WU Mei Lin

Meilin was a worker in an electronics factory before she became an organiser of a labour group in 1984, where she organised strikes and unionised with workers as the open market policy of China caused factories to shut down in Hong Kong. In 1989, Meilin and her comrades thought that women’s voices were absent in the mainstream labour movement, so they formed the Hong Kong Women Workers Association (HKWWA) together. In HKWWA, “women workers” includes women who are in the waged labour market and women who were doing unpaid housework at home.

Working hard and studying hard, Meilin finished her degree in Sociology, and became a primary school teacher for one year. Then in 1998, Meilin joined HKWWA as executive director.  In all these years of work in HKWWA, Meilin’s organising work has included marginalised women workers such as out-sourced janitors, part-time and casualized women workers and double-burden family carers. She has provided assistance and training to help women to form their own organisation such as unions, self-help groups and rights-based groups. Asides from movements of resistance, Meilin also tried to organise and train women to form Workers Cooperatives with emphasis on economic democracy.

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