1 May in Osnabrück - Making care work visible

Two thirds of all working hours in Germany are paid, but also unpaid care work: washing, cooking, cleaning, care, education, parenting, social (relationship) work or the organisation of everyday life, both for oneself and for other people. Because work is more than just wage labour, as is always tacitly assumed. A society cannot exist without this care work and yet it is devalued and ignored. In capitalism, only that which creates added value (profit) has value; the rest is merely a cost factor that needs to be minimised. This happens in the area of care work through low wages, extremely stressful working conditions or the simple shifting of this work into the private sphere - women in particular suffer from this, as they still do most of this work ("Mum will do it"). Although many people feel the excessive demands and exhaustion of the daily "hamster wheel", the problems remain within their own four walls. We want to oppose this and make it clear that the misery we are almost all in is systematic, which is why we, the Women's Strike Alliance, symbolically renamed Osnabrück's Raiffeisen Platz "Platz für Sorge" (Square for Care) today on 1 May, International Workers' Day. We want a society in which people's needs and caring for one another in solidarity take centre stage instead of competition and profit. We stand by our position: Women first! For a good life for all!