June started her working life in 1972 aged 17 as a weaver in a blanket-making factory in Durban, South Africa. Two years later she was sacked after helping workers in the factory to organise into a union. In 1976 she was arrested and held in solitary confinement for a year.

On her release from prison, June continued her mission to help workers organise themselves, becoming the first female general secretary of a South African national union and later, a senior official in the South African Department of Labour.

Now based in the UK, June has worked for a number of international organisations and academic institutions dedicated to helping empower women workers throughout Africa and beyond.

As we walked into the factory the noise got louder and louder until it felt quite unbearable..

"It's like life before was a walk in the park, all beautiful and sunny and then all of a sudden a hole opens up and you fall right into it."

This is how June describes her first day as a weaver in the Afritex blanket-making factory in Durban, South Africa. Then 17, she was in the first group of women recruited to work in the factory.

"The first thing I noticed was the noise," she remembers. "As we walked into the factory it got louder and louder until it felt quite unbearable - and then there were these huge, filthy dirty machines that we were expected to work on. I didn't know what had hit me."

The factory was geared around men

A lot of the women were sexually harassed...

June's commitment to empowering workers - particularly women - started then.

"I soon noticed that the whole factory was geared around men," says June.

For example, there were belts on the machine that were connected to the power supply. They often used to break, which meant the power cut off and so couldn't work. We had to get the men to fix the belts, as they were too high up for us to reach. As we were paid on a piece rate basis, every minute spent waiting for the belts to be fixed meant lost wages."

June and her fellow weavers were also required to carry large, heavy rolls of blanket material from the loom to the quality control room.

"This was a real problem for us women. The men could carry the rolls on their shoulders but they were too heavy for us to pick up. We tried lifting them up onto our heads, African-style, but it was impossible!

"In fact, no-one should have had to carry those rolls, whether they were men or women. One man dropped dead from a heart attack after struggling to carry one."

Sexual harassment was also accepted as the normal way of working in the factory.

"A lot of the women were sexually harassed and ended up in relationships with male co-workers and supervisors. says June. "They knew if they didn't, at the very least they wouldn't get the help they often needed in carrying rolls of blankets and fixing broken belts on their weaving machines. At worst, the supervisors would victimise them, for example by refusing to allow them to leave work for family emergencies, or even dismissing them.

An instinct for collective action

We were seen as trouble makers, so a lot of what we did was in secret.

"I don't know how I became an organiser," says June. "I think I just instinctively realised that the only way we could get anywhere - both women and men - would be for us to stick together."

June started to organise workers so they could collectively raise their issues with the factory management. Together with some of her fellow workers, she was involved in the setting up what was to become South Africa's first Independent textile workers union.

Even though the factory management at the time refused to recognise the union, together with her fellow workers colleagues she got them to agree to provide them with trolleys to transport rolls of blanket, as well as a proper canteen.

"They also agreed to give women time off if they needed to take their children to the doctor. Before, they threatened to dismiss anyone who did this."

At the time, which was at the height of Apartheid, many workers in South Africa were intimidated and victimised for being union members, and June was sacked by the factory for her union activities. But she continued her work as an organiser, first on a voluntary basis, and then as a paid employee of the union, recruiting workers to join and taking up cases on their behalf.

"We were seen as trouble makers. So a lot of what we did was in secret. We used to get down to the factories at 4 am to talk to workers, so the factory management wouldn't see us."

Solitary confinement

Every morning the interrogators would come and pick me up and take me to their interrogation centre, then I'd spend the day having four or five people yelling and shouting at me.

In 1976, during a year of Government crackdowns on black activism, June was arrested and was placed in solitary confinement.

She was held there for nearly a year.

"The only way of coping was to take each day as it came," she says. "Every morning the interrogators would come and pick me up and take me to their interrogation centre, then I'd spend the day having four or five people yelling and shouting at me.

"I just had to resign myself to my situation, but it was so hard, especially as they kept taunting me about the death of another activist whose funeral I'd been to just before I was arrested. They kept reminding me my life was in their hands."

June was never told why she was detained for so long. "Under the draconian laws of the Internal Security Act, which the Apartheid government used to suppress dissent, there was no legal obligation to make any formal charges against me."

On her release from prison just before Christmas in 1976, she started organising again, this time for the metal workers' union. She became its general secretary - the first female general secretary of a national union in South Africa.

In 1999 she gained a senior position in the South African Department of Labour and has since worked for a number of international organisations and academic institutions, dedicated to helping empower women workers throughout Africa and beyond.

She also set up the Workers' College in Natal, South Africa, which was the first college in South Africa dedicated to educating and training trade unionists.

Helping women workers find their voice

What I do is get women to find their own strength and voice from inside themselves.

June's mission is to enable workers to find their voice. She is particularly dedicated to empowering women workers and has delivered scores of training workshops to women throughout Africa to help them learn what their rights are and to gain confidence as workers.

"The reality is that poor treatment of workers hits women hardest," she says. "For example if a woman is told late in the day that she has to work extra hours, her first thought is going to be, ‘who is going to feed the children?' It's not the same for men.

"But often women are just not used to thinking positively about themselves, and have little confidence so they find it difficult to speak up for themselves.

"This is particularly true if they have been sexually harassed, which happens all too often - they just look totally defeated.

"If everyone around you is telling you you're nothing, you start to believe it.

"But even the youngest women have an inner strength they can draw on. What I do is get women to find their own strength and voice from inside themselves.

"For example, when I'm training women workers to become leaders, I get each of them to talk about positive experiences and actions that they have taken to solve problems in their daily lives -these are plentiful. I help them to use these experiences as strength they can build on.

"I also ask women to turn to the woman sitting next to her and tell her something positive about her. I see something click inside their heads and the whole energy of the room changes."

Ethical trade is bringing signs of change

Ethical trade is starting to change things too, she says.

"I was in Tanzania recently and I saw some really positive things happening. There was a farm where I noticed that pregnant women were given a space to go and rest in. That's definitely new.

"I also noticed that when the time came to spray pesticides in the fields, the workers were sent away for a couple of hours, so they wouldn't get contaminated by the sprays.

"Being involved with the Ethical Trading Initiative, I'm starting to understand more about the other side of the story, and how retailers work.

"It's key that we get retailers to understand that their buying practices can make it very hard for factories to make sure their workers don't work too many hours, and to pay their workers enough money to live on."

"This the only way we are doing to make change happen," she says. "We need to understand more about each other's worlds."

Find out how to encourage retailers to behave more ethically and be an ‘ethical pest' at www.ethicaltrade.org/get-involved