ORGANIZED LABOUR: THE GLOBAL STRUGGLE

MEETING THE CONFEDERATION OF ETHIOPIAN TRADE UNIONS

As elected staff representatives, we could not visit Ethiopia without meeting with at least one labour organization. We were greeted by Kassahun Follo, President of the Confederation of Ethiopian Trade Unions (CETU) and other members of its Executive Committee.
There was instant kinship among us. Unfortunately, as with other scheduled meetings in our brief period in the country, there was so much to discuss within a very short time.

MARIA DWEGGAH

Kassahun Follo, National Trade
Union leader

CETU has nine National Trade Union Federations with a membership of 350,000 members organized in 450 “basic/plan” unions. As the conversation progressed, common issues started to emerge, specifically the difficulty in organizing trade unions, financial constraints and limitation of trained staff representatives, the effect of decentralization on union organizing, contractual arrangements, rights of permanent workers versus day labourers, safety and security, employment of women, mobbing and sexual harassment. To address the empowerment of women in the workplace, one of the nine permanent members of the Executive Committee is the Head of Social Affairs and Women’s Division.

Two of our hosts, the President and the Head of the Foreign Relations Division, were preparing to attend the ILO Conference in Geneva, which was to take place the following week. Ethiopia became a member of the ILO in 1923. The Confederation of Ethiopian Labour Unions (CELU) had been a constituent member since its establishment in 1963 and slowly evolved into what is now known as the Confederation of Trade Unions. As with most labour movements worldwide, the history of Ethiopian trade unions is no different, marked by bitter struggles, boycotts, strikes, expulsion of union leaders and active members from their jobs, inside takeovers, government intervention, and mergers. The CETU of today was reorganized and was recognized as a legal entity in 1997.

In its publication, “The Confederation of Ethiopian Trade Unions’ Profile”, this relatively young organization enumerates its many challenges. Currently the country is in the process of change to cope with the ongoing global economic order. The transformation from command economy to market economy brought about privatization of publicly owned enterprises. The challenge of the privatization program particularly on workers, as witnessed so far, is a rather severe one. Workers are exposed to exploitation and unjustified industrial measures of employers. Another major obstacle that the workers and their unions face in the process of defending their rights is the extreme delay of the legal decisions by the labour court. Although the rule is that the concerned court should decide within 60 days, the actual practice shows that labour cases are delayed up to five years. Financial constraints and limitations of trained manpower are also among the major problems faced by the Confederation.

It would be absurd to compare their struggles and challenges with our own internal labour struggles in the UN, but we could also not dismiss the many similarities.