Kenworthy News Media July 4, 2013
COSATU and Africa Contact campaign demands
unbanning of TUCOSWA
Today (4 July 2013), Africa Contact launched an ACT NOW campaign to
unban Swazi trade union federation, TUCOSWA, together with the Congress of
South African Trade Unions and TUCOSWA, writes Kenoworthy News Media.
“With this campaign, we wish to send a clear message to Swaziland’s government
in general, and its Minister of Labour in particular, that the Swazi trade
unions have the support of people throughout the world, who will not stand idly
by and let the rights of workers in Swaziland be trampled underfoot,” says
Africa Contact’s Chairperson, Mads Barbesgaard.
“Together with the ILO we demand that TUCOSWA is unbanned. TUCOSWA’s
struggle is essential and epoch-making in ensuring that leaders in other
countries are not inspired by Swaziland to undermine their countries’ labour
rights.”
After years of negotiations, Swaziland’s trade unions federations had
decided to merge into one organisation, the Trade Union Congress of Swaziland
(TUCOSWA). But the Swazi government, after initially registering TUCOSWA, chose
to deregister the federation in violation of the rules of the International
Labour Organisation (ILO) that Swaziland has ratified.
During its International Labour Conference in June, the ILO demanded
that “the [Swazi] government should immediately proceed to the registration of
TUCOSWA.” Until Swaziland’s government chooses to do so – something that won’t
happen without pressure from within and outside Swaziland – the trade union
movement in Swaziland, and thus Swazi workers, are left without a voice.
And Swaziland’s population need the voice of a trade union congress to
demand their rights in a country where all that question the rule of absolute
monarch King Mswati III are met with threats, violence, torture and
imprisonment. In a country that is nominally a middle-income country but where
two thirds of the population survive on less than a dollar a day, many without
having a meal every day. And in a country where the government routinely and
often violently breaks up any demonstration, protest or union event.
Sign the petition here
See also
UNBAN TUCOSWA, SAY ILO UNIONS
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