12 December, 2010
The ICEM’s Contract and Agency Labour (CAL) Regional Seminar for Sub-Saharan Africa took place in Accra, Ghana, on 8-9 November. The seminar brought together ICEM affiliates from Senegal, Guinea, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Namibia, Nigeria, Mauritius, Ghana, and Togo to discuss CAL developments in their countries.
Representatives from SASK, the international arm of the Finnish national labour centre, which supports the Sub-Saharan Africa CAL project, and the ICEM CAL global and African coordinators also participated in the seminar.
Joseph Toe, CAL Sub-Saharan Africa Project Coordinator, at the Ghana seminar
Affiliates exchanged information on what steps they had taken in respect to their specific action plans developed during previous workshops. Many participants reported that dealing with the issue of short-term contract work or agency labour was becoming more and more challenging. This was the case expressed by those coming from Nigeria, where management attitudes are increasingly favouring the use of precarious employment.
Although unions in Nigeria have been demanding that remuneration of contract staff should be determined by the industry in which the contract operates, so that workers receive equal pay for equal work, they have not managed to achieve this yet.
Matti Koskinen, from the Finnish Union of Salaried Employees, Toimihenkilöunioni (TU), made a presentation on how CAL is dealt with in Finland, and said that collective agreements mostly regulate the use of short-term labour. Matti also drew attention to the European Metalworkers’ Federation’s second common demand for more secure employment, against precarious work. Joseph Toe, the Sub-Saharan Africa CAL Project Coordinator, presented a paper on membership recruitment, which participants said would prove to be very helpful in their CAL organising campaigns.
Looking to the future, affiliates proposed that they should concentrate more on collecting facts and figures relating to CAL, and that they should prioritise the organising of CAL workers. Affiliates also suggested that dedicated funds should be raised for CAL workers, and that there should be more capacity building for dealing with CAL workers.