15 September, 2010
Joseph Toe is ICEM's Contract and Agency Labour (CAL) Project Coordinator for the Sub-Saharan Africa Region. He is a native of Togo.
How prevalent is the issue of Contract and Agency Labour and Precarious Work in Africa?
In some cases, the proportion of temporal workers may reach 80% of the permanent workforce. Deregulation of the labour market has accelerated this process.
What factors have impacted on the use of CAL?
Structural adjustments imposed by the Bretton Woods institutions adversely affecting the institutional employment context at two levels:
• The de-regulation of the labour market and the fact cry that use of labour must become more flexible; and
• The reduction of trade union participation and the inability of civil society to effectively make its voice heard over anti-social measures advocated by lending institutions.
The arrival of Asian investors has also disrupted the labour market in Africa and jeopardises previous social gains.
What is the Sub-Saharan African ICEM CAL Project?
The Sub-Saharan African ICEM CAL Project started at the end of February 2009 and covers 8 countries, Guinea, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and South Africa. The selected targeted countries were all identified as nations where the issue of contract and agency labour is wide spread, but also where there are relatively strong trade unions. This means that there are possibilities of carrying out actions to achieve reasonable progress on this issue.
What are the Project Objectives?
The project aims to develop trade union strategies and seek best practices to address contract and agency labour related problems in Sub-Saharan Africa; it seeks to create a coherent regional coordination to address the problem; it advocates for governments to take the relevant initiatives and policies to halt the use of temporal contracts and to regulate private employment agencies; it seeks to carry out high level and specialised regional research; to have trained union negotiators on the issue of rights for contract and agency workers; to build the organisational capacities of the leadership in CAL campaigns; and to create a network for information- and experience-sharing of ICEM affiliates on the issue across the region.
The training is based on a number of simple and practical tools designed from examples taken from around the world. At the end of each session, a plan of action is developed on the future actions to be carried out at the national level in synergy with other GUFs’ affiliates, and guidelines are defined to be included in the ICEM Global Campaign on CAL. In order to implement the national plan, a monitoring mechanism, which is part of the plan of action is defined, and the officers in charge of its implementation are appointed.
Trade union action is indispensable to neutralising the development of outsourcing and temporal employment, particularly as it is crosscuts and affects all trade and industrial sectors. Sub-Saharan African countries are seriously affected by this problem and are reacting in order to stem and/or reduce the adverse effects. The Sub-Saharan African ICEM CAL Project also encourages and assists unions in:
• Building trade union organising and negotiating capacity;
• Institutionalising sector-based negotiations and reinforcing trade union unity of action, which is necessary to combat outsourcing, labour brokering, and contract agencies. It fights for the regulation of employment agencies and recourse to outsource, and to be involved in that redress process;
• Reinforcing solidarity between temporary and permanent workers;
• Training those who organise temporary workers;
• Negotiating collective agreements which include clauses on the systematic recourse to outsource and use casual labour with regard to the improvement of the working conditions and the reduction of the consequences of casual labour;
• Campaigns for the transformation of casual labour into permanent employment;
• Develops strategies for CAL workers, with the emphasis on decent work and inclusion of gender and race in those strategies;
• Organising campaigns and lobbying at national and international levels against casual labour, and developing plans of action aimed at ridding this phenomenon in the Export Processing Zones (EPZ);
• Carrying out studies on the consequences of outsourcing and contract labour agencies within the context of worsening disparities and inequalities of the social strata. This means addressing the Millennium Development Goals 2015, the 2007–2015 Decent Work Agenda in Africa; the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), Sustainable Human Development Programme, and the Tripartite and Social Dialogue Principles which serve as the basis of ILO.
Casual employment affects positive labour values, which develop, distinguish, and socialise the human being.