Tanzania – new communication structure to increase union power

From 10 to 12 July, a project monitoring and planning meeting was held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania at the head office of TUICO, (Tanzania Union for Industrial and Commercial workers), to follow up on the project’s advances and challenges.

Despite many plant closures and job losses, TUICO continues to grow, thanks to a union culture of permanent and strategic organizing. TUICO has become one of the most important unions in Tanzania and East Africa with over 80’000 active members, some 35’000 of these which belong to IndustriALL sectors. The union’s influence also extends to the National Centre TUCTA, where several TUICO leaders hold important positions.

Organizing is a priority

As Boniface Nkakatisi, General Secretary, and Samuel Lyimo, Education Secretary reported, at the beginning of each month the Regional Secretaries report back to head office on the number of workers organised, versus the number of workers targeted.

However, all union membership records are administrated on paper, which is extremely cumbersome, time consuming and bureaucratic. The union’s internal communication system was very slow, as it took more than two weeks to send information between the regional offices and the national head office. The project seeks to address these issues, hence equipping the head and regional offices with electronic communication infrastructure and  building a union membership database.

Since 2015, Shahmez Khimji, Unifor Director for Information Technology, has been assisting the union and working directly with the project committee team in TUICO head office to shape up their IT structures. TUICO is now organizing basic IT training for all their staff members.

The project has a two-fold objective, targeting internal and external communication structures. At the internal level, an infrastructure for rapid exchanges of information is being built. This will help members to get information from the union to improve essential organizational functions; handling of labour disputes and case handling, providing education to members, organizing new members, and sharing information to conclude collective agreements.

The second objective is to develop Tuico’s external communication structure, to develop outreach and alliances with civil society, connect with other unions in the region and improve access to IndustriALL’s sectorial networks and activities. The meeting last week addressed these next steps.

Both Unifor and TUICO presented their union structures, and Mohamad Alsadi, Unifor’s  Director for Human Rights and International Department, explained how the Social Justice Fund functions.  TUICO was particularly interested in the way UNIFOR reaches out to their members and communities to keep them involved and active in nation-wide political struggles understood as union issues.

Suzanna Miller, IndustriALL project and rights officer, said:

"As the communication project progresses, IndustriALL looks forward to supporting and hearing more about workers’ struggles and successes in Tanzania."