AFL-CIO Leads Union Delegation to Middle East

An AFL-CIO-led labor delegation to the Middle East is arriving this week in Amman, Jordan, for talks with union leaders and workers. Cathy Feingold at the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center describes the goals of the visit and will provide updates on the delegation throughout the week.

AFL-CIO union leaders, led by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, are visiting Jordan and Bahrain this week. The labor delegation seeks to learn more about the challenges facing Arab trade unions, leaders and working men and women while sharing with our brothers and sisters in the Middle East our experiences and the challenges we all face in a global economy. Most important, the delegation will explore with our counterparts in the region how U.S. workers can support workers in the Middle East. U.S. workers face many of the same issues as do workers in this region. 

The delegation will take part in a high-level meeting of Iraqi trade union leaders in Amman sponsored by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the global labor movement. The meeting will include senior staff at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). U.S. union leaders also will have ample opportunities to meet with workers at workplaces in addition to union leadership in each country.

Other participants in the U.S. delegation include: Bill Lucy, AFSCME secretary-treasurer and chairman of the AFL-CIO Executive Committee on International Affairs; Patricia Friend, president of the Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA); and Greg Junemann, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE). The delegation also is accompanied by AFL-CIO International Department Director Barbara Shailor and Solidarity Center Executive Director Ellie Larson.

Although the region’s countries have stood at the crossroads of international commerce for centuries, as the central stopping point on the ancient Silk Route connecting the West with East Asia, the economies of the Middle East and the North Africa region are beginning to face the challenges of 21st century globalization. As elsewhere, these economies are shifting toward trade liberalization, privatization of industry and public services, so-called flexible labor markets and other policies favored by the Washington consensus. As the region’s economies integrate further with the global economy, working people and their families are confronted with the same policy debates and workplace issues affecting America’s workers. The citizens of the region want good jobs that will enable them to provide for their families, the opportunity for safe migration for decent work, equitable division of resources, strong social safety nets and educational systems that provide opportunity for a better future. 

The overall situation in the Middle East region for workers is challenging: freedom of association, freedom to organize and bargain collectively are severely restricted. As a result, trade unions in this region face numerous challenges. Across the region, unions are finding it difficult to organize workers in the private sector, in both industry and services. But in countries like Bahrain and Oman, which have historically not had trade unions, workers have formed unions in the private sector.

In Jordan, workers are forbidden from organizing in the public sector, and civil servants (including teachers and many health care workers) do not have collective bargaining rights. Hundreds of thousands of Syrian, South and Southeast Asian, Egyptian and Iraqi workers in Jordan are barred from joining unions. Jordanian labor law restricts union organizing to 17 prescribed sector unions, mandated by law to affiliate to the General Federation of Jordanian Trade Unions (GFJTU). The GFJTU and its 17 unions have made modest progress on the road to transparency, democracy and independence, but this process has only just begun.    

Meanwhile, the U.S. trade agreement with Jordan included workers’ rights provisions that were supposed to prevent gross violations of workers’ freedoms. But these provisions weren’t enforced, and last year the violations were so extreme the AFL-CIO and the National Textile Association (NTA), which represents U.S. textile producers, filed a workers’ rights case against Jordan with the U.S. Trade Representative.

The Bush administration has done little or nothing to enforce the workers’ rights part of the agreement, according to a report, Justice for All: The Struggle for Worker Rights in Jordan by the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, which has maintained an office in Jordan since October 2003. The report details the scope of workers’ rights violations across industries in the country, including violations of the rights of migrant workers, obstacles to freedom of association and collective bargaining, as well as a rise in child labor and forced labor.

In Bahrain, workers cannot organize in the public sector. In an important step forward for the Bahraini labor movement, the government adopted new legislation in 2002 that recognizes freedom of association and lifts the ban on strikes. The Trade Union law allows private-sector workers, maritime workers and civil service workers to form and join trade unions. However, the government of Bahrain has continually denied public-sector workers their freedom to organize. All unions in Bahrain are affiliated with the General Federation of Bahrain Trade Unions (GFBTU), which comprises 51 company-based unions in the construction, industrial, textile, insurance, petroleum, aluminum, airport services and other sectors. Thirteen women are active on the executive councils of GFBTU affiliates, and the federation recruits non-citizens to be union members and hold union positions. Union organization is new in Bahrain. GFBTU leaders have placed a high priority on developing union representatives’ capacity to organize new members and negotiate with employers over wages and work conditions.

The AFL-CIO Solidarity Center is a nonprofit global organization that assists workers around the world who are struggling to build democratic and independent trade unions. We work with unions, nongovernmental organizations and community groups worldwide to achieve equitable, sustainable, democratic development and to help working men and women everywhere stand up for their rights and improve their living and working conditions.

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