Democratic Trade Unions in Nepal Face Tough Fight with New Regime

NTUC President Laxman Basnet (center left) and Solidarity Center Programs Director Tim Ryan rally with workers on March 18.

In Nepal, unions are still struggling to promote democracy and the rights of workers, reports the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center’s Tim Ryan from Kathmandu.

In 2006, the democratic trade unions of Nepal took to the streets to push out the country’s autocratic king and usher in a new phase of democracy in this poor, mountainous country. Since then, the former Maoist insurgents have been brought uneasily into the political process, and they succeeded in forming the current parliamentary government—but democracy and justice for workers are still a distant vision.

The threat to Nepal’s fragile democracy, plus the impact of the global economic crisis, led more than 50 trade union organizations from 30 countries around the world to Nepal earlier this month in a show of solidarity at two national conventions of the democratic trade union movement here—the Nepal Trade Union Congress-Independent (NTUC-I) and the General Federation of Nepali Trade Unions (GEFONT). For the past five years, the Solidarity Center has been working with Nepalese unions to increase membership, assist in labor law reform and, now that democratic space has opened up, encourage the unions to engage with their parliament.

The story of Kumar, however, is painful proof that the Maoists are far from cooperative. I met Kumar (not his real name) at the NTUC-I convention, held in the regional city of Birganj. More than 1,000 delegates attended from all over the country, some traveling days to get there, to discuss policy and elect leaders. An average of three candidates ran for each office and executive council position. Campaigning was high-spirited, featuring demonstrations, songs and dances, prolific leafleting and processions in an open venue dotted with colorful tents. It was followed by an impressive free and transparent voting process.

Kumar stood by, solemn and subdued, watching all the commotion, not attempting to join in. As he told me:

I just got out of the hospital after spending two weeks there. My nose is still broken and I need an operation.

Kumar is the president of a casino union in the capital city of Kathmandu and a national NTUC-I vice president. He was at work when a mob of Maoist thugs entered the casino and attacked him. His members tried to defend him. “But the Maoists beat me all over,” he said. As he shuffled away into the raucous hoopla of the campaigning, holding onto the shoulder of his 10-year-old son, he looked so damaged it seemed his bones might come apart.

So while the Maoists have joined the national political process, their trade union front continues its intimidating ways, attacking democratic unions and employers with naked violence and extortion. Despite this blatant aggression, the democratic unions—especially NTUC-I and GEFONT, aligned with the mainstream United Marxist-Leninist Party—have reached out to the Maoist union to try to bring it to the table and develop consensus on pushing progressive labor law reform.

One young NTUC-I cadre with whom I spoke was highly skeptical. Ashok, a leader of the Rickshaw Workers Union, puts it this way:

They are still bandits. They don’t care about collective bargaining or a relationship with the employers or the economic progress of the country. All they care about is strikes and violence.

At the GEFONT convention, held simultaneously in Kathmandu, a senior GEFONT officer agreed that the Maoists were continuing their violence, and they were anything but democratic.

The Maoist party tells the union who will be the leadership. They are totally controlled by the party.

Yet GEFONT leaders believe the Maoists must be engaged on some level, both in politics and in the labor movement, in order to be reined in. A top-ranked NTUC-I leader echoed this approach.

We need to get them under a joint trade union umbrella, with a code of conduct, and enmesh them in a legal system in order to move them in a responsible direction.

One of the goals is a united union approach on reforming the country’s labor laws:

If they do not support the reforms, they could wreck the process.

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