Maravi

Finnegan calls for proactive labour unions, employers

Finnegan calls for proactive labour unions, employers
By Mutuna Chanda
Sunday March 30, 2008 [04:00]

INTERNATIONAL Labour Organization (ILO) representative for Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique Gerry Finnegan has said employers and the labour movement should be more proactive in preventing industrial unrest. And Finnegan has said the ignorance of labour laws among investors needed to be overcome. In an interview on Friday, Finnegan said employers and labour unions should not wait for problems to occur for them to undertake to solve them.

“We want to see Zambia prosper and don’t want to see the exploitation of workers or employers not playing their rightful roles,” he said.

Finnegan said once workers understood their rights and their respective employers understood their roles, there would be lesser conflicts in places of work.

“Workers need to be made aware of their rights. The unions should be popularising the core aspects of labour laws among the workers and if they understand their rights and managements in places of work understood their roles; there should be lesser problems,” Finnegan said. “We are working with the trade union movement in trying to re-chart their messages to ensure that the key issues in labour laws are popularised.”

And Finnegan said all investors needed to be made aware of labour laws obtaining in the country.

“Laws should be made accessible to new investors. We want to overcome the ignorance. All investors should be made aware and this could be done through the Zambia Federation of Employers and the Zambia Development Agency,” Finnegan said.

“If necessary labour laws should be translated in foreign languages that would make it easy for the investors who may not understand English to understand them; like I am aware that there are translations of the laws in Chinese.”

Finnegan also called on the labour movement to find a way of organising workers in the informal sector.

“There are a lot of workers in the informal economy and there should be a way of organising them,” said Finnegan.

Labels: LABOUR, TRADE UNIONS

posted by MrK @ 3:27 AM