Last Sunday morning, the Federation of Jordanian Independent Trade Union went on strike in front of the parliament, rejecting the amendments of the labour law which articles deal with the trade union organization.
In a statement, the independent unions considered the amendments, as a restriction to their right to form trade unions, asking for the repeal of Article 98 of the Labour Code, which included restrictions on the right of workers to form and join trade unions, and asked to provide them with the full right to establish their trade unions.
The unions said that the text proposed by the Labour, Development and Population Committee is inconsistent with the principles of the freedom of the trade union organization, as it granted the power of registering trade unions to the Minister of Labour, which contradicts the most basic criteria of the right to organize, in violation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights ratified by Jordan.
For his part, Ahmed Awadh, the director of the Phenix Center for Economic and Informatic Studies, told “Alghad” website that these restrictions have over the past years weakened the effectiveness of the majority of the existing trade unions and weakened the role of workers in the social dialogue and the policy consultations. Moreover, these restrictions led to the absence of the workers’ representatives in the majority of the private sector businesses, in addition to their contradiction to the provisions and the spirit of the Jordanian constitution.
Awadh pointed out that many of the reports presented to the Human Rights Council at the end of March by Jordanian, regional and international human rights organizations have clearly focused on these violations, which will be discussed at the meetings of the Human Rights Council in November. Moreover, the International Labour Standards Committee of the ILO has reported several violations of this article in its last report, which will be discussed in May.
It is noteworthy that the decision of the Constitutional Court No. (6/2013), which was based on the provisions of the Constitution and the International Covenants and conventions, gave the right to all the workers in the public sector to freely organize in trade unions, however it is still on hold.
#international_standards #protest #Jordan #labour_law
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