On July 2, the Minister of Labor and Professional Integration held a meeting with representants of the ministry of Interior and from the Ministry of modernizing sectors and a delegation from the Democratic Confederation of Labour, in order to discuss the new law on strike.
The Confederation’s delegation insisted on the withdrawal of the project of law presented to the parliament because of it was unilaterally drafted, without consulting the trade unions and in a conservative spirit. The draft is ignoring the right-based approach and the social evolution and aims to restrain the right to strike by using the Penal Code and imposing limiting and threatening conditions for anyone who wants to exercise the right to strike.
The delegation demanded the tripartite negotiation as stipulated by the ILO legislations and in presence of the governmental parties, in the same way the Labor Code was drafted and passed. The delegation refused the concept of “consultation” et considered that this is inappropriate for the labor laws and that is doesn’t comply with the international conventions nor with the ILO’s centenary declaration of last month.
In the same context, the Confederation insisted on the necessity to ratify the international convention number 87 adopted by the ILO’s institutions to discuss the law on strike. It asked for the cancellation of the article 288 of the Penal Code, and to back off on cutting salaries to sanction workers who strike considering that this is a dangerous infringement to the trade union’s acquis.
In return, the Minister of Labor categorically refused all these proposals, clinging to the “consultation” process arguing that it is a process that other trade unions accepted on the agreement of April 25th 2019. The minister even invented a new way to deal with the central trade union bodies by consulting them by mail.
The executive board of the Confederation expressed its will to a tripartite negotiation to reach a law draft that guarantees this constitutional and universal right, reiterating that it is ready to continue the struggle in all legal ways to defend the acquis and demands of the Moroccan working class, first and foremost, the right to strike.
#Morocco #Democratic_Confederation_of_Labour #law_on_strike
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