{"id":18656,"date":"2012-05-03T08:29:12","date_gmt":"2012-05-03T04:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=18656"},"modified":"2012-05-03T15:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-05-03T11:00:00","slug":"qatar-trade-union-gets-the-go-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-business\/middle-east-employment-analysis\/qatar-trade-union-gets-the-go-ahead\/","title":{"rendered":"Labour: Qatar Trade Union Gets the Go Ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

First in the Gulf, but not in the Middle East. The Palestinian Trade Union movement has 290,000 members, and has been funded largely, and a little ironically, by Saudi, Egypt and Syria.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Saudi Gazette<\/em>\u00a0runs a story, apparently from Agence France Presse, reporting that Qatar will allow the formation of trade unions. In addition, it will end the current system of sponsorship for foreign workers.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia has already mooted about ideas of ending its own sponsorship program, taking the authority and responsibility of hiring and managing foreign workers out of the hands of individuals and companies and instead putting them under the control of a few, specialized companies. Workers\u2019 unions, though, are another matter.<\/p>\n

Saudi history in regard to the union movement has been harsh. Unionism first raised its head in the 1950s, at the oil facilities in the Eastern Province. Unionism smacked a bit too much of communism, the ultimate enemy of God on Earth according to Saudi clerics and rulers. It did not help matters that would-be union leaders\u00a0appeared to have had connections<\/a>\u00a0with the USSR as well as the suspect Arab Nationalists running Egypt at the time. Discredited on both political and religious grounds, unionism became a major taboo as well as a readily prosecuted crime.<\/p>\n

This attitude has not noticeably softened over time, though there have been\u00a0calls to reexamine the issue<\/a>. In 2001, the government authorized the formation of \u2018labor committees\u2019 in companies employing more than 100 Saudi nationals, but did not extend membership to foreign workers. International organizations have condemned the ban considering the ability of workers to organize a basic right.<\/p>\n

Now, Qatar, a sister member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, is authorize unions. This will put additional pressure on the Saudi government \u2013 and it will be harder to ignore because it\u2019s a bordering country.<\/p>\n

Qatar to allow trade union, scrap sponsorship<\/a><\/p>\n

DOHA \u2014 Qatar is to allow the establishment of a trade union to protect labor rights and scrap the \u201csponsor\u201d system for foreign workers, a top official said in local dailies Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The union, independent from the labor ministry, \u201cwill have the right to receive the complaints of workers and protect their rights,\u201d the ministry\u2019s undersecretary Hussein Al-Mulla told Alarab daily.<\/p>\n

The union \u201cwill be run by Qataris but as a foreigner you will have the right to vote but not run in the board of directors elections,\u201d he said, adding that the project awaited the emir\u2019s approval.<\/p>\n

The Gulf state will also scrap the much-criticized sponsor system for foreign labor, as it aims to gradually recruit one million workers for the 2022 World Cup tournament it is to host, said Mulla. \u201cThere is an intention to cancel the sponsor system and replace it with a contract between the worker and the employer,\u201d he told the daily.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CROSSROADS ARABIA: Qatar is to allow the formation of trade unions. In addition, it will end the current system of sponsorship for foreign workers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":18657,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,64],"tags":[3886,1060,18300,2805,1115,1086,191,5169,18307,18275,3882,385,18330,1087],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18656"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}