Doha, Europe Brief News – The Ministry of Labour of Qatar has signed a new memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) and with workers’ management committees. This is just another effort to provide transport workers with their true rights.
The MoU between Qatar and ITF was signed as a part of their previous agreement of the International Labour Organisation technical project. This MoU specifies the transport workers’ rights for the coming two years.
Stephen Cotton, ITF General Secretary said “ As worker rights and implementation improve, Qatar is already seeing the economic and social benefits of having a healthy productive workforce”.
He further added, “There is still a long way to go, but this MoU, we are taking an important first step towards freedom of association in Qatar”.
This MoU has the utmost significance as it builds up with the help of five year talks between Qatar and ITF. In 2018, the Qatar government made a few changes to Qatari employment law.
The law was placed to provide Employees with the freedom to change their jobs without requiring them to have no objection certificate from their first job employer.
Qatar Giving workers a voice
The new agreement has strengthened worker rights, even more, first of all, it aims to provide thousands of migrant transport workers in Qatar a collective voice.
Under the new law, companies with more than 30 workers can simply form a joint committee with an equal number of workers and management to discuss key workplace issues.
Cotton said, “ This is the first time we have seen anything close to industrial democracy for migrant workers in Qatar”.
He further added, “ Joint committees are a major step because workers will be able to raise critical workplace issues and concerns directly with management and representative workers’ views in critical decisions around safety and conditions of employment”.
The ITF has been working with transport companies to help form these committees and engage workers in the system. Both parties have shown their willingness to grab every opportunity to form joint committees in local and multinational companies.
The MoU aims to take care of all transport sectors and ITF has already started to help with the technical aspects of worker rights.
The MoU outlines areas of cooperation across the different transport sectors mainly Wage protection, Recruitment and working conditions, Promoting the voice for workers and giving them access to justice and many others.
