Investors exploiting local labour - trade unions

Workers in various sectors of the Ugandan economy continue to suffer widespread exploitation as the government undertakes the delicate task of maintaining its interests in attracting investors while guarding workers' rights, trade union officials said on Tuesday. The secretary general of the National Organisation of Trade Unions, Lyelmoi Otong Ongaba, told IRIN the main offenders were the textile and fisheries sectors, where labour laws were rarely observed and workers who registered with any trade union were regularly shown the door. "The situation is appalling," Ongaba said. "We have a problem with unionisation in the textile Industry, but the exploitation of these workers has reached such proportions that we decided to lobby for international solidarity for our government to see the point." "In the textiles, fisheries and hotels, when they hear that you are a member of the union, you go," he added. Ongaba said industries had been the main impediment to the development of unions in Uganda and unfortunately, the government seemed to be supporting them. For example, he said, President Yoweri Museveni at one time admitted to causing the dismissal of 290 employees of Tri-Star Apparel - a textile factory targeting the American market - who were striking against bad working conditions, because they would "scare away investors". However, presidential spokesman Onapito Ekomoloit denied the charges against the government, and said Museveni was concerned about workers' conditions and was opposed to any mistreatment of workers. "The president has been visiting factories and insisting on better safety gear, and for sanitation levels to meet international standards. Workers' representation in parliament is also a vision that was espoused by the president and we are the only country where workers are represented in parliament," Ekomoloit said. Ekomoloit said the government was subjecting all labour laws to reforms under which any worker in Uganda would have the right to form a union. The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) said in a report on Uganda released recently that textile industry workers in the country suffered widespread exploitation. The ICFTU, which represents some 145 million workers in 154 countries, said despite praises heaped on Uganda by the both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for its progressive economic policies, textile industry workers had gained little. "The Ugandan authorities give employers in the textile sector free rein and the employers take advantage of this to exploit their workers beyond imagination," the ICFTU report, titled "Uganda: A government at the service of employers", said. The confederation said joining a trade union in Uganda's textile industry, which supplies garments to the world's leading chains, "means being sacked". Though the report charged that child labour was a problem in Uganda's sugar and tea sector - another major export area - Ongaba said this practice was on the decline, and commended the owners of the country's sugar plantations. Other exploitations included sexual harassment, which Ongaba said mainly targeted female workers. "Sexual harassment is a big problem. It is very difficult to understand and to detect. But girls get jobs after being harassed - it is wide-spread," he said. Ongaba attributed the situation to the failure by the government to enforce strict labour laws in favour of "giving investors an enabling environment. They sacrifice the workers for investors and this is terribly bad". The ICFTU report pointed to one particular textile factory as a major perpetrator of workers' rights violations, with even employees' toilet breaks being timed. "It is a real race against time because we have five minutes. Because the toilet is quite far from the workshop, you sometimes need five minutes just to get there. If you are gone for more than five minutes you get a warning," the report quotes one of the factory workers as saying. "After three warnings you run the risk of getting the sack. If you spend more than five minutes in the toilet, they can halve your pay for that day," the employee added. According to Ongaba, these violations have prompted union officials in Uganda to appeal to the US government to scrap Uganda from the list of countries eligible to benefit from the African Growth and Opportunity Act.