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MENA: enhancing union cooperation in broadcasting
Published: 20 November 2008
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Steps to increase cooperation between broadcasting unions in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) and to enhance collective bargaining won support in Cairo on 17/19 November. Unions from eight MENA countries - from Palestine to Bahrain and from Morocco to the Sudan - focused on the threat to jobs from new technology, the need to ensure the full participation of women in broadcasting and improving health and safety. Equal opportunities is a particular problem in private broadcast companies, warned Galila Osman from Egypt who helped chair a keynote session in which there were calls to make equal opportunities a strategic objective in the region. The seminar for Arabic-speaking broadcast unions was organised by UNI MEI global union and FES foundation Germany in cooperation with the General Union of Press Printing and Information, Egypt. UNI MEI President Heinrich Bleicher-Nagelsmann promised the seminar that the global union will consider further initiatives with broadcast unions in the MENA region. “This has been a very good start working together and it has given us a clearer picture of the needs of each of the eight countries,” Heinrich told the closing session. The FES work in UNI MEI follows on similar UNI initiatives this year in the Graphical and Finance sectors and the opening of a UNI office in Tunis. Seminar members visited the studios to meet colleagues in Egyptian TV-Radio and Nile TV (which broadcasts overseas via satellite in English, French and Hebrew). 36,000 staff work at the central Cairo studios. In their conclusions the seminar group called for more training in negotiating over the introduction of new technology and boosting skills to create new jobs and ensure job security. UNI MEI Director Jim Wilson reported that recent technological changes in other parts of the world had cut jobs in many established operations but created jobs in new operations - where staff often remained outside unions and on lower pay. Organising in these new broadcasters - including privately owned commercial television - was identified as a key priority. The conclusions called for “equal opportunities between men and women and invites media women to take part actively in their unions”. Jim told the seminar “as trade unionists we need to organise more women and we need more women leaders if we are to organise these workers”. Participants took part in mock negotiations between unions and managements and briefed their colleagues on bargaining and other developments in their countries. Governments were urged to examine the negative impact of the introduction of new technology and several speakers warned of older media workers losing out in the changes and to ensure that new technology bought into the region is suitable for their needs. “We have to retrain workers with new skills and new qualifications - unemployment is mismanagement,” said one speaker. Unions were urged to be involved in managing change. “We have to be at the heart of this process to deal with the negative impact of these new technologies,” session chair Omar Ahmed from the Sudan told the seminar. Organising is a huge challenge in the MENA region - not just in media and entertainment. In Egypt for example out of a workforce of 24 million there are three million union members. More than 20 trade unionists attended the Cairo seminar - from Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Sudan and Egypt. |
