Human Rights Issues Continue as Freight Forwarding and Logistics Groups Extend Links

QATAR – Once more we hear of controversy regarding logistics groups working in, and with, countries which have a dubious record when it comes to human rights. The situation in Myanmar was graphically described in a piece earlier this year and the name of Qatar constantly surfaces on news bulletins with regard to human rights just as more international freight forwarding groups intensify operations in the country.

In a month when the WACO freight management system, a network of independent cargo companies, declared Qatar Airways as a preferred carrier, the Arab Trade Union Confederation (ATUC) which represents union federations across the Arab and Middle Eastern region, announced its support for the ongoing protests against the airline as part of a global union campaign for workers’ rights. Under the new agreement WACO members have been nominated as preferred forwarders by Qatar Airways in a new collaboration which aims to develop long-term business synergies between the two organisations.

After what it describes as repeated attacks on trade union rights by the Government of Qatar the ATUC has backed the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the campaigns by union federations such as the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), BWI (building and woodworking) and IUF (farming and hotel workers) in their various sectoral campaigns in Qatar for better workers’ rights in the country.

The campaign caused the airline to change its position regarding the status of women when it agreed to offer pregnant staff temporary work on the ground when they conceived. Previously they had simply been dismissed. Female staff are also now allowed to marry in the first five years employment with the company but must still notify the airline in advance. According to the ITF around 80% of Qatar Airways staff are women and 90% are foreign nationals.

The employment policy changes followed a ruling by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in June which found against Qatar for allowing the state airline to utilise policies in contravention of ILO Convention 111 on Discrimination (Employment and Occupation), signed by the government some forty years previously and then, according to the unions, ignored.

The changes made do not seem however to have satisfied the ATUC which has resolved to ‘conduct a campaign in cooperation with democratic organisations in order to put pressure on the State of Qatar to give up its inhuman practices against workers, to reject its intransigence, and campaign for its approval of the trade union freedoms set out in international conventions’. ITF Arab World regional secretary Bilal Malkawi commented:

“This resolution is further proof of the will for change in Qatar across the Middle East. The ITF’s continuing campaign for justice for Qatar Airways workers’ was born and shaped at the direct request of Arab World unions. This declaration by the ATUC is a vindication of all the campaigns for reform in Qatar.”