Draft legislation currently before the Ukrainian parliament has alarmed trade unions across the country. The proposed laws, affiliates say, reproduce and entrench the worst restrictions imposed under martial law: weakened union representation thresholds, removed protections for pregnant women and workers in hazardous conditions and the effective exclusion of trade unions from collective bargaining processes.
Most troubling to union leaders is the way the drafts have been developed.
“We were never given the text of this law,”
said Mykhailo Volynets, chairman of the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine. Social dialogue, already fragile in Ukraine, with the national tripartite council having not met since 2018, has been bypassed entirely. For affiliates already struggling to hold together union structures amid industrial devastation, the exclusion is not just a procedural failure. It is an existential threat.
IndustriALL assistant general secretary, Kemal Özkan, was direct about what is at stake:
“We call for an immediate end to Russian aggression, the right to social dialogue and the right for workers.”
IndustriALL general secretary, Atle Høie, echoed the concern, warning that the window to get this right is narrow:
“International companies will want to buy what is left of Ukraine. Ukraine has ambition to join the European Union (EU) and it must comply with standards, including labour legislation”.
We have to make sure that the EU is clear to Ukraine on what...
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