Jordan News

Activists considered that the amendments approved by the government to the labor law did not respond to the demands of labor sectors, after a wave of sharp criticism of these amendments made by the government to the labor law, as they did not address the basic problems that the labor market needs.

The following is a report published by Al-Araby Al-Jadeed newspaper, on its website, on government amendments to the Labor Law and the consequent labor crisis.

Following is the report:

Organizations concerned with defending workers’ rights, and specialists, sharply criticized the amendments made by the Jordanian government to the Labor Law, as it did not address the basic problems needed by the labor market, especially providing the necessary protection for workers and limiting violations of their rights, as well as restricting the right to establish unions or Entities defending their rights, which may push the government to avoid conflict in light of the current conditions that are mainly witnessing living difficulties for most workers’ groups, in light of the repercussions of the Corona pandemic.

According to a Jordanian official, in an exclusive statement to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, it is possible that the government will withdraw the amended draft labor law that it previously referred to the House of Representatives, although the Parliament’s Labor Committee approved the amendments referred to it by the Prime Minister and conducted long dialogues about them.

These developments come at a time when the Jordanian Labor Observatory (a civil society organization concerned with labor rights) launched a campaign, in cooperation with human rights and legal associations, to withdraw the amended draft law and reconsider the law in its entirety, in line with international labor standards.

The head of the Labor Observatory, Ahmed Awad, said that the amendments approved by the government to the labor law did not respond to the demands of the workers’ sectors and organizations concerned with their defense, with the need to reduce the increasing violations against workers, improve working conditions and allow the establishment of trade unions to defend their members and negotiate on their behalf.

Awad added to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that the observatory had previously submitted a memorandum to the government specifying the items that must be amended in the law to guarantee workers’ rights, explaining that “a demand was made to amend the definition of collective labor dispute in the original law, which deprives a group of workers of the right to benefit from dispute resolution tools. Collective work, to be limited to trade unions, and the need to amend the text that gives the authority to deport a non-Jordanian worker in some cases, while the powers of the deportation process for violators are supposed to be transferred to the judicial authority, not an administrative decision issued by the minister, as the judiciary is the one who resolves these issues.

According to Awad, the memorandum stressed “the necessity of amending the special text also regarding the duration of the collective contract to become two years instead of three years, because this is unfair to the workers, as three years is a long period in which many working conditions change.”

He stressed the need to add some clauses that would reduce labor violations, which reach the level of forced labor, forbidding workers in supervisory professions in institutions or whose work requires movement, instead of overtime in the event of their working hours being increased, and protecting workers in special working conditions. , such as working at night and in difficult occupations.

The head of the Labor Observatory indicated that the current labor law requires that the union founders be Jordanians, which is considered discrimination against non-Jordanian workers, in accordance with international labor standards and best practices in this regard, which refer to the adoption of flexibility regarding the nationality requirement, so that foreign workers have the right to participate in the establishment of unions and operating it after a reasonable period of their stay in the country, or adopting a certain percentage of foreign workers among the founders.

On the other hand, Jordanian Minister of Labor Youssef Al-Shamali said, in recent press statements, that the amendment of the law came to implement the programs of the Ministry of Labor in the fields of employing Jordanians, considering that it aims to prevent the leakage of expatriate workers into the market and control them accurately and prevent the chaos prevailing in the labor market and to replace The gradual and immediate recruitment of Jordanian labor to replace expatriate labor.

But Imad al-Malhi, coordinator of the campaign to defend Jordan workers (Voice of Workers), said that the law should be biased towards workers and do them justice without infringing on the rights of employers and regulating the labor market.

Al-Malhi called for the need for the law to reconsider the right to collective bargaining and open it to all workers, as many of them deny this. Man power.

For his part, the former Undersecretary of the Ministry of Labor, Hamada Abu Najma, stressed the need to open the Corona pandemic file and the changes it has brought about in the labor market and the basic rights that must be included in the law, such as issues of non-discrimination between wages and working hours.