Migrant women workers demonstrate on Labor Day for trade union rights

For the sixth consecutive year, migrant women domestic workers (MWDW) celebrated Labor Day yesterday along with civil society organizations. Demonstrators who numbered several hundreds rallied in Wata Musaytbeh early Sunday morning and headed towards Hamra Street where a cultural festival was held at an empty parking lot. Workers from different nationalities carried banners calling for the end of trafficking, the “kafala” system, for serious investigations into suicide incidents and for the right to form a trade union. In the same context, Al Akhbar newspaper published a feature on the newly-founded trade union for migrant domestic workers in which it estimated that the total number of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon ranges between 150 and 220 thousand out of a total workforce of 1.45 million people. The newspaper reported that the main obstacle facing MWDW today lies in the Labor Minister Sajaan Azzi’s rejection to legalize the ‘General Union of Cleaning workers and Social Care’ in Lebanon as officially named in the official registration request submitted to the Ministry. In doing so, the paper went on to say, Azzi is denying women workers their right to association which is recognized by international conventions. Azzi’s rejection is based on the double-ground that domestic workers are not covered by the provisions of the Labor Law, and therefore, are not entitled to establish a trade union, and so are non-Lebanese workers. In response to Azzi's arguments, lawyer Nizar Saghieh told Al Akhbar that denying this category of workers this right is and arbitrary act since the current law indicates that they are not entitled to the exact same provisions for founding a trade union as stipulated by current legislations. However, he added, this should in no case deny them altogether the right of forming an association or a trade union to defend their own rights, while noting that the newly founded trade union also includes Lebanese workers. (As Safir, Al Akhbar, 4 May 2015)