Bahrain Mirror: The Secretary General of the General Federation of Bahrain Trade Unions (GFBTU), Hassan Al-Halwachi, announced that "the trade union work is witnessing a serious decline due to the fierce struggle of a number of large companies to weaken and marginalize it at a time when the Ministry of Labor is looking at what is happening in a negative way and not doing what expresses its real role as provided by the International labor standards, being the party responsible for protecting labor rights, respecting trade union freedoms and imposing respect on employers."

The Secretary-General said in an official statement issued on Thursday, July 11, 2019, "We have completed 17 years since the issuance of His Majesty's Decree No. 33 of 2002 on the Trade Union Law in September 2002, and we have completed 14 years since the decision of the Minister of Labor No. 9 of 2005 with respect to full-time dedication ti engagement in trade union activities, which stipulates that trade unionists shall perform their trade union duties according to their levels, whether as leaders in their unions or in the Union. Both of the laws are being subjected to fierce attacks by employers in a number of major companies."

"It is regrettable that the Union work after all this effort, and after the unions have achieved a dialogue with employers, and achieved labor gains that have had a significant impact on increasing productivity and promoting professional loyalty in all the establishments that have made these gains. We find ourselves today as if we started to get into the tunnel of the countdown on these rights, starting from the attack on the unionists headquarters, abolishing or changing their places, as well as stopping the automatic withholding of trade union contributions from members' salaries," he stated.

Al-Halwachi added "We communicated in this regard with the Ministry of Labor and explained the seriousness of this worrying decline, especially since it happens in companies that have always represented a distinctive experience in social dialogue. How does it come that today is witnessing these declines after all this long period of nearly two decades of founding trade unions and more if we take into account the pre-union stage during the period of labor committees in which these companies have been busy with labor representative work since earlier times."

The Secretary-General referred to the recent phenomenon of "Alba's targeting of unionist member of secretariat Mohammad Mosaed and the threat of expanding the targeting framework of other trade unionists with flimsy and unconvincing claims, such as the claim that they do not meet the standards of full-time trade unions."

Arabic Version