As trade union militants in Britain steel themselves for big battles ahead they can look to the new Palestinian unions in the West Bank and Gaza for lessons in how to get things done. Tony Richardson explains.IMG_4174

About seven years ago new unions started to be formed in Palestine. Previously most of the best paid, but still low paid, jobs for Palestinians were in Israel so most of the problems workers faced were in relation to these jobs. Sometimes they weren’t paid, sometimes short paid, sometimes sacked, and often had injuries.

They were represented at this time by the official union federation PGFTU (Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions), usually legally. There were also NGOs helping Palestinian workers, notably the Ramallah-based Democracy and Workers’ Rights Center (DWRC) set up in 1993 by a group of Palestinian trade unionists, lawyers and academics to defend workers’ rights and promote social justice.

When the workers were forced out of their jobs in Israel by closures and time lost at Israeli checkpoints they tried to organise more at home in the West Bank and Gaza.

Initially the Palestinian Authority had used the PGFTU to distribute money, food parcels and health care which was why most workers had joined. But when this aid dried up the workers began to realise they were getting very little representation.

The PGFTU consisted of appointed officials plus an executive divided up amongst the various political parties and dominated by Fatah. Until the 2006 elections when Fatah lost its majority in the Palestinian parliament to Hamas, going into dispute would have meant the PGFTU clashing with Fatah-supporting employers or a Fatah-dominated government which officials of the Federation did not want to do.

There had been a small number of independent unions in Palestine for some years, notably those of the teachers and the university workers. The new unions, sponsored by the DWRC were started when the DWRC helped workers with problems in different workplaces such as the hospitals and banks. They encouraged them to form workplace committees which went on to link up with similar committees in their own sector, and then formed unions. This involved a lot of educational work on how to organise, as well as many disputes.

When each union was formed it started relating to the other new unions and in 2007 the new organisations came together in Ramallah to found a Federation of Independent Unions. All the unions in the Federation are independent, organising members from across the political parties and not relating to, nor being controlled by, the state. They hold elections at least every two years and function through workplace committees so they are also democratic.

Unlike the original official unions the independent ones are constantly defending jobs and conditions, often through strike action. They had a short period of strength in Gaza as well as the West Bank but the destruction of industry by Israeli attacks, the numbers of unemployed and the utter devastation caused by the most recent Israeli invasion has left them barely surviving there.

Strikes in the West Bank, however, increased with the election of the Hamas because the subsequent EU boycott meant there was little money to pay teachers and other public service workers. There was a long hospital strike over non-payment of wages and even since Hamas has been removed from the West Bank government a huge teachers’ strike and other struggles have continued under the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority.

Workers in the new unions have many problems to deal with such as job losses, checkpoints, the rising cost of living and wages affected by monetary fluctuations. (Some receive their wages in Jordanian Dinars but have to pay their bills in Shekels.)

They don’t get much financial support, because the international trade union federations only accept as affiliates unions with official recognition in their home countries. Money cannot be raised from Arab countries because democratic unions are regarded by them as a dangerous precedent, as was seen recently in Egypt.
As a result, although they have an office in Ramallah, and branches all over the West Bank, there is a weakness in the organisation of the new unions and they don’t yet have a website to help to overcome their international isolation.

For trade unionists around the world the best way of showing class solidarity with Palestine is to offer practical support to the new unions while backing the struggle to end Israeli occupation.