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afrol News, 31 October - Mauritania is one of the countries receiving the heaviest critique by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) as it summons up registered trade union rights violations in 2000. Especially the obstacles to strike are deemed exaggerated. According to the ICFTU, Mauritanian legislation grants the government the power to decide whether or not to recognise a trade union. The government can also dissolve any trade union involved in what the government considers to be an "illegal" or "politically-motivated" strike. Mauritania's trade union centres have strongly criticised these provisions, pointing to ILO standards which state that only the courts should be given the power to dissolve trade unions. In reports received by the ICFTU, trade unions also complain about the fact that many companies in the private sector refuse to recognise the associations that have formed within them to defend the interests of workers. Foreign workers do not have the right to become trade union officials, the report notes. An expected change in the new draft of the Labour Code would require foreign workers to have worked in Mauritania and in the profession represented by the trade union, for a period of at least five years. Further, the ICFTU notes, protection of trade union leaders is not explicitly afforded by the Labour Code, although such protection is conferred upon union delegates within companies. ICFTU has documented that "various obstacles stand in the way of the right to strike, namely compulsory arbitration. General strikes are difficult to organise, since the government generally invokes errors in administrative procedures or the overly 'political' nature of the strike to ban the action. Moreover, civil servants must give a one-month pre-strike notice. In the private sector, strikes must be preceded by the submission of a non-conciliation or negotiation-breakdown report." According to Mauritania's trade unions, legislation also allows the government to use a trade union's calling of a strike as a justification for dissolving it. The ICFTU today has delivered its report on trade union rights violations to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) as a follow-up to the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.
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