Ramallah – Palestinian unions and federations played a prominent role in confronting the Israeli occupation and before it the British Mandate and the Zionist expansion before the Nakba, but recent years have witnessed a remarkable decline in its role, whether in terms of interaction with national issues and concerns, the last of which is the war of extermination in Gaza, or the defense of the rights of its employees.
On the reasons for this decline, a former union and political analyst tells Al -Jazeera Net that successive Palestinian governments and the political system pursued that many unions contain or adapt them to their prohibition to reduce their impact and their role, after the growing strikes and paralyzed government action many times.
In November 2014, the Palestinian government decided to ban the union body of public employees, one of the largest Palestinian unions, and the Personnel Syndicate was arrested by Bassam Zakarneh 3 times after that, and one of them was charged with “affiliation with illegal associations.”
Early start
The organization of trade union work began in Palestine more than a hundred years ago, specifically in 1920, and crystallized in 1925, where the Palestinian Arab Workers Association was formed, according to the Palestinian National Information Center, which shows that the birth of the Palestinian trade union movement was linked to the privacy of the reality of the conflict between the Palestinian national liberation project and the Zionist expansion project at the time.
Bassam Zakarneh, head of the banned staff union, says that Palestine has a history of union work different from most of the world, especially those that were not subject to occupation and do not fall under political injustice.
Zakarneh added that most of the Palestinian unions and federations were working in the political field, such as the Union of Teachers and the Union of Workers, and were an effective part of the national liberation movement, in the face of the occupation and the support of the Palestinian revolution with organizational cadres and even armed cadres.
He referred to the role of the student movement and students ’federations as an impressive force, explaining that leaders in the Palestinian revolution were originally members of a student union or a union of teachers and others, but when the National Authority came, there was a deficit in union work in exchange for creativity in political work,“ because raising staff was a national education to serve political and national issues more than the service of members. ”
The head of the banned staff union continues that trade union action inside Palestine has evolved with the development of the political situation from a state of revolution to authority, as trade union leaders began to combine political action and union work, and this led to a strong movement and a qualitative shift in union work after the return of the national authority.
He referred to the role of the banned union, which he was heading in serving its members, and its interaction with national issues, and its last political role was to strike the martyr Khadr Adnan from food in 2012, when the unions led the street and were invited to mass marches.
Neither democracy nor freedom
Today, Zakarneh explains that “the situation is completely different. There are no unions in the democratically elected image, and there is almost no freedom to work union.”
He adds that the unions were supported at the beginning of the establishment of the authority, and the interest was great to be elected democracy, and most of the people who were chosen from the base had to have national interests and not partisan interests, and that the union would not run for its party or its faction, but rather it was required to be interested in Jerusalem, refugees and aggression against the Palestinian people.
Now, “Frankly, the issue has been completely different from the previous one, and when the Legislative Council was dissolved and the legislative and presidential elections were absent for a long time, there is no longer democracy in the unions, most of which were domesticated or appointed its members, or turned to the kingdoms of some of those who have been 44 years ago in the same union without elections and without a union body.”
With the exception of a few effective unions whose role is often limited to work and the rights of their employees, many unions cannot call for any pause or march, and if the invitation is done, the response is not done, “and therefore it does not have a union role, so how about the political role?” The Palestinian trade union is wondering.
Hence Zakarneh explains the absence of national events in light of the war on Gaza, “the reason is the absence of democratic life in general, not only in the unions, without democracy and the participation of the people in decisions, and the absence of confidence, there is no effect for leaders.”
In his opinion, “There is no possibility for the return of trade union events except with the return of the Legislative Council and the presidential elections until the legal protection is available.”
Weakening methodologies
For his part, political analyst Suleiman Bisharat says that weakening the role and union status is a policy pursued by the successive Palestinian governments, and has emerged clearly in the previous and current government, including the ban of some unions, the signing of agreements with them, the failure to implement them, ignore their activities, or contain and adapt their leaders.
He added that the unions have remained – until the past years – the representative of its members and exercise their union tasks, and demanded their rights based on the force of the movement in the street, “the situation of the armies in the unions made it able to pressure and raise the sound in front of the government, before the latter succeeded in weakening it.”
Bisharat believes that the policy of weakening unions has taken several forms and through several methodologies, including: internal divisions in the unions and converting them into multiple currents, the methodology of questioning the goals of the movements that lead them, and entering the political dimension as a result of the 2007 division, and the use of occupation attacks and war on Gaza is an excuse to thwart union demands.
He added that “all this led to one result that the Palestinian government has become the one who constitutes public opinion of employees towards what is related to salaries, or with regard to the steps that can be taken from the unions themselves as part of the re -engineering of the functional role of them, and determining the form of the relationship between the unions and the government.”
Recently, the Palestinian government has identified with the union movement in protest against the failure to pay its salaries, so it decided to reduce the days of working hours, which is a protest step that the unions have long waved to pressure the government, which lost their impact.
The Authority is suffering a financial crisis as a result of Israel’s detention of about $ 2.7 billion of Palestinian tax funds, which made the authority unable to pay the salaries of its employees in full.
