African trade unionists have tasked the new Director-General of World Trade Organisation , Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to ensure that global trade agreements promote workers’ rights, eradicate poverty and guarantee sustainable industrial development in the world.
The continental workers’ movement said it was time for what it calls “alternative trade policies that must take into account the needs of working people around the world, inclusive of economic growth and sustainable development”. The unionists noted that the emergence of Okonjo-Iweala was “significant and fullest of time” when the African Continental Free Trade Agreement involving 54 African countries with a combined population of more than one billion people and combined gross domestic product of more than $3.4 trillion had become a reality.
WTO, it said, must partner International Labour Organisation , to ensure the dismantling of institutional constraints against workers exercising their fundamental right to freedom of association and collective bargaining in member countries of WTO.