Positive outcomes of the IMF/IF Metall project in Tanzania

TANZANIA: 4 – 5 December 2009 the IMF head and Africa regional office together with the leadership of Tanzania Union of Industrial and Commercial Workers TUICO held an evaluation workshop in Dar es Salaam to evaluate the outcomes of the project started in 2004. The project’ goal was  to assist the union in producing and disseminating their own educational materials to all their local branches. The meeting examined the developments, activities and outcomes of the complete project period from 2007 to 2009. Project activities in Tanzania were supported by IF Metall since 2003. The results of this evaluation indicate that the following have been achieved:

• The union membership has increased by almost 30%; from 35,000 members in 2003, when the IMF first started cooperation with TUICO, to 52,000 in 2008, this growth happens despite the union having also lost substantial membership through retrenchments in 2008 and despite the restructuring of the economy by the government;
• The union has produced 5 educational materials which have been used to train and educate 9,668 branch leaders and staff, among those, 3,622 are women workers. These materials have now become a reference for other unions and the National Centre;
• The union now allocates 20% of their total annual income for educational activities;
• Women participation in the union has increased and 36% of the total leadership are women;
• In 2008 the union recruited 10,635 members of which 4,292 are women,  showing the new awareness of women workers towards the union;
• More disputes are resolved by workers at the workplace and are dealt with directly by the union shopstewards trained by the project; in particular the number of disputes involving women’s rights in the workplace has increased dramatically;
• Staff members are becoming more competent in their  daily work including improving on the use of new technologies like computers;
• The unions financial situation is stable compared to many unions who have lost their membership.

These are few of the many positive and concrete results mentioned, however the project has had a far-reaching impact on the national labour movement and in the community. In 2007 the union led three successful strikes and pickets to stop the government from introducing bad labour laws. The union recently engaging the government on labour brokers and casualisation of workers, sub contracted workers are fully part of TUICO as union members. The union is also developing capacity to organize the informal sectors and have already won many of their struggles. Since TUICO has been taking up these struggles, the other unions in Tanzania have enhanced their role in influencing the political debates.

Many lessons can be learned from this project, lessons of solidarity between unions and lessons of genuine exchange between unions. The project has strengthened TUICO in the sub-region and in particular the relationship between TUICO and NUMSA. NUMSA played a major role in providing human resources to the project from the very beginning, moving their press and publications team several times to Dar es Salaam to train TUICO members.

The project has built the capacity of the union to play a major role in the region, it is now TUICO’s turn to provide human and educational resources to other unions for example in Kenya and Zambia.

As the union organizes workers in different sectors IMF will discuss with other GUFs the possibilities for joint work for the near future in particular a mapping of the industries and unorganized workplaces and joining efforts to modernise and strengthen communication between branches, regions and TUICO head office.