There is a great need for stakeholders to have open dialogue internally first regarding employees.
Government says recent amendments to the Essential Industries Decree and Employment Relation Promulgation is in place to safeguard workers.
Recently, Fiji was found to breach the ILO conventions.
Attorney General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum says government has expanded the Employers Advisory Board to include a cross section of representation.
“We were actually told if we do it we would go back to Geneva and said you have breached the agreement. So we were actually forced to go with the FTUC, FCEF and government and than we came up with the amendments to the Employment Relations Promulgation. We now got that,” said Khaiyum.
However, the AG argues that many other countries face far worse situations where trade unions are concerned.
He says it’s something our trade unions here should understand.
“Many of them need to understand how modern day businesses work. Many need to understand many trade unions in countries have moved along and not take a 1950s confrontational type of unionism but as opposed to developing our collaborative partnership,” the attorney general added.