The
Council, in its 18th regular meeting held on Friday July 14th,
deliberated on the Civil Service Bill, before it gets directed to
Parliament, which resumes business in November 2006.
Council
Decides Civil Servants Cannot Organize
The Council of
Ministers has dropped the idea of letting members of the civil
service organize themselves into trade unions or other forms of
association, sources disclosed.
The Council, in
its 18th regular meeting held on Friday July 14th, deliberated on
the Civil Service Bill, before it gets directed to Parliament, which
resumes business in November 2006. The bill, designed to reform the
Civil Service Proclamation of 262/94, is one of the few legislations
the Council debated for four consecutive weeks before it endorsed it
last week by consensus.
The bill was
crafted by experts from the Civil Service Agency and the Ministry of
Capacity Building, with the hope that the new law will help the
state retain professionals and reverse the mass exodus of personnel
in recent years. The most controversial issue however, was whether
the estimated 150,000 members of the civil service could organize
themselves in trade unions.
In the public
sector, only those employed by state owned enterprises are allowed
to organize through labour unions, using the labour law revised last
year. The civil service law denied this right to its direct
employees, although many countries such as Kenya and South Africa
allow the existence of such organization.
For instance
public sector employees in the United States have the Civil Service
Employees Association, which comprises a membership of 265,000. In
the United Kingdom, the Public and Commercial Services Union has a
membership of 325,000.
“Everything our
members have earned in our jobs, including fair wages, health
insurance, benefits, leave time and our workplace rules, is the
result of contract negotiations,” says the mission statement of the
Civil Service Employees Association in the United States (CSEA). “To
ensure our contracts are enforced, CSEA provides members with
numerous resources including labour relations, legal, communications
and field services.”
According to
sources, experts attending the Council meeting tried to make the
case that Ethiopia’s constitution guarantees the freedom of
association along different interests, thus members of the civil
service should be allowed to have their trade union or association.
However, others argued that the civil service is created to advance
the agenda of the government in power, thus should not be considered
like other organizations.
“I think the
Prime Minister felt that this may be an issue that needed more
time,” said a senior level minister who attended the meeting.
Football
means many things to many people. Take, for example, Tadesse Aynalem, the new
chairman of the Coffee Football Club fans association.
30-years-old, Tadesse has
had an unconventional career. He is one of four survivors of the 11 people who
founded Tasfa Goh Ethiopia, a group that helped break the AIDS taboo in
Ethiopia 10 years ago. His first wife, the late Mebrat G. Meskel, was also a
founding member.
When trade
representatives of the United States announced that they would concede 97pc of
their duty on exports from poor countries, many delegates from the developing
world were skeptical. Six months later Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in
economics and a professor of Economics at Columbia University, and
.........
To me, the
opposition parties that have decided to join parliament this year
after so much haggling do not sound brilliant when trying to
articulate their agendas in Parliament. Opposition politicians
looked terrific before, during and immediately following the May
2005 elections. Now well-settled in Parliament, they look more
timid, less imaginative and more divided.
Two distinct ideological tendencies were evident during the
recent parliamentary debate that set the Revolutionary Democrats
against what their chief priest, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, called
liberals, whom he accused of displaying confusion and inconsistency.
My tall Gojame friend called Thursday afternoon to kindly give me
some information that I needed. He enquired about what I was writing
about, and I ......
In history books,
bloody revolutions and popular uprisings get all the attention. But
if you look at the past more closely, many epochal democratic
breakthroughs happened after the storm or next to it, when pressured
autocratic regimes made concessions to democracy out of pragmatism
...
A close member of
my family is in town from Sweden for a few weeks and has been
staying at our house. He has been residing in Scandinavia for well
over 30 years, and it is always most entertaining when he comes to
visit. His entire Abesha ......
The new basilica of the Holy Saviour
church built in the vicinity of Bole (referred to as Bole
Medhanialem in the local vernacular) has become the latest addition
to the series of tourist attractions in the metropolis.
The
usual site for churches in this country is a hilltop or at least an
elevated land with a commanding vantage point from where one can see
the surrounding landscape. The Bole area in the southern part of
Addis, however, is disadvantaged in this regard. Nonetheless, the
grandeur of the basilica and its imposing presence compensate well
for that natural shortcoming.
Yes, many people
say putting an incumbent in the same footage with leaders of
opposition, particularly those who are inexperienced, is unjust.
They sure have a point. Seen in light of this, leaders of Ethiopia's
parliamentary opposition should have been accorded the benefit of a
doubt when they were found erring.
In large part,
this is not the case. They may think of themselves as braving a huge
popular protest when they decided to join the club where their
archrival party has an overwhelming power. Particularly in Addis
Abeba, little were they appreciated for what many believed was an
act of betrayal to their colleagues in jail.
