Below you can read Statement of PERC Youth Committee in support of the ITUC-PERC Executive Committee decision to recommend for the ITUC General Council to suspend Federation of Trade Unions of Kazakhstan (FPRK) membership.
Statement of PERC Youth Committee
On October the 22nd 2018, the Pan-European Regional Council (PERC) Executive Committee adopted a recommendation to the ITUC General Council that the membership of the Federation of Trade Unions of Republics of Kazakhstan (FPRK) must be suspended.
The PERC Youth Committee (YC) fully supports this recommendation. Keeping in mind that the values of a democratic trade union movement has been at the core of ITUC work since its inception, we cannot abide what is a de-facto take over of FPRK by the authorities of Kazakhstan.
Today, FPRK is being run by state officials and is, in fact, under the total control of Kazakh authorities. As a result, FPRK has abandoned the struggle for the interests of workers, regular Kazakh people and their basic social and labour rights, the most important of these being freedom of association, the right to strike and the right to bargain freely. To the PERC YC, it is obvious that such an organisation cannot take part in the work of ITUC, cannot take part in the development of its strategy and cannot effectively manage the work of the ITUC.
We hold the opinion that suspending the membership of FPRK in the ITUC sends a clear signal to FPRK, workers around the world and the independent trade unions of Kazakhstan and other Central Asian republics that it is important to develop and create trade unions based on the principles of democracy, thus allowing workers—union members—to manage their organisations themselves and defend their social, labour and civil rights.
PERC Youth Committee
