Togo - Export processing zones: workers’ fundamental rights violated, trade union demands ignored or punished and serious accidents

In theory, the thousands of EPZ workers are covered by a reasonable legal framework – the labour law fully applies in the zones and a collective agreement took effect in 2013. In practice, however, the zones are typified by the persistent and growing violations of fundamental workers’ rights and trade union rights. In 2013, 160 employers of Paper Bags, a subsidiary of the Indian group WACEM, were sacked for demanding better working conditions. They are the victims of the company’s contempt and the much-decried tâcheronnat system, a labour contracting and outsourcing system open to all manner of abuses. Despite the mobilisation of national and international trade union organisations as well as Togolese human rights groups, the workers were still awaiting, at the beginning of 2016, for justice to be served. The workers’ demands and the repeated warnings issued by COSYNTRASOFT, the organisation grouping EPZ unions, regarding health and safety issues, are generally ignored. On 30 January 2015, an employee of the Korean company NINA died at work due to a lack of care. She had informed a superior that she was not feeling well, but was ordered to return to her post. The working conditions at the factory had already been described as abysmal, and the women often have to work standing up for ten hours in a row. In June, for lack of safety measures, six workers from the cement plant of the WACEM Group died in a fuel tank explosion. Almost 900 employees of this Indian group are employed under the tâcheronnat contract labour system. The management does not provide them with equipment and ignores their demands. At the end of 2015, they finally managed to secure a social agreement.