SOCIAL ELECTIONS IN BELGIUM AND TOGO

Results social election on national level of Belgium.

Recently there have been social elections in the EU country Belgium and the West African country Togo. Belgium trade unions have already a long experience with social elections while in Togo it was for the first time social elections were held. Both countries have a pluralistic trade union landscape. In Belgium the competing trade union confederations are the socialist oriented ABVV/FGTB, the Christian ACV/CSC and the liberal oriented ACLVB. In Togo there are six competing trade union confederations in alphabetical order: CGCT, CNTT, CSTT, GSA, UGSL and UNSIT.

ACV once again succeeded to maintain its position as the biggest trade union confederation in Belgium with 55,8% of the elected delegates of the Workers’ Council and 58,46% of the delegates at the Commitees for Prevention and Protection on the Work Place. Regarding women 40,34% of the elected ACV delegates (40,34%) are women (ABVV 33,86% and ACLVB 34,82%). ACV comments that there is still work to do because the share of women working on national level is higher.

Elections for the Commitees for Prevention and Protection were held in 6.809 enterprises. Workers’ Council delegates were elected in 3.595 enterprises. An average of a little bit more than 70% of all workers participated in the elections,  that shows a high degree of involvement of workers in the social elections. Last but not least, what is to be noted is the balanced distribution of ACV candidates on age categories: between 15-24 years 193, between 25- 34 years 10.491, between 35 – 44 years 17.625, between 45 – 54 years 23.177 and between 55 – 64 years 7.242 candidates.

One of the federations of the Togoles trade union confederation CSTT has a special cooperative program to assist "mototaxistas" to finance the moto, to educate them and to defend their interests.

In Togo there have been 238 elections on public and private level involving 23.561 workers who elected 642 delegates, from which 456 delegates are trade union members and 186 are independent. The distribution of the results established by the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security is as follows: CSTT 181 delegates (39,69%), CNTT 144 delegates (31,57%), GSA 84 delegates (18,42%), UGSL 32 delegates (7,01%), UNSIT 9 delegates (1,97%) and CGCT 6 delegates (1,31%).

Regarding these results of the social elections and in accordance with the law the confederations CSTT and CNTT are recognized by the Government as ‘representative trade union organisations’.