A turbulent climate spoils the dream of a decent Arab citizen

Abdel Hafez El Sawy

The world celebrates Decent Work Day this year on October 8, 2019, in recognition of workers' contribution to the well-being of communities, and an affirmation of their right to upgrade their skills and preserve more of the gains they have gained through their struggles over the past decades.

Articles 23 and 24 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provide for the human right to work, as well as protection from unemployment, equal remuneration for his work, and for wages earned for work that ensure a decent living for human dignity and social protection.

It is the right of the Arab worker as a human being that his aspirations are to increase his skills to suit the requirements of the current labor market, which imposes a quality of education that keeps pace with the technology that races against time on a daily basis.

It is assumed that the workers' gains from fair pay, proper working environment and social protection are taken for granted and no longer need to fight battles with employers or governments and parliaments.

However, I hope that Arab workers dream of decent work, and the Arab world tops the international list with the highest unemployment rate among the regions of the world, by about 15.4% in 2017, that is, the presence of 19.8 million unemployed.

The Arab region leads the world in terms of the high unemployment rate among young people by 46.2% for the age group (15-24 years), as well as in terms of female participation in the labor market by up to 19%, while the global average 48%, according to data Reported by the unified Arab Economic Report 2018.

Labor movements have developed in many countries, and have achieved successes in their relations with employers, or with society as a whole. Some labor movements have sought to form political parties that express their demands, enabling them to come to power.

However, the Arab experience has not been so successful, as it was possible to domesticate the labor movement through the domination of the dictatorial political regimes on the trade unions, confining their role to labor issues, and their movement in a political movement calculated as a decoration within the framework of undemocratic political regimes. Governance over the past decades - until now - a known rule, namely "loyalty versus giving."

The private sector and employment opportunities
In the early nineties of the twentieth century, most of the Arab countries moved to the so-called market economies, where the state was withdrawn from the labor market by a large percentage, especially in productive activities, and was given a great opportunity to the private sector, which was not qualified to provide jobs in a manner commensurate with the entry The Arab private sector often did not allow the existence of entities representing workers, but the condition of staying at work was to waive the right to form trade unions.

Bitter reality
There is no longer one Arab country that is not subject to the instructions of the World Bank and the International Fund. Or understand the limited potential of the private sector in terms of the financial resources required for the nature of the role required of it.

Workers in the Arab region were exposed to the absence of many rights, such as fair remuneration, social protection (health and social insurance), appropriate working hours, or the provision of industrial security in productive institutions.

According to the data of the Director General of the Arab Labor Office in 2018, the percentage of Arab workers in the informal labor market ranges between 44% and 82%, where social protection is absent, and there are countless abuses in the field of workers' rights.

The report adds that the social protection of workers in the Arab countries is enjoyed by only 30% of workers, and is mostly the share of workers in the public sector and government.

While the global average is 52%, in Europe and America it reaches 90%. Unemployment insurance is rare in Arab countries.

As for the culture of training, it is absent among the actors in the labor relationship (government, workers, employers). With poor education and low budgets for training, the Arab worker graduates without training and receives degrees, which employers do not accept, but graduates of educational institutions undergo training periods before they join as key workers.

In the light of market economies, the new entrants to the labor market in the Arab region find themselves facing a new financial commitment, and they have not yet earned an income, the cost of obtaining training courses that qualify them to the labor market, and the employer does not accept them before they get these courses.

Hence, the equation is a major imbalance, with governments and employers evading, and the worker bears that cost alone.

Challenges of Arab Labor
There are a number of challenges that have directed Arab labor for some time, related to the fragile development structure that haunts all Arab economies, as well as due to the wrong policies related to labor market planning, and the relation of the outputs of educational institutions with the needs of the labor market.

According to the unified Arab Economic Report 2018, the Arab labor force reaches 136.4 million people, and the employment opportunities provided by the Arab economies to the labor force are distributed among the services sector by 64%, the agriculture sector by 18.3%, and the industrial sector by 17.7%. Therefore, the added value of Arab labor is reduced because of the dominance of the service sector in the labor market.

One of the drawbacks of the studies is the low percentage of skilled labor among the Arab labor force. The report of the Director-General of the Arab Labor Office for 2018 shows that the percentage of skilled labor in many Arab labor markets ranges between 15% and 30%, and the weakness of Arab economies has led to a significant proportion of the jobs created every year. Fragile, estimated at 17.8%.

There is a new challenge related to the reality of the economies of the Gulf oil countries, because of the negative economic and political conditions experienced by the crisis of the collapse of oil prices since mid-2014, or the crisis of the blockade of the Gulf States and Egypt to the State of Qatar, as well as the open war in Yemen, which entered a coalition of Saudi-UAE in March March 2015, and there is no end to it.

Together, these crises have affected the economic realities of the Gulf states, which are considered as receiving countries for foreign labor, especially those from Arab countries.

More than 1.9 million foreign workers have recently left Saudi Arabia, which will help increase the number of unemployed in Arab labor-exporting countries, according to Saudi data.

On the other hand, the Gulf countries have a strategy of nationalization of jobs to cope with increasing unemployment among their children, and the Gulf countries have already taken steps in this context to oblige the private sector to restrict certain jobs to nationals, as happened in Saudi Arabia, for jobs such as telephone stores and some retail services.

The open war of the Saudi-UAE alliance and the consequent targeting of strategic facilities for the economies of the UAE and Saudi Arabia, under the scenario of the continuation of this war, is expected to drain the financial resources of the two countries significantly.

This scenario will have a significant impact on the Arab labor situation, as many government projects in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, as well as private sector projects, will be suspended and investment movement will be significantly affected in the short and medium term, which means laying off more Expatriate labor, including Arab labor.

Conflicts and political instability
Counter-revolutionary practices have led to severe negative consequences for Arab economies and, consequently, for Arab labor.

According to the estimates of the "ESCWA" the cost of conflicts in the Arab region during the period (2011-2015), this cost amounted to 614 billion dollars, equivalent to 6% of the GDP of the countries of the region.

These conflicts also destroyed the production base, with the value of the destroyed infrastructure amounted to about 416 billion dollars.

As a result of these conflicts, the participating countries lost a large part of their human wealth, with about 1.4 million people killed or injured.

The figures indicate that the unemployment rate in both Syria and Yemen reached more than 50% of the labor force due to the wars on the territory of the two countries.

The negative effects of the conflicts in the region were not limited to the above, but their disasters focused on human resources, where it is estimated that there is a so-called "missing generation", that is, there are 13.8 million Arab children who did not attend classes at the age of enrollment in compulsory education As a result of these conflicts, some 14 million people are displaced, and 75% of the world's migrants are Arabs.

Consequently, the Arab labor force has been killed by conflicts that have destroyed its productive base and infrastructure and, most importantly, its human resources.

While armed conflicts have such negative effects, political instability also has negative implications for the reality of Arab labor.

In Egypt and Iraq, recent popular demonstrations have been demanding the fight against corruption, and the reconsideration of economic policies that have increased the burden of living, disproportionately with the entry of labor.

In 2019, Egypt was included in the short list of remarks in the International Labor Organization (ILO), which the Egyptians called the blacklist, for violations by the Egyptian government - under a military coup - against trade unions.

Egypt is not alone among the Arab countries on this list, but also Libya, Algeria, Sudan and Mauritania.

Hope for Freedom
Perhaps in the world celebrating Decent Work Day, Arab governments remember their duty to provide public freedoms to their people, and to workers' freedom in particular, both with regard to the choice of jobs and the freedom to form trade unions, so that Arab labor movements maintain their rights, including decent work. In its comprehensive sense, from fair wages and social protection, suitable working hours to wages, and rest time either during the working day or at the end of the week, or during the year.

Perhaps the recent movement witnessed by the Arab countries in Sudan, Algeria, Egypt and Algeria, which ushered in a second wave of the Arab Spring, leads to the access of Arab workers to their rights as a living group within the community, or the emergence of their role in political and community participation more positive than the role that was drawn to the labor movements Over the past seven decades.