On November 21, 2018, a briefing on the topic: “Trade Unions in a New Format of Social Partnership” was held at the site of the Regional Communications Service of Almaty, in which the main speakers were the Chairman of the TOP “Trade Union Center of Almaty” Umirbaeva Z.A.¸ Aynakulova DM – Chairman of the Almaty City Branch “Branch Union of Workers of State Banking Institutions and Public Services”, Nurgaziev K.Sh. – Chairman of the Almaty branch of the Republican sectoral trade union of health workers “SENIM”, Sarsenov S.N. – Chairman of the Branch of the Republican Public Association “Kazakhstan Branch Union of Small and Medium Business Workers“ YNTYMAQ ”in Almaty, Sitdikov V.M. – Chairman of the Branch of the Public Association “Local Trade Union” Energy “. Also at the briefing was attended by the chairmen of local and primary trade union organizations, media journalists, representatives of TV channels Almaty, Atameken. In his speech, the chairman of the TOP Almaty city Umirbaeva Z.A. noted that the Federation of Trade Unions of the Republic of Kazakhstan is today becoming the main conductor of the state social policy in implementing the October Message of the Head of State to the people of Kazakhstan, the Five Social Initiatives of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and takes on part of the tremendous work that our country is to do in the near future. In addition, the Speaker noted that within the framework of social partnership, at the initiative of the Trade Union Center of Almaty, together with representatives of the akimat, the Chamber of Entrepreneurs and employers, joint meetings, explanatory work in labor collectives to raise wages of low-paid workers, conclude collective agreements and create primary trade union organizations are held. In order to implement the President’s Address, an additional Agreement was signed to the current Regional Agreement, which establishes the minimum wage not lower than 42 thousand tenge and includes a paragraph on the need to intensify work on making changes and amendments to collective agreements, acts of the employer governing the wage system in terms of wage increases for low-wage categories of workers. Also added a paragraph on the adoption of measures to prevent mass release. The result of the joint work of representatives of the trade union and social partners, aimed at increasing the wages of low-wage workers, was that the leaders of a number of enterprises in the city had already raised by 10-15% the wages of this category of workers. This work continues and brings effective results. In addition, the trade union center together with the social partners are conducting purposeful work on concluding collective agreements in the organizations of the city, as a result of which only 2018 collective agreements were concluded in the last 2 months of the current year. We provide legal advice on the development of draft collective agreements. Today, trade union organizations have been established in 17 enterprises.
In their speeches, the other speakers touched upon the activities of their trade union organizations, and also drew attention to problematic issues arising from workers in various fields of activity and in work collectives, namely, low awareness of workers about their labor rights and their willingness to defend, the practice of social partnership is far from perfection, failure by employers to part of the obligations under the collective agreement, insufficiently weak explanatory work by the heads of enterprises and the consequences labor, social, housing and domestic problems arising from here, as well as the insufficiently rigid position of trade union organizations already present at enterprises. As part of the briefing, solutions were made by trade union organizations during the implementation and implementation of modernization reforms – to deal more with wages in enterprises, the social sphere, safety and labor protection, to pay attention to improving legislation, developing social partnership, to be more principled in deciding what tasks, have more autonomy, conduct high-quality training, promote the nomination of responsible trade union leaders, more gesture to defend their rights to the administration, to cover more work in the media, to pay attention to targeted work with workers and young people, explaining to them their labor rights, the content of the collective agreement, the work and activities of the trade union organization. The speakers answered all the questions asked by journalists during the briefing.