2016 ITUC Global Rights Index - Mali

Harassment of two union leaders: Two trade union leaders, Dr Loseni Bengali, a member of the Syndicat National de la Santé, de l'Action Sociale et de la Promotion de la Femme (SNS-AS-PF, affiliated to the UNTM) and general secretary of the branch union at the Gabriel Touré hospital, and Youssouf Fofana, former general secretary of the Syndicat de la Police Nationale (SNP, affiliated to the CSTM), were targeted by their employers throughout 2015. Dr Bengali had been transferred in 2013, arbitrarily, according to his union, which staged several strikes during the year to press for his reappointment to his former post. Fofana, who was unfairly suspended in 2013 on account of his trade union activities, was the object of unrelenting harassment.

Former strikers still awaiting justice in mining sector: The Malian justice system's excessive slowness in dealing with cases involving trade union rights violations, some dating back several years, contributed to poisoning relations between trade union organisations and the authorities, which, evoking the separation of powers, shirk all responsibility, repeatedly responding that the judicial proceedings must follow their course. The mining sector is the worst affected. The trade unions once again denounced mining companies, recruitment agencies, the National Directorate of Geology and Mines and the Chamber of Mines for the failure to reinstate unfairly dismissed workers, many of whom are trade union activists, and for the non-payment of monies owed to them.

In some cases, verdicts have been pronounced but the employers refuse to implement the court decisions, with total impunity. In 1999, Analabs-Morila, for example, had been ordered to pay a wage increase but still has not done so. Nor has it respected the agreement on overtime signed between workers' representatives and the company.

The trade union rights violations at the LTA-Mali mining company, where workers have been on strike since 2011, have already been documented by the ITUC. The authorities in Kayes had validated the dismissal of 27 trade unionists on grounds of their abusive exercise of the right to strike and clear resolve to damage the company. The support provided to the strikers by the Fédération Nationale des Mines and de l'Energie (FENAME) failed to prevent the dismissal of 30 additional strikers. On 25 October 2015, the 57 workers still awaiting justice launched a sit-in in the courtyard of the Confédération Syndicale des Travailleurs du Mali (CSTM). The sit-in was still underway at the end of the year.