The National Confederation of Senegalese Workers is actively involved in international cooperation work

The National Confederation of Workers of Senegal (CNTS) is aware that the current challenges of the world of work can be met more effectively with broad frameworks of collaboration.

Among these challenges, we find: sustainable development, youth employability, the transition from the informal to the formal economy, migration, etc. These themes are globally or partially taken care of respectively by the cooperation developed between We Social Movement(WSM, Belgium), Instituto Sindical de Cooperación al Desarrollo (ISCOD, Spain), Confédération générale des syndicats Libéraux de Belgique (CGSLB, Belgium) and Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (CGIL, Italy).

This international cooperation takes the form of a series of capacity-building, awareness-raising and advocacy campaigns, as well as sharing experiences, good practices and field actions. For example, we can mention :

  • A survey on labor needs followed by support for young people in their professional integration within the framework of the ISCOD project in 2020.
  • A reforestation and the installation of a waste sorting system in the Keur Madia workers’ home with the CGSLB in October 2020.
  • Holding a capacity building workshop on just transition in June 2022 in the execution of the program with WSM.
  • Twinning with FLI-CGIL comrades through seminars hosted in Dakar between 2012 and 2017.

Specifically, in the field of sustainable development, the CNTS is both emphasising trade union unity and strengthening its cooperation with other non-union organisations, especially those of civil society. This option is in line with the recommendation of the ITUC to build alliances in order to achieve a just and solidarity-based transition. Thus, the CNTS, in partnership with the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, has set up a working group on climate that brings together some thirty civil society organisations and sister trade union organisations (UNSAS, CSA, CNTS FC and UDTS). This working group is now very active on the national scene, especially on issues related to coastal governance, which remains its priority theme.

This is not the first time that the CNTS works together with civil society organisations. In September 2019, the union worked with the Association of Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts of Senegal and Alternatiba on the occasion of the Global Strike for Climate to demand climate justice.

Moreover, the work of the CNTS in the field of sustainable development is more dynamic during international events such as the COPs where our delegates unite and show solidarity with other international delegates to support and defend the positions and priorities of the ITUC, as evidenced by the participation of our focal point in the Radio France International program C’est pas du Vent broadcasted in December 2018 during the COP24.

In addition, the international cooperation work that the CNTS conducts also covers migrant workers working in Senegal. This is the meaning of the caravan initiated by the Committee of Inter-Union Actions and Reflection on Migration (CARISM) in 2021.

In the same vein, the CNTS has taken part in a program for Senegalese returnees working in agribusiness. This program was financed by the Emilia Romagna Region and executed by NEXUS.