Trade Unions of Albania - Functions

Functions

The role of the trade unions was defined in Article 6 of the 1966 Labor Code as follows: "The workers and employees have the right to organize in trade unions. The trade unions of Albania are social organizations of the masses. They unite the workers and employees on a voluntary basis, and operate as a school of communist education under the leadership of the Party of Labor of Albania in accordance with its statutes." Article 7 further states that, "Organized into trade unions and conscious of the working-class mission to build socialism, the workers and employees participate in directing the economy, in drafting and realizing the state plans for economic development, in solving the problems of work and production, and in cultural activities and the increased well-being of the people. The workers, employees, and their trade union organizations fight to strengthen discipline in the state and at work to continuously increase production, and to preserve and maintain state property. They control the administrative activity of enterprises, institutions, and organizations with the result that these groups function better, the people's government becomes stronger, and bureaucratic excesses may be avoided."

The July 1945 Law for the Protection of Workers and Regulations of Work gave the trade unions "sweeping powers to regulate hours, wages, working conditions, and the hiring and dismissal of manual and professional workers." Among the tasks of the unions was "to make and approve collective contracts and to control their execution" and to promote socialist emulation in enterprises. One sympathetic author noted that, "Manager, Party and trade union run the enterprise in compliance with the directives of the current plan on the basis of democratic centralism combining centralised leadership with the maximum creative participation of owrkers engaged directly in production." A critical work, meanwhile, describes their functions as follows: "Throughout their existence the unions have been, for all practical purposes, an appendage of the party machine, performing such set tasks as fulfilling the government's economic plans, maintaining labour discipline, spreading the official gospel among their members."

A 1982 Government work noted that the trade unions participated in the "drafting and editing of laws on labour and wages; supervise the application of rules on safety at work and technical security; exercise social control on behalf of the masses over the execution of housing construction plans and participate in the allocation of houses; control the activity of commercial enterprises and public catering," and that, "Through the trade-unions the workers exercise their control over the rates of utilization of state social insurance funds, the accommodation of the workers and their children in rest-homes, check the execution of plans for the construction of health and prophylactic institutions, the work of health services, etc."

The trade unions also managed holiday houses and other vacation and recreational areas for workers.