About us

Our Mission

The Trade Union Competence Centre (TUCC) is the FES’ regional trade union project for Sub-Saharan Africa. Our work is based on a fundamental understanding of what we wish to achieve through our trade union work: We want to support organized labour in building and exercising pressure from below!

We want to work with organized labour in the region in order to drive a socio-ecological transformation which, ultimately, will lead towards more just societies. Why? Because we are convinced that democratic trade unions have the unique ability to build pressure from below by representing the voice of working people in their respective communities, locally, nationally but also across societies and across the continent. Therefore, our first main aims is to

1. Strengthen the political relevance and the impact of our trade union partners.

We are strongly convinced that trade unions cannot win political struggles, if they cannot exercise collective power from below. Or to put it differently, if unions fail to win the “struggles at the workplace”, they will definitely not succeed in the political arena. That is why we also want to

2. Place the strong representation of the concrete interests of workers at the core of our work.

A successful socio-ecological transformation and the overall struggle for more just societies in Sub-Saharan Africa clearly need membership-driven trade unions – powerful trade unions which can effectively represent workers’ interests within and beyond country borders.

Our Project Areas

Our different project areas are informed as well by the two main goals mentioned above. They are, firstly, driven by an understanding of trade unions as collective actors within society, politics and the economy:

• Crossing the Divide Between the Formal and the Informal Economy
• Shaping Climate and Energy Policies for a Just and Sustainable Transition
• Representing the Interests of Workers in a Changing World of Work

And, secondly, we strongly support the idea of trade unions as membership-based, inclusive, democratic and innovative organizations representing the interests of workers locally, nationally, regionally and globally:

• Holding MNCs Accountable Through a Strong and Vibrant Membership
• Applying Innovative Instruments to Advance the Interests of Workers