The newly formed Samoa Workers Congress is intended to be the national organisation that brings together all the worker organisations of the country, It will act as the national body for workers on the National Tripartite Forum between government, employers and employees.

“The nature of the tripartite forum is the workers are not recognised as a member of this forum to discuss matters, and so by having the Samoa Workers Congress we intend to be the best representatives for all the workers,” said the new President of the SWC, Gatoloa’i Tili Afamasaga.

“Not everybody is able to sit in at the tripartite forum but by having a national body we should be able to appoint good people to participate and have the national body put things together for the good of all the workers so they are truly educated.”

Introduction of the Labour and Employment Relations Act 2013 builds on top of years of slowly developing organisations representing the interests of workers in different sectors. “Over the years,” said Gatoloa’i, “we’ve had the growth of what we call staff associations particularly in government ministries , gradually they gain an awareness that they need to organise themselves as workers to work together towards a common goal of being able to get a good job, decent salary and so forth.

“These are common issues for all workers, so by having an umbrella organisation it makes it easy for a lot of people to come together and talk about common issues.” She also said it also makes it a lot easier for global bodies like the International Labour Organisation to come into a country and work with a national counterpart.