The Condition of Workers’ Rights and Freedom of Tade In Kurdistan Region and Iraq
“Workers Rights and Freedom of Association” is a joint project run by PFOK and NPA in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region. The project, which has an implementation period of four years, began in July 2016. A number of researchers from PFOK have conducted a study of the project between July and December of 2016. By using a mixed methods approach, this study tries to reveal the workers’ conditions and the freedom of association and unions in a legal and social framework.
The research tools that have been used in the data collection are individual interviews, focus group discussions and questionnaires.
Data collection has taken place in the cities of Baghdad, Erbil, Basrah, Sulaymaniyah, Kirkuk and Duhok. In order to know more about the conditions of workers, 1000 questionnaires have been shared purposely with workers in these six cities. However, only 780 of these workers met the definition of worker for our study, thus only they have been marked as participants. Secondly, 43 semi-structured interviews were conducted with related people who are: one Parliament member, 12 government representatives, 16 syndicate representatives, two employers, eight workers, two academies and two law experts.
Moreover, six focus groups were conducted in all six cities to know more about the workers’ condition and freedom of unions. Most of the participants were relevant to our study and 67 persons took part in the discussions.