OUR DEPARTMENTS

Women and Gender Department
Hamdi Yusuf: Head of Education, Training, Women and Gender Department
1. Enhancing the capabilities of the National Centre and its Affiliates through high-quality education and training initiatives.
Reinforcing and promoting awareness about trade union ideology, principles, and values.
2. Integrating gender perspectives across all education and training programs.
3. Facilitating the organization, education, and growth of individuals to bolster the bargaining influence of the working class and facilitate their access to rights.

Parliamentary Affairs & Advocacy Department
Anisa Abdirahman, Head of Parliamentary Affairs & Advocacy Department
1. To establish, nurture, and sustain a robust, efficient, democratic, and autonomous trade union movement in Somalia.
2. To advocate for, protect, and attain the rights and privileges of trade unions, while actively working towards enhancing working conditions and employment benefits for all workers in Somalia. This includes ensuring the complete recognition and advancement of workers' rights, interests, and dignity in their labor.
3. To ensure the comprehensive social and economic well-being and progress of all workers in Somalia, both within and beyond the realm of trade unions. This commitment extends particularly to marginalized groups such as women and children.
4. To shield workers from any type of bias, exploitation, or mistreatment, and to champion their rights vigorously.
5. To elevate awareness and understanding of political, economic, and educational matters among trade unions, empowering them to effectively safeguard their interests.
6. To establish and manage a centralized National Labor Information Center, aiding trade unions and workers in areas like organizational structure, management, employment regulations, legislation, and other pertinent topics.
7. To serve as the intermediary for communication between the labor movement and various stakeholders, including government bodies, development partners, religious institutions, cooperatives, progressive organizations, and employers' associations, for matters of mutual concern and shared interest.

Health and Social Welfare department
Abdiaziz Hashi, Head of Health, and Social Welfare department
1. Auditing Workplace Safety and Health Practices
2. Advocating for Employment within Health and Social Welfare, Pensions, and Social Security
• Providing Education on Workplace Environment, Climate Change, HIV/AIDS, TB, and Employee Well-being
3. Creating Policies Focused on Safety, Health, HIV/AIDS, and Climate Change
4. Researching and Advancing Occupational Safety and Health

Information Department
Abdiwali Zacimka, Head of Information Department
Coordinates organization publicity through methods like issuing press statements, holding press conferences, and conducting outreach initiatives like exhibitions.
Evaluates media content to craft responses in alignment with the organization's values, including the creation of press statements or media releases.
Offers guidance to leadership on relevant subjects that should be communicated to a wider audience.
Recognizes, chooses, processes, and shares information about the organization in both physical and digital formats.
o Promoting the organization through various channels such as press statements, press conferences, and outreach activities like exhibitions.
1. Evaluating media content to craft responses in line with the organization's values, including press statements and media releases.
2. Advising leadership on pertinent matters requiring wider communication.
3. Gathering, refining, and sharing both physical and digital information related to the organization.
4. Drafting speeches for leadership.
5. Collaborating with the media.
6. Serving as an intermediary between the organization and its members, enhancing communication links.
7. Addressing inquiries from the public and other stakeholders, delivering needed information.
8. Conducting awareness and alert services on current issues, fostering understanding of the organization's policies and actions.
9. Conducting online research to ensure current information dissemination.
Generating reports, updating, and managing the organization's website as a crucial information tool.
10. Overseeing organization publications like newsletters, annual reports, and newspaper.
11. Managing the library database.
12. Publishing The Voice Worker Newspaper

Organising Department
Nafisa Mohamed, Head of Organizing Department
The department is responsible for coordinating associations within the informal economy in the nation. It also plays a role in formulating policies that address the rights of self-employed individuals and those with uncertain wages in microenterprises, with the aim of ensuring:
To establish robust and larger industrial unions, united under a single national center.
A. To achieve complete unionization across all labor-utilizing sectors.
B. To unify unions through mergers, amalgamations, and federations.
C. To coordinate and bolster trade union endeavors in Somalia, aiming for increased solidarity within the working class through both organic and mechanized means.
D. To encourage adherence to established constitutional principles among affiliate members and the general constituency.
E. To engage with union leadership, affiliate representatives, and secretariat departments to identify labor and civic concerns impacting worker well-being.
F. To communicate with the workforce about political, social, and economic matters.
G. To collaborate with union leadership, affiliate representatives, secretariat, and SOCOTU structures and departments to discern necessities for national events.
H. To offer guidance to leadership regarding worker-centric matters necessitating action.
I. To translate resolutions from leadership and congress into actionable plans.
J. To prepare project proposals and budgets for departmental efforts aimed at organizing activities.

Legal Department
Ruweyda Mo’allim, Head of Legal Department
The department achieves its mandate by offering the subsequent services:
1. Providing legal counsel to SOCOTU and its affiliated unions and members at large.
2. Initiating and safeguarding legal proceedings on behalf of SOCOTU, its affiliated unions, and members, both domestically and internationally.
3. Enhancing capacity through paralegal training courses that equip trade unionists with legal skills. The courses predominantly cover Constitutional Law, Labor Law, Introduction to Law, International Labor Law, Conciliation, Arbitration, Law of Evidence, and Advocacy skills. Noteworthy alumni of the program include past and current trade union leaders and select Parliament members.
4 In addition to intensive paralegal training, the department holds workshops and seminars for trade unionists, addressing pertinent issues and facilitating information exchange to enhance trade unionists’ proficiency in promoting and safeguarding their members.
5. Conducting research on crucial policy and legal matters concerning trade unions.
6. Establishing connections with other progressive organizations to advance labor rights.

Informal Economy Department
Ahmed Mohamed, Head of Informal Economy Department
The department is responsible for coordinating associations within the informal economy in the nation. It also plays a role in formulating policies that address the rights of self-employed individuals and those with uncertain wages in microenterprises, with the aim of ensuring:
I. Ensuring the right to freedom of association, particularly as many of these workers are often prohibited from organizing under local or national laws.
II. Ensuring the possibility of engaging in collective bargaining in various forms.
III. Offering guidance on broadening the application of labor laws to encompass categories of workers that have been excluded, and/or amending labor regulations to encompass these workers.
IV. Ensuring their organizations' inclusion in institutions of social dialogue and policy formulation.
V. Regulating employment arrangements that create distinctions in treatment and outsourcing.
VI. Carrying out the principles outlined in Recommendation 204.
VII. Establishing a minimum wage that can be requested.
The department also collaborates closely with the International Labour Organization (ILO), the government, and the Somali Employer Association to implement national initiatives targeting youth and women throughout the country. It suggests strategies to leadership for generating employment opportunities and promoting decent work.