Mongolia

The AFT’s partnership with Mongolian unions began in earnest in 2008, when a staff member met with newly elected leaders of both the Federation of Mongolian Education and Science Unions (FMESU) and the Confederation of Mongolian Trade Unions (CMTU). The election of these two progressive leaders represents a dramatic shift away from the state-dependent unions that remained after the collapse of communism. They aim to implement a radical democratic transformation led by cadres of provincial labor activists increasingly dissatisfied with the lack of effective representation. In an early success, workers gained the right to independent legal representation in disputes with their employers for the first time in Mongolia’s industrial history.

FMESU’s executive leadership is strongly committed to active membership participation and recently joined the Civic Voices International Democracy Memory Bank Project[a1]  as a way to draw members into its programs. The union is dedicated to promoting democracy education as a way of revitalizing the civics curriculum in schools and training young activists, who lack a basic understanding of democratic principles and institutions.

FMESU is one of Mongolia’s largest and most democratic trade unions. In addition to its efforts to reform the country’s autocratic, conservative trade union movement, the union and its president are strong advocates for introducing democracy education into the national school curriculum. The FMESU general secretary was one of the first women elected to head a national union in Mongolia. Women educators are well represented on its 60-member national executive board and its 11-member national executive committee.

FMESU represents educators and nonacademic employees in primary, secondary and postsecondary education, including administrators, faculty and staff of universities and government research institutions. The union is the principal bargaining agent in negotiations with government ministries and represents members and nonmembers in legal disputes with employers. The union’s 15,000 dues-paying members are heavily concentrated in Ulaanbaatar and other major urban centers, where the majority of the population resides. The union also has links with rural teachers through separate provincial and district trade union structures.

Further information on Mongolia from the State Department is available here.