General Union of Negro African Workers
Open-knowledge reference entry
The General Union of Negro African Workers, more widely known by its French name Union générale des travailleurs d'Afrique noire ('General Workers Union of Black Africa', abbreviated UGTAN), was a pan-African trade union organization. Ahmed Sékou Touré was the main leader of the organization. In its heyday, around 90% of the trade unions in Francophone West Africa were affiliated to UGTAN.
History
Foundation
UGTAN was founded at a conference in Cotonou on January 16, 1957, through the merger of Confédération générale des travailleurs africains (CGTA), the West African branches of the French Confédération générale du travail (CGT) and some independent unions. The conference was held following a call from the railway workers' union to build an independent and united African trade union centre. The Cotonou conference called for the setting up of UGTAN branches across West Africa. Challenging colonialism, UGTAN declared itself as independent from French union centres.
Confédération africaine des travailleurs croyants (CATC) participated in the Cotonou conference, but abstained from voting in the election for a Provisional Executive of UGTAN, stating that they wished to confer with their member organizations on affiliation to UGTAN. In the end CATC remained outside of UGTAN, wishing to remain a non-political union organization. Another group that resisted integration in UGTAN were unions in French Equatorial Africa linked to the pro-Soviet World Federation of Trade Unions. Countering UGTAN, the WTFU-affiliated Cameroonian trade union centre CGTK launched Confédération générale aéfienne du travail (CGAT). In Soviet discourse, UGTAN was condemned as a 'petty bourgeois-racist' entity.
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This entry incorporates text from “General Union of Negro African Workers” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.