ASSOCIATION OF TANZANIA EMPLOYERS (ATE) BOLDLY MOVING FORWARDS ON MANY FRONTS

During a recent mission, it was a pleasure to see ATE moving forward on many topics, with bold and courageous moves, which can be an example for many other employers’ organisations in the region.

At the level of governance, the ATE General Assembly agreed to the proposal of the Executive Director to reserve the Board representation for company chief executive officers in order to ensure that the ATE Board is the voice of the business leaders, and not only deals with current issues from an HR perspective. Also the sector structure was strengthened and extended.

At the level of revenue-membership, an important decision was taken to increase the membership fees with 50%. These fees had not been increased for about 5 years, so the increase partially compensates the inflation evolution, but also gives the signal that the value of ATE membership requires a higher contribution. The move was accompanied with a strong communication effort of ATE towards the membership to justify the modification. And… most interesting, the membership levels were not at all affected negatively by this increase, on the contrary, paying membership grew. Indeed during the first months of 2019, also thanks to concentrated efforts of ATE to activate dormant members, the number of paying members increased substantially.

At the level of services, also interesting initiatives are being launched. The legal services department will start extending its activities beyond labour and social affairs and encompass also fiscal matters. This move also confirms ATE’s intention to move slowly but steadily from pure employers’ organisation, dealing exclusively with social affairs, to a wider role as business member organisation, intervening in all areas where businesses have interests and needs. Also the launch of offering, as a training institute, a high level Diploma in Labour Law and HR Management is soon to be completed. 

Finally, as policy oriented voice of business, ATE is soon to launch its business agenda 2019- 2020, with an array of policy proposals in diverse fields such as simplification of business regulations, better skills policies and reasonable minima wages. 

And last but not least, the organ-point to end this very positive overview: ATE left its rather cramped offices for a better location,  with substantially more space for its staff and a nicer receiving infrastructure for its members.