Workers in Samoa face challenges in accessing decent jobs, securing fair wages and protecting their livelihoods from economic shocks and climate change. Labour migration offers opportunities to earn income overseas, but it also raises questions about workers’ rights and the impacts on families and local workplaces. A strong, united trade union movement is vital to ensuring workers have a voice in shaping responses to these challenges.
The Samoa Workers Congress (SWC) has taken an important step toward strengthening the voice of working people by bringing together its Executive Committee to develop a plan to build a stronger, more representative trade union movement.
Representing workers from across Samoa, the SWC Executive Committee includes leaders from the Samoa Teachers Association, Samoa Nurses Association, Samoa Seafarers and Maritime Association, Samoa First Union, Samoa National Provident Fund Staff Association and other affiliated unions. Together, they share a vision of improving workers’ rights and strengthening trade unions’ role in Samoa.
The new two-year partnership will help build SWC’s organisational capacity so it can better support its affiliates in organising workers, promoting women’s leadership and rights, and responding to the growing impacts of climate change on workers and communities. The project will also strengthen SWC’s ability to represent workers in national tripartite dialogue, including minimum wage negotiations, labour migration and other key labour and social policy discussions. These priorities reflect the project’s broader goal of building a strong, democratic and sustainable national trade union centre capable of advancing decent work, gender equality and just transition in Samoa.
For the newly elected SWC President, Saina Tomi, the partnership comes at a critical moment.
“I want to build a strong trade union movement, bringing together the Samoan way of community to support workers and their rights.”
Her commitment is grounded in years of organising experience. She worked tirelessly to establish Samoa’s first private sector union, the Samoa First Union (SFU), with support from Australian and New Zealand unions. However, the movement faced enormous setbacks during successive national crises. First came the devastating measles outbreak, followed soon after by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many workplaces closed, businesses struggled, and union membership declined as workers lost jobs and livelihoods.
Today, as Samoa’s economy gradually recovers, there are opportunities to rebuild worker organising.
Saina Tomi believes that by working together, Samoa’s unions can once again become a strong collective voice for working people.
“My hope is that one day we can bring all the unions in Samoa together and build a strong trade union movement that protects every worker.”
The SWC is supported by Union Aid Abroad–APHEDA‘s Partnership for Decent Work in the Indo-Pacific (PDWIP), the Australian Council of Trade Unions and funded by the Australian Government.
By strengthening governance, organising capacity, women’s leadership, and policy advocacy, the project will help lay the foundations for a stronger, more representative, and more united labour movement that can improve wages, protect workers’ rights, and ensure workers have a meaningful voice in shaping Samoa’s future.
As SWC begins this new chapter, the partnership demonstrates the power of international trade union solidarity, bringing Samoan workers together with support from Australian unions to build a fairer, more just future for all workers in Samoa.
This project is supported by the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and the Australian Council of Trade Unions through Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA’s Partnerships for Decent Work in the Indo-Pacific program.
