Muscat: The General Federation of Oman Workers (GFoW) has dealt with a number of labour issues by workers in private sector facilities.

As a result of the swift response, the federation was able to retain more than 45,000 of the national workforce by ending collective services or reducing wages in 2021. These issues varied from the individual and collective termination of contracts of work of the national labour force to many establishments not paying or delaying workers’ wages.

Complaints about deductions in wages by private sector companies under the pretext of the economic crisis due to the pandemic were received by the federation.

Labour complaints and the collective termination of employment contracts for the national workforce included 1805 legal advice and labour complaints; 5,438 workers were notified of their dismissal or collective dismissal from 156 companies; 5 notices of strike (3 in the oil and gas sector, 1 in the trade and industry sector, and 1 in the media sector).

There were also 14 union issues varying from membership disputes, members, composition, to work system.

Efforts to preserve over 45,708 national workforce in private sector establishments have resulted in the termination of services collective or reduced wages, the federation added.