The National Union for Namibian Workers (NUNW) had announced in early July that it would withdraw from the Namibian Basic Income Grant Coalition (see NewsFlash 62). USBIG now reports that the 600 delegates at the annual congress of NUNW elected a new Executive Committee and voted to rejoin the BIG Coalition. With the reversal of the NUNW’s decision, the entire incident has become a BIG victory (so to speak) for basic income supporters. Instead of marginalizing the issue, the (former) union leadership’s decision demonstrated how broad the support for basic income is in Namibia and how out of touch that group of leaders was. Basic income was not the only issue in the decision to change leadership, but it was an important one. According to Herbert Jauch of the Windhoek Observer, “The congress decision on the BIG will not only redirect the NUNW leadership but will also increase the pressure on the Namibian government to seriously consider the introduction of a national BIG as a tool to fight poverty.”
For more information about the NUNW Congress, a see, “The NUNW Congress: A turn-around?” by Herbert Jauch, published in the Windhoek Observer, September 10-16, 2010. A PDF of this article is online at:
https://www.archiv-grundeinkommen.de/namibia/20100910-The-NUNW-Congress-A-turn-around.pdf
