Labour Court

Wednesday I spent the day with BIGUF's attorney Salem at the Labour Court. (I'm using the British spelling of "labour" because that is the actual name of the Court in all the translations).The Labour Court as the name would suggest deals only with labor (switching it up) issues. Stuff like workers who are fired without proper severance pay, or aren't paid the full amount of wages they are owned etc.
The court was fairly drab (not surprising) and very hot and stuffy (also not surprising). Initially the room was entirely filled with men (I have never felt so much the "other" in my life) but eventually two female lawyers joined. I chatted with a few different people about the state of the law here and comparisons with American labor law. One of the lawyers I spoke with is, according to Salem, the top labor lawyer in the country who has written many books about the subject. He told me that his wife had died 2 just two weeks ago, and this explained why throughout much of our conversation he seemed so incredibly sad.
Much of what was done in court was similar to my experience in the U.S. where everything is settled behind the scenes and the judge just basically gives a stamp of approval. A lot of my understanding of what happened with individual cases was hampered by the fact that while Salem's English is decent he tended to oversimplify, and not really tell me the details.Also, while he speaking to the Judge I was left completely in the dark.
One of the biggest differences was that the judge sits on a panel of 3, one permanent worker's representative and one permanent employer's representative. There are 3 different labour courts (each with jurisdiction over different parts of the city) and I sat through 2. The employer's representative was absent during both. Apparently this happens a lot, because all 3 members need to be present for some of the more important cases, and this is used often as a delaying tactic.