Workers Rights Under Attack, As Usual.

 

       In this world awash with countries that call themselves "democracies", Labour Start comes up with some information that those at the front line of protecting and/or furthering workers rights are well aware, but perhaps facts with which the public at large are less familiar. A system that puts profit and continuous growth as its priority and only object for its existence, can never put workers rights on its agenda. Unless to find ways to whittle down the cost of that labour. The system and workers rights are incompatible, what ever rights we have as workers has been fought for and wrestled from the system, at a cost to those involved, sometimes the ultimate cost, their lives. Our rights have never been give, we have wrenched them from the system. Nothing will change until we change the system we live under.

      This from Labour Start:

 Today in Geneva the International Trade Union Confederation is releasing to the world the results of its annual Global Rights Index.

The picture it paints is not a pretty one:   

• Trade unionists were murdered in ten countries - Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Pakistan, the Philippines, Turkey and Zimbabwe. 
• 85% of countries have violated the right to strike. 
• 80% of countries deny some or all workers collective bargaining.
• The number of countries which exclude workers from the right to establish or join a trade union increased from 92 in 2018 to 107 in 2019.
• Workers had no or restricted access to justice in 72% of countries.
• The number of countries where workers are arrested and detained increased from 59 in 2018 to 64 in 2019.
• Out of 145 countries surveyed, 54 deny or constrain free speech and freedom of assembly.
• Authorities impeded the registration of unions in 59% of countries.
• Workers experienced violence in 52 countries. 

You can now download the full report here.

What can we do about this?

First of all, let's make sure that every single member of our unions knows about this report.  We cannot guarantee that the mainstream media will give it the publicity it needs.  But if every single person who gets this email message shares it with others, the impact will be enormous.

Please -- share this email, share the link to the ITUC Global Rights Index, post it on Facebook and Twitter.  

Together, there are millions of us.  Together, we can reverse these trends and ensure that the rights of all workers are respected, no matter where they live.

Thank you.



Eric Lee

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Don't Ask For The Right To Strike, Take It.

       It is a strange thought that in a so called democracy, you can be employed but if a difference between you and your employer arises, you can't stop working to try and get the situation resolved. The law, as in slave society, forbids you to stop working, you first have to jump through hoops organised by the state and your employer.

     The right to strike has continually been attacked by employers and this mindset has always had the backing of the state as it continually tightens the legislation governing our right to strike. The aim of course is to destroy one of the main tools in the armory of the workers as they struggle to hold onto, or improve their conditions. Their idea is that during disputes you just keep working while the employers indulge in so called talks, that can drag on indeterminately while you still keep producing their profit, and your grievance becomes a pantomime of talking shops.

     Most Europeans consider Sweden to be one of the more socially conscious states on the continent, but even there, the right to strike is under fierce attack, sadly backed by the big unions.

This from Gatorna:

        This is a video in English about the Right to Strike rally in Sweden and the demonstration that was held on Saturday August 25 in Stockholm by anarchist and autonomous organizations, unions and individuals. 2000 people joined the demo. STRIKE BACK was a mass action with the purpose of defending worker's rights in Sweden. Recently the heads of the swedish trade union confederacy made a deal with the employer's confederacy severely limiting the right to strike. While it hasn't been turned into law yet, any plausible government alternative after the election this September are likely to pass it.We see this development as part of a larger pattern of impeding working class struggle across Europe, as seen in the development in countries such as France or Poland in the last years. See the call for the action bellow.

        We publish the call for a nationwide social strike on the 25th August in Stockholm, launched by the “Strike Back” movement against the project of a law that drastically limits the right to strike. The law was proposed as a response to the mobilizations of the dock workers in Gothenburg, to close down the already limited possibilities for workers to call for a legal strike. This proposal is but one episode of a longer series of attacks to the right to strike in several European countries in the last years. As the call implies, if they attack us in the workplaces, we will bring the strike into the streets, taking up the determination to reinvent the strike expressed recently in Sweden by the young Afghans striking against deportations and globally by the women’s strike. How the limitations to the right to strike are part of an overall transformation that tries to turn workers into a just in time asset, how to join forces and confront the attacks to the strike on a transnational level, these are for us the open questions we are looking forward to discuss in Stockholm in autumn.

Read the full article HERE: 

Visit ann arky's home at radicalglasgow.me.uk
 

Capital, The Enemy Of Workers Rights.

      To any sane person it absolutely ridiculous that being a workers rights activist should be dangerous, yet the nature of the beast that has wrapped itself around the world, makes such activities extremely dangerous. You are seen as an enemy of capital, and that in the eyes of our lords and masters, is an evil philosophy.

An appeal from IUF:

      Labour rights activists are being held in criminal detention following a wide-scale police crackdown in the southeastern Chinese province of Guangdong December 3-5. Police targeted independent worker rights centers and arrested, questioned and detained staff and volunteers against a background of factory closures and rising worker protests and strikes. Seven of the more than two dozen arrested activists are either in detention or cannot be contacted. Confirmed as being in detention and denied access to lawyers for reasons of 'national security' are Panyu Workers' Centre director Zeng Feiyang and staff member Zhu Xiaomei; Foshan Nanfeiyan Social Work Services Organization director He Xiaobo; and Deng Xiaoming.
        The IUF-affiliated Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU) and Globalization Monitor have initiated an online petition to the Chinese government, calling for the immediate release of all detained activists and an end to the repression of labour rights organizations. CLICK HERE to add your name or that of your organization to the petition - links to translation in various languages are at the top of the page, scroll down for the English text.

 

 December 10 - International Human Rights Day - HKCTU and labour support groups rally for the release of detained labour activists on the Mainland.

This story is posted on the IUF website here

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

 

Solidarity Is Our Weapon.

An appeal from Labour Start:  

       The International Union of Foodworkers launched an online campaign last week to support workers on strike at global brewery giant SABMiller.  The company had been refusing to negotiate and was engaging in union-busting practices at its subsidiary in Panama.
      The company's reaction was to block all email messages coming in.  Thousands of campaign supporters received error messages in their inboxes.  You may have been one of them.
       SABMiller has to learn that they can "blacklist" our email servers, but they can't silence our voices.
The IUF has forwarded on all the messages to the workers on strike, and is going to present all the names to the company in the form of a petition.

Please take a moment to send your message today:

http://www.iuf.org/cgi-bin/campaigns/show_campaign.cgi?c=943

      Please share this message widely, among friends, family, and fellow union members.  (Use the links on the right side of this email message.)

Thank you.



Eric Lee 

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Corporate Greed And Right-wing Governments.

       Turkish companies, like companies everywhere, rub their hands with greed driven glee, as their government moves ever more to the right, they jump in and try to crush any workers organisation that they consider might impede their ever increasing exploitation of the workforce.



 This appeal from IUF:

       Union members at the Turkish Sütas dairy company are fighting for their rights against mass intimidation by management including dismissals, criminal complaints to the prosecution office, police raids on the union offices and the dumping of 13 tons of liquid manure on the sit-in area across the factory gate where the dismissed workers were picketing.

       The IUF-affiliated Tobacco, Drink, Food and Allied workers Union, TEKGIDA-Is, began organizing workers at Sütas dairy company in 2012. The company responded with mass dismissals targeting union members between October 2012 and August 2014, leaving 83 workers and their families without income. Many workers are harassed and compelled to resign from their union membership by threats and calls to their families. To break the workers' picket management poured 13 tons of liquid manure on the area.
     You can support their struggle for union rights and recognition. CLICK HERE to send a message to Sütas management calling on the company to reinstate the 83 dismissed union members, stop harassing the workers who want to join the union and recognize TEKGIDA-Is.

     And if you have not yet had the opportunity to do so, please take a moment to support the German Food Workers and their members' fight for a first collective agreement with the transnational catering and retail giant Autogrill - CLICK HERE!

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

LOOKS NICER THAN JACKBOOTS, - JUST AS BRUTAL.

      The "industrial revolution" rolled over the people of Europe and for about the next 250 years or so, the ordinary people of Britain and the rest of Europe struggled to force little increments from the employers to try to improve their meager conditions. Inch by painful inch we won small concessions, and tried to hand those successes on to the next generation who would hopefully carry on the struggle for total emancipation from wage slavery. 

       The conditions that we have at the moment, though far from what we want, were won in hard fought struggles. People went to prison and in some cases were executed, as they fought to improved our conditions. Nothing we have today was handed to us by the employers or the state, it was always our endless battles that brought as what we have. Now this corporate fascist regime of millionaires that sit in the  Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption are determined to claw it all back and remove what little workplace rights that we have won.

       The so called "deficit reduction" is a guise used by employers and backed up by the state, with which to tear up all agreements between workers and employers. The UK's corporate hatchet man, George Osborne, is attempting to bribe the workers with a handful of silver in exchange for all those rights won over the last 250 years of bitter and painful struggle. For a couple of thousand shares in the company, you can abandon all union protection, workplace rights, the right to a tribunal for unfair dismissal, redundancy payments and a host of other things. We don't have the right to give these away, we hold those rights as custodians with the obligation to hand them on to our children and grandchildren. They are not ours to sell for a quick buck. 

     The legislation will be optional at first, though you will, in all probability, be obliged to sign up if you want a job with firms that make it their policy. it will then be introduced to all new firms making it compulsory if you want a job with them. This is corporate fascism by bribery, it looks nicer than jackboots, but the result is still the same, all rights with your employer, to use you or dispose of you at will. Your freedom and self respect are at stake. It should be resisted with the same anger and ferocity as the jackboots on the streets, it is all limbs of the same vile beast.

ann arky's home.

RESISTANCE IS THE ANSWER.

        Although the real aim is to get rid of the corporate greed beast and its band of leeches and parasites, in all their entirety, we should still fight to hold onto what ever meagre rights we still have. This "crisis" thing they keep belching about is in their eyes, a wonderful excuse to hack more viciously at our working and living conditions. Worse conditions for you, is increase profit for them, hire and fire at a whim suits their dictatorial attitude and also is meant to engender an atmosphere of fear in the work place, helping to create a subservient workforce that will meekly accept what is thrown at them without resistance. Standing up and fighting back scares them as it might affect their profit margin, profit is the only thing that runs through their veins.

ann arky's home.

CORPORATE DESIRE - A CHEAP SUBSERVIENT WORKFORCE.

       The present corporate friendly government, is hell bent on handing the big business lobby what it has always wanted, ie; to be able to fire workers without running the risk of being taken to a tribunal for unfair dismissal. The corporate world is asking the government to do away with legislation that the workers and unions have fought long and hard for, protection against dismissal at the vagaries of their employer. They are also asking for another couple of favours from their millionaire puppet politicians, to do away with redundancy and collective bargaining. According to the double-speak of the deranged minds of the corporate bosses, this will create more jobs by allowing businesses to hire and fire without fear of facing a tribunal. They maintain that it would help business if they could hire and fire more cheaply.

We need protection from the workers.

       This is just hogwash, in an attempt to take away what little rights workers have. Employers can at present hire workers on an temporary contract for up to three months to determine their suitability for the job and can dismiss them at the end of that three months, with no costs involved for the employer. If they were eager to hire more workers but feel they don't want to run the risk of a tribunal if the worker is unsuitable, they can use the temporary contract and if they are suitable retain them. The fact that they don't just means that they don't want to employ more workers and it is not the legislation that is stopping them.

      In the present climate the corporate bosses know that they have the backing of our public school millionaire politicians to do what they can to dismantle what little protection workers have. Less workers rights, easy hiring and firing, no redundancy, no collective bargaining, all helps to keep down wages and increase profit margins. In this exploitive system of capitalism, that's the name of the game. A cheap subservient work force is the corporate world's dream. No amount of tinkering will change that. We have to remember that as we fight for decent conditions, they are never ours when we win them, they are merely on loan, the bosses will come back later with the backing of their friends in The Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption and take them all back again. For a decent life for all we have to get rid of this exploitive system of capitalism.

ann arky's home.

MILITARY DEMOCRACY???

      

          I have never been one to think that democracy will come via a military government. In most cases the top Military are in too cozy a relationship with those at the top you wish to get rid of, they are part and parcel of the same state apparatus. So I thought it would only be a matter of time before there were the usual fractures between the new ruling elite and the real people of Egypt, and now the new ruling class are beginning to show where their plans are heading, the usual control over the working class. Below is an appeal from LabourStart.

        The Egyptian revolution last winter was an inspiration to the whole world. And workers were at the heart of it. Their strikes brought down the Mubarak regime.

But today, Egypt's Military rulers continue to criminalise strikes.

     That hasn't stopped Egyptian workers from walking off the job in their hundreds of thousands. Today, a major strike wave is sweeping the country, with schools, hospital and public transport systems shut down. Those workers face the risk of brutal repression unless the country's military rulers start recognizing their basic human right to join and form trade unions, and to strike.

        Egypt's new independent unions and the International Trade Union Confederation have today launched a major campaign to pressure the new regime to enact a labour law that recognizes workers' rights.

      It's extremely important that you and other members of your union act today by sending off a short message. It will take you less than a minute to do this.

Click here to send off your message.

Please pass this message on to other members of your union.
Thank you!



Eric Lee

ann arky's home.

THE STATE AND ITS HATERD OF UNIONS.

The trial of the leader of the Fiji Trades Union Congress

 is due to start this week.

SOLIDARITY.

         Fiji's military government has dramatically stepped up its harassment of trade unionists. Recently FTUC President Daniel Urai was arrested for holding an ‘illegal’ meeting, and his trial is due to start on 2 September. Meetings of the FTUC itself have also been prevented. Fiji has been under a military dictatorship since 2006, as a result of which Fiji has been suspended from the Commonwealth and the Pacific Islands Forum. The European Union has also suspended overseas aid payments to the regime. Leaders and activists of the Fiji Trades Union Congress (FTUC) have been assaulted or detained on several occasions. In February, Felix Anthony, General Secretary of the FTUC and of the Sugar Workers’ Union affiliated to the ITF and the IUF was taken from home by three uniformed military officers and subjected to threats. His family including children were also threatened. A new government decree issued on 29 July will, 'effectively abolish all trade unions in Fiji', according to the FTUC. Fiji has ratified the two relevant core ILO Conventions - Convention 98(1974) and Convention 87 (2002) and is obliged to observe the workers' rights enshrined in them. Moreover, as a member state of the ILO, the Government of Fiji has an obligation to adhere to the Declaration of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work adopted by the ILO in 1998.

An appeal from LabourStart.

       The trade unions of the Pacific island nation of Fiji are under attack. Please take a moment to join thousands of other trade unionists from around the world to send your message of protest:

http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=1086
Please spread the word by email, on Facebook, and elsewhere.
This is extremely urgent.
Thank you!

ann arky's home.

NICE MEAL -- CRAP CONDITIONS!!

New York: Boathouse Restaurant workers strike against unfair labor practices

       60 employees of the Boathouse Restaurant in New York’s Central Park have walked off their jobs and were joined on the picket line by 37 of their co-workers who were illegally terminated in retaliation for organizing a union. In response to low wages, stolen overtime pay, long hours, no benefits, unsafe conditions, rampant favoritism, sexual harassment, ethnic discrimination, and management abuse 70% of the Boathouse staff signed union cards in January, and on January 27, the union petitioned the United States Government to hold a union representational election. Boathouse management immediately launched a campaign of terror against the employees.

        Management fired 37 workers for their support for the union and aggressively intimidated and threatened the remaining union supporters, many of whom are immigrants.

       The City of New York owns the boathouse; Dean Poll is the contracted operator. Under the terms of the operator's contractor, the New York City Parks Commission can cancel his contract and replace him with another operator. You can support the Boathouse workers by sending a message to the Parks Commissioner urging him to do just that! Click here to send a message.

For more information, read the full story here.

Ron Oswald
General Secretary, IUF

International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF)

8, rampe du Pont-Rouge
1213 Petit Lancy, Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 793 22 33
Fax: +41 22 793 22 38
website: www.iuf.org

ann arky's home.

FACTORY LOCKOUT.

    

  From LABOUR START

      We've received an urgent request for help from workers at a garment factory in the Philippines.

      A hundred workers have been locked out for more than two months now, camped out in front of the main gates of the Mactan Export Zone, which is one of the largest in the country.

     As the union put it, "The fight of the Alta Mode workers is a struggle for job security and workers rights." Alta Mode supplies garments to such global brands as Abercrombie & Fitch, whose 'social compliance manager' is one of the targets of this protest. No union has managed to successfully organize workers in the three decades that the Mactan Export Zone has been in existence.

     Let's put an end to the "no union, no strike" policy of those export zones and support the Alta Mode workers.

Please take a minute and sign up to the campaign -- and then spread the word to your fellow union members.

Thanks very much.

Eric Lee.
 

 
ann arky's home.