Events of the last week have shown that while the catastrophic collapse of the Rana Plaza in Bangladesh gained the world’s headlines, workers are routinely killed at their workplaces due to neglect, cost cutting and sub standard regulations. These are not isolated events but part of an economic system that […]
Monthly Archives: May 2013
29 posts
Last week the sixth meeting of the Rotterdam Convention, an international body that regulates hazardous substances, concluded without recommending that chrysotile asbestos be listed as a hazardous substance. This failure has outraged survivors of asbestos disease, community groups and unions around the world as it flies in the face of […]
We’ve recently reported on the struggle of workers at Hyundai Motor division for the right of permanent employment and a stop to sub-contracting measures. The same issue has been tragically highlighted in another one of Hyundai’s divisions. In Dangjin, South Chungcheong province, five workers were killed because of oxygen deprivation […]
Last year we reported on the shooting of protesting garment workers at KaoWay in Cambodia, a factory that manufactures shoes for German company Puma. The District Governor, Chhouk Bandith, shot three workers during a protest for wage increases of 50 cents per day. Despite numerous court appearances and overwhelming evidence, […]
In a case that has highlighted Indonesia’s poor enforcement of labour laws, 34 young workers were recently discovered being forced to work as slaves at a waste-recycling factory in Sepatan Timur in Tangerang, west of Jakarta. The case also highlighted the apparent involvement of police and military personnel in helping […]
With the death toll well over 1000 from the collapse of the Rana Plaza in Dhaka, Bangladesh, words cannot adequately describe the damage and horror that this incident has caused to workers and their families. In another example of the murderous conditions that workers are forced to work in, last […]
This week hundreds of workers at the Port of Hong Kong agreed to end their 40 day strike after winning a 9.8% wage rise, as well as promises of further negotiations on working conditions and an assurance of no retaliation against striking workers. While successful, the workers did not achieve […]
The recent bombing by Israel of some of the Syrian government’s military installations is another sign of the involvement of imperialist and reactionary forces in an attempt to influence the outcome of the struggle in Syria. Such interventions do not help us. Notwithstanding these interventions, the popular uprising needs to […]
In an incredible feat of endurance, labor activists and irregular workers Cheon Ui-bong and Choe Byeong-seung, have been on an aerial protest atop an electricity pylon for close to seven months. They are protesting against Hyundai Motor Company’s use of contract workers instead of hiring permanent workers. The issue of […]
‘Nakba’ means disaster or catastrophe and stands for the process of expulsion of approximately 750,000 Palestinians from their homes between 1947 and 1949. Palestinians and their supporters mark this day to remember and press the claim for these refugees, and their descendents, many of whom still live in refugee […]