Over 800 workers employed by the Australian company Ansell at the Biyagama Export Promotion Zone in Sri Lanka have been on strike for over a month. The workers are fighting the company’s refusal to recognise their union, the Free Trade Zones & General Services Employees Union (FTZGSEU) and continued harassment […]
Monthly Archives: November 2013
32 posts
Garment workers in Bangladesh have been in almost constant mobilisations over the last year against the appalling conditions that they have to endure. Major disaster like Tazreen and the Rana Plaza collapse have been the outcome of an industry that employs millions of workers but is based on brutal and […]
It has been a year since the horrific fire engulfed the garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, killing well over 100 workers. While investigations have revealed that massive breaches of fire and health & safety regulations caused such a calamity, the surviving workers and the families of the dead and injured […]
Workers at the Punto Deri leather product manufacturer have long faced low pay, long working hours, non payment of overtime and inability to use official holidays. In order to achieve better conditions, most of the workers joined their local union, Deri-Is. The response from Punto Deri was to identify the […]
Earlier this month, around 700 workers at Incheon Airport took industrial action to improve their employment status. Their strike action has had some success with airport management now agreeing to negotiations. Workers nevertheless are ready to go back on strike if they feel that the negotiations are not progressing. This […]
The occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel has totally compromised the economic and social life for millions of Palestinians. To survive, many Palestinians have to work in Israeli factories, whether in occupied Palestinian areas or in Israel itself. Every day, workers face intimidation, humiliation and harassment by Israeli soldiers as […]
A recently released report into the conditions of workers at industrial zones in and around Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city, has highlighted the hardships that workers endure. The report highlighted that with the typical base wage of only around $US 1 per day, workers routinely work eleven hours a day, six […]
The typhoon that struck the central Philippines earlier this month made global headlines with many references to the devastation and the difficulty of bringing relief to those in need. What most media outlets did not analyse was the scarcity of infrastructure that was present before the typhoon or how vulnerable […]
Earlier this week, in an historic occasion for the labour movement internationally, PALEA representatives signed an agreement with Philippines Airlines to reverse a previous decision to outsource and casualise its workforce. Instead the company will now offer on-going, permanent jobs to hundreds of striking PALEA members. The struggle over outsourcing […]
In the last few years, garment workers have taken to the streets many times demanding better wages, but since the catastrophic collapse of the Rana Plaza earlier this year, workers have staged almost continual mobilisations. On the back of the most recent protests that led to the shutdown of many […]