Yearly Archives: 2013

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 […]

As reported last week, the crackdown against migrant workers in Saudi Arabia is continuing.  Three workers have been killed, around 100 injured and more than 20,000 workers having been arrested so far. Almost one-third of Saudi Arabia's 28 million population is foreign workers, the majority employed as labourers and domestic […]

While low wages and weak labour laws have encouraged many garment companies to set up in Cambodia, workers have organised many protests over the years to better their wages and conditions. Unfortunately they have often been met with violence from government forces and hired thugs. In a demonstration of workers […]

As reported last week, the suicide of Mr. Choi Jong-beom, struck a chord with many other workers in relation to the precarious nature and intensity of their workplaces. This week, the reason behind Choi’s death was one of the themes of the annual workers march to commemorate the anniversary of […]

The low wages and dangerous conditions that workers in the palm oil industry in Indonesia have to endure have been an issue for many years. This week, hundreds of workers and their supporters held a demonstration at the annual meeting of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). Actions such […]

After decades of repression under Saddam Hussein’s government, followed by the decade of invasion and occupation by US forces, Iraqi unions are still defiant in their attempts to organise. Many activists are routinely targeted for harassment with some killed for their attempt to uphold their rights. Their struggle has now […]

As previously reported, the human right situation for labour and human rights activists in Sri Lanka continues to be very bleak (see here, here and here).  For the current Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Colombo, the government has increased the presence of its security forces in and around […]