Yearly Archives: 2014

As part of the ongoing restructure within the global airline industry, Qantas, the Australian national carrier, announced this week that it was going to slash 5,000 jobs over the next three years. Unions in Australia are having meetings with Qantas management and deciding on their response to these job losses. […]

International Women’s Day (IWD) originated in 1911, when women garment workers in New York held demonstrations protesting against their appalling and dangerous working conditions, after a fire engulfed their factory. On IWD in 1917, Russian women textile workers went on strike. They gained wide public support and initiated the revolution – the […]

In early February, AAWL organised a group of Australian trade unionists for a solidarity visit to Bangladesh to meet other workers and unionists. Hear the report back on the situation for workers in the textiles and Ready Made Garment industry in the aftermath of the Rana Plaza collapse and the […]

During 2013 workers in all industries continued to come under pressure from the continuing crisis of capitalism as companies tried to restore profits my making workers work harder for less, and by spending less on health and safety. This relentless race to the bottom was tragically exemplified by the Rana […]

In the latest show of determination, workers employed by Paharpur Cooling Towers, a local multinational company, staged a one day strike on the 26th of February. This is a long running dispute and the workers have now started a campaign throughout the industrial belts of Kolkata, India. The workers are […]

As previously reported, workers in Korea are organising and fighting back against continual repression by companies and the government. This week, strikes and demonstrations in many South Korean cities continued the momentum for an end to privatisation and union repression. More protests are being planned for the coming months.

Following recent reports on the hundreds of workers who have died building World Cup football stadiums, this week a gas explosion at a restaurant and a gas leak at a chemical plant claimed more lives and injured many more. These incidents show the terrible conditions that workers in Qatar endure […]

Recent reports have once again highlighted the horrendous conditions that workers endure while building the infrastructure needed for the 2022 Football World Cup. While the government of Qatar does not care about the deaths of these migrant workers, the reality is that the use of migrant labour and the suppression of independent […]

As reported previously, the Australian government has unleashed a new wave of repressive laws and actions against asylum seekers. Earlier this week, in the offshore 'penal colony' of Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, conditions for asylum seekers became so intolerable that they staged a protest action. This provoked a […]

Building on last December's strike over rail privatisation, and the repression that followed with many trade unionists arrested, a general strike has been called for 25 February. Many labour groups internationally have pledged their support for their South Korean comrades.