Yearly Archives: 2015

As reported previously (see here and here), there has been an upsurge in action by workers in Iran in the last 12 months as a reaction to the continuing deterioration of living standards. On May Day, seven independent labour organisations put out a joint statement denouncing the savage exploitation of […]

This week was the first anniversary of the Soma mine disaster in western Turkey where 301 workers were killed when there was a major underground explosion and fire (see images). The disaster was a result of continual cost cutting by the company that resulted in unsafe working conditions. While some […]

The 15th of May is the 67th anniversary of Al Nakba, the day in 1948 that officially marks the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their lands. Thousands of Palestinians all around the world held events to remember, to commemorate and to fight for justice for the […]

Earlier this month, over 40 contract workers at the Hedgewar Hospital in Delhi started an indefinite sit in inside the hospital compound. They were all contract workers whose contracts were suddenly terminated. After a week, the workers were successful as the local government was afraid that the actions could spread […]

A fire at a garment factory in the Sindh Industrial Trading Estate (SITE) of Karachi earlier this month injured at least ten workers. Given that buildings are built very close to each other and that there are few access points, fire personnel had to break through walls to get to […]

This week, the city of Geneva, Switzerland hosted a major international conference that discussed whether to list chrysotile asbestos as a substance to be banned from use. Even though the World Health Organisation estimates that over 100,000 people are killed each year because of exposure to asbestos, powerful economic players […]

After a decade long battle against casualisation and insecure work, the Unite union in New Zealand was able to win an agreement from the global fast food giant McDonalds to stop using ‘zero hours’ contracts. A ‘zero-hour’ contract allows employers to hire staff on a casual basis with no guarantee […]

As reported recently, after a long fight, the group of power loom workers that had led the major strikes in Faisalabad were freed this week. These workers had been given hundreds of years’ jail sentences under the country’s draconian anti-terror legislation. They took their first steps out of jail on […]

As reported previously (see here and here) the fight by the mainly Kurdish population of Rojava, in Northern Syria, has attracted sizeable solidarity from labour organisations around the world. Now that the front lines of the battle have shifted away from the town of Kobane, the issue of rebuilding the […]

Migrant workers all over the world endure some of the worst working conditions of all workers. A recent documentary in Australia exposed the wide ranging abuse of migrant workers in the agricultural sector by unscrupulous bosses via the use of sub-contracting and sham contracts. Unions for many years have been […]