The decision earlier this month by the US military to build a new Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea has sparked major protests from Korean anti-war activists. Activists are worried that the deployment of this new system will only serve to heighten tensions in the Korean […]
Blog entry
2579 posts
This week, major demonstrations occurred around Lebanon in protest against a proposed new sales tax that will disproportionately affect workers and their families who are already enduring low salaries. In one demonstration, the Prime Minister Saad Hariri had to abandon his car when it was surrounded by protesters angry at […]
Late last week, Elena Urlaeva, head of the Human Rights Alliance of Uzbekistan, was released after a concerted international campaign. Urlaeva was arrested earlier this month as she was preparing to go to an international conference. Urlaeva is an outspoken critic of forced and child labour in Uzbekistan's cotton sector. […]
On Saturday, 13 workers from the Maruti Suzuki factory were sentenced to life imprisonment by the District Court of Gurugram, in Haryana state. This follows on from the previous ruling that had found an additional 18 workers guilty of a variety of charges following incidents in 2012. These sentences are […]
Hundreds of workers at the FAW-Volkswagen factory situated in the northeast city of Changchun have continued to take action over the last few weeks. Their demands are against the practice of agency labour hire which allows non-permanent workers to be paid as little as 50% as permanent workers for the […]
Hwang Yu-mi died on 5 March 2007 on the way to hospital from acute myelogenous leukaemia. She was the first publicly known victim of what later became known as the Samsung Electronics blood disorder cluster cases. Yu-mi was only 23 and had worked at Samsung for less than four years. Since […]
Over 1,300,000 central government workers throughout India staged a one day strike on the 16th of March, over the ongoing non-implementation of previous agreements, see photos of rallies and demonstrations. Specifically, workers are demanding that pay rises agreed by the 7th Pay Commission be implemented, that contracting of work be […]
International Women’s Day (IWD) was celebrated all around the world on 8 March. On the centenary of the Russian revolution of 1917 that was sparked by women workers taking action on IWD, many demonstrations highlighted how much more work is still needed to achieve gender equality whether in the workplace […]
The referendum to decide whether to grant the President of Turkey extra powers is still four weeks away, but the government is increasing the pressure on any opposition, including labour activists. The chairperson of Turkish Bureau Union, Fahrettin Yokuş, recently survived an assassination attempt from armed gunmen. A mob attacked the […]
This week, the Philippines Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) released new national policy guidelines on contracting and subcontracting. The new guidelines are supposed to limit the use by companies of contract and casual workers as a way to undermine workers’ solidarity and maintain lower rates of pay and lesser […]