Changes in Labor Law in Burma, and What That Really Means
U Maung Maung, general secretary of the Federal Trade Unions of Burma (FTUB), visited the AFL-CIO last week to give some perspective on the draft Labor Organizations Law the Burmese government has introduced. The International Labor Organization (ILO) will decide in November whether to send a Commission of Inquiry to the country, a move Burma would like to avoid.
Although the law is a step in the right direction, U Maung Maung pointed out several holes in its reach, foundation and application and says it lacks adequate procedures for protecting collective bargaining or freedom of association. The announcement of changes in the labor law was accompanied by the release of 15 activists in October, all of whom were held on charges of “affecting the morality or conduct of the public or a group of people in a way that would undermine the security of the Union or the restoration of law and order.” However, 22 activists are still being held for this same reason, with sentences reaching up to 28 years.
Labor Department Seeking Nominations for Anti-Child Labor Award
 |
||||
|
||||
Iqbal Masih was a Pakistani carpet weaver who was sold into slavery at age four. After escaping from his servitude at 12, he became an outspoken advocate against child slavery.
He told the world of his plight when he received the Reebok Human Rights Award in 1994. He was tragically killed a year later at the age of 13 in his native Pakistan.
Now the U.S. Labor Department is seeking nominations for its annual award named for Masih to honor those who have made extraordinary efforts to combat the worst forms of child labor internationally and raise awareness about child labor.
Video Shines Spotlight on Real-Life ‘Help’
|
|
When the highly acclaimed movie “The Help” premiers today, 2.5 million domestic workers will be hard at work taking care of someone else’s children and cleaning their homes. Working people are hoping that this movie, which for the first time features African American domestic workers at the center of a major motion picture, will also shine a spotlight on those who usually remain invisible.
Fifty years after the stories told in the film, domestic workers remain an unprotected workforce, without access to basic rights that other workers take for granted. Still mostly women of color, far too few domestic workers receive overtime pay, meal and rest breaks, sick leave or vacation. And far too many of them work for less than minimum wage.
Human Rights Watch: Bahrain Illegally Fired 2,000 Workers
More than 2,000 workers in Bahrain have been dismissed from their jobs since late March, apparently for participating in or supporting pro-democracy demonstrations, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said.
The labor movement in Bahrain has asserted that the dismissals have violated Bahraini labor laws. Human Rights Watch adds the dismissals may also violate international standards, in particular those banning discrimination on the basis of political opinion. HRW called on Bahrain’s government to reinstate and compensate the workers if an investigation finds they were illegally fired.
Global Labor Ramps Up Campaign to End T-Mobile’s Anti-Union Tactics
|
|
Deutsche Telekom, the parent company of T-Mobile USA, boasts in its annual report on corporate responsibility that it is committed to the global labor standards established by the International Labor Organization (ILO), a branch of the United Nations. Except, it appears, when it comes to T-Mobile workers in the United States.
International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) President Sharan Burrow says Deutsche Telekom—of which the German government is the dominant shareholder—is
actively and deliberately violating these very rights in its overseas operations.
T-Mobile workers throughout the U.S. are fighting to join a union—the Communications Workers of America (CWA)— but the company has hired union-busting attorneys and is conducting a classic anti-union campaign with mandatory captive audience meetings, delaying tactics and other intimidation measures, says UNI Global Union General Secretary Philip Jennings. UNI represents workers in telecoms unions around the world.
If these workers were in Germany, they would have become members of the union automatically but T-Mobile USA management has launched a brutal intimidation campaign to keep the union out of the workplace and to scare the workers out of fighting for their rights. Read the rest of this entry »
Global Unions Condemn Child Labor
 |
The global union movement is calling for governments, employers and workers to take action to halt the exploitation of child labor around the world, and especially in Uzbekistan.
During the month of June, global unions and governments are focusing on the issue of child labor. June 12 was World Day Against Child Labor, but events are ongoing around the world all month.
At a recent conference of the International Labor Organization (ILO), workers and employers reported that millions of children were forced to leave school to do hazardous work in Uzbekistan’s cotton fields.
Unions estimate that in the 2010 harvest alone in Uzbekistan, up to 2 million children between 10 and 16 years old were forced to work in hazardous conditions, with heavy lifting, exposure to pesticides and incidences of rashes and respiratory diseases and cases of meningitis and hepatitis.
Now Countries Need to Ratify the New Global Domestic Workers Rule
|
|
Across the world, working men and women celebrated the historic vote June 16 by the UN’s International Labor Organization creating a new global rule to protect domestic workers. Now the work begins to make sure countries implement the rule, known as a convention, and make protections for domestic workers a reality.
In a joint statement, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Ai-Jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Worker Alliance (NDWA), said the convention “acknowledges that domestic work—work performed in or for private homes—is indeed work.”
Further, the people who perform this work—overwhelmingly women, migrants and people from historically marginalized communities—are indeed workers, and thus entitled to the same rights and protections that all other workers enjoy.
Milestone for World’s Domestic Workers
 |
||||
|
||||
Today, at the International Labor Organization’s 100th annual conference in Geneva Switzerland, the global community took a major collective step towards achieving economic and social justice for some of the world’s most vulnerable workers with the overwhelming adoption of the Decent Work for Domestic Workers Convention and accompanying recommendation.
More than 80 percent of the world’s governments, workers and employers voted in favor of the convention’s adoption, with 90 percent supporting the accompanying recommendation. In practice the convention and recommendation set out basic minimum rights and protections to which domestic workers within countries that ratify the convention are legally entitled. Symbolically, however, these instruments achieve much more.
Domestic Workers: ‘We Have Broken the Silence. We Have Yet to Break Our Chains’
|
|
||||
|
||||
Ai-jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance /La Alianza Nacional de Trabajadoras del Hogar, sends her observations on the International Labor Organization’s (ILO‘s) meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, where a new global rule on domestic workers is set for a vote June 16.
I’m on my way home from a week of discussion and debate about the “Decent Work for Domestic Workers” convention at the ILO’s International Labor Conference in Geneva. This is the first international convention on domestic work. Getting here has been a long road, more than 10 years in the making. The final vote on the convention will take place on June 16.
This process was a powerful reminder of the importance of movements: movements of workers that demand change, movements of women that promote hopeful visions for new ways in which we can relate to each other, social movements that create progressive governments that can play powerful roles in international arenas. It was the growing movement of domestic workers around the world—and our capacity to capture the imagination of trade union movements and governments internationally—that got domestic work onto the agenda at the ILO in the first place.
ILO Takes Big Step Toward Domestic Workers Rule
 |
||||
|
||||
Devon Whitman of the AFL-CIO Field Department reports on a huge victory for domestic workers at the International Labor Organization (ILO) meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.
Last night, following a week of intense negotiations, governments, employers and workers from across the globe reached agreement on the 19 articles which will make up the first international convention on domestic work at the 100th annual conference of the International Labor Organization (ILO). While the final vote of the ILO’s general body will take place on June 16, the victory last night marked a major achievement on the road to winning a strong international convention setting out the rights of domestic workers the world over.
An ILO “convention” sets an international labor standard. Governments must ratify the convention for it to become the law in that nation.
Juana Flores, of Mujeres Unidas y Activas (Women United and Active) of San Francisco, said:
So many women throughout the world have never been recognized for their labor. With this convention the world is recognizing, for the first time, that domestic workers are workers like any other and deserve the same treatment. I feel incredibly proud to have been able to represent the domestic workers of the United States in this process.
