ITUC Shocked at UN Palestinian Agency Actions Over Strike
The ITUC has written to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon criticising the actions of the UN’s Palestine Relief Agency UNRWA as a strike of its employees enters a third week. UNRWA management have insisted that they will not talk to the workers’ union unless and until the strike is called off. Some 7,500 employees and contract workers are on strike over claims for improvements in their wages and working conditions.
G20 Finance Ministers: World Unions Warn of Complacent Attitude and Ask “Where are the Jobs?”
“G20 Finance Ministers have to look beyond the comfort zone of Wall St and the City of London, to the reality that millions of people are still losing their jobs and are now being made to suffer further austerity whilst the benefits accrue to the very banks and financiers who caused the global crisis in the first place. The world economy is not out of the woods yet, and the cuts in public expenditure being announced by many of the G20 Finance Ministers have in fact made the risk of a deeper recession more likely. The commitments made by the G20 in London and Pittsburgh to put employment at the centre of decision-making are not being met. The G20 leaders’ meeting in Seoul next month must put jobs back on the G20 agenda,” said ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow.
Trade union leaders and workers at Foxconn India imprisoned
The ITUC has protested to the Indian authorities over the continued imprisonment of 12 union leaders and workers in Vellore central prison. Criminal cases have been filed against trade union leaders and workers at a Foxconn plant located in a Special Economic Zone in Chennai, after they took strike action for union recognition and better wages.
Haiti: Trade unionist killed during demonstration
The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) deplores and roundly condemns the death of Louis Jean Filibert, a mathematics teacher and member of the teachers’ union « Union nationale des normaliens d’Haïti (UNNOH)” and national trade union centre “Confédération des travailleurs des secteurs publics et privé (CTSP)”. The trade unionist was killed by a projectile that came from a police officer during a demonstration organised by a coalition conducting an awareness-raising campaign calling for the education of Haitian children excluded from school.
DR Congo: women trade unionists present en masse at World March of Women
The streets of Bukavu (DR Congo) resounded on Sunday with the voices of thousands of women from all around the world, marching with colourful banners to express solidarity with the women victims of the sexual violence plaguing this eastern part of DR Congo. Among them, Congolese women trade unionists and their sisters from eleven African countries, accompanied by representatives from the ITUC and its regional organisation ITUC-Africa, asserted a strong trade union presence at this event calling for an end to impunity, reparation for the women victims in DR Congo, and the establishment of a lasting peace in the region.