ITUC Meets in Zimbabwe to Demand End to Harassment of Unions, Implementation of ILO Report
The international labour movement sent a resounding message of support to Zimbabwe’s trade unionists at a ground-breaking conference in Harare which heard how workers’ representatives continue to face violence and intimidation despite gradual improvements under the power-sharing government.
Honduras: Trade Union Leader Assassinated
The ITUC has strongly condemned and denounced the murder of trade union leader Juana Bustillo, president of the social security workers’ union SITRAIHSS and a member of the National Resistance Front, FNRP. This murder is yet another tragic episode in the surge of repression and violence suffered by the trade union movement over recent years: since the coup d’état on 28 June 2009, protesting workers have met with persecution, murder and imprisonment.
ITUC Supports New International Standard on Social Responsibility
Reacting to news that the ISO 26000 has received enough votes to become an official international standard to be issued by the International Organisation for Standardization, ITUC General Secretary Sharon Burrow expressed her satisfaction. “This was the right decision. The ITUC participated in the Working Group that developed the standard as well as on the drafting committee that wrote it. We are satisfied with the text.”
Sharan Burrow to Call on UN Member States to Prioritize Employment-centred Policies as Key to Achieving the MDGs
A three-day summit on the MDGs opens today in the General Assembly at the UN Headquarters in New York. Over 100 heads of state will gather to adopt an 81-paragraph MDG Summit Outcome Document which aims to reverse the trends in increasing poverty and hunger, exacerbated by the financial crisis. The document agrees to measures to accelerate progress towards achieving the MDG targets of significantly reducing poverty, hunger and unemployment, of addressing lack of access to education, health care and social protection, and of reversing climate degradation by 2015.
Labour Rights under Attack in Honduras
The new ITUC report on core labour standards in Honduras, published to coincide with the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) review of its trade policies, reveals grave violations of labour rights. Indeed, following last year’s coup d’état, virtually all union activity was halted.