Australia Asia Worker Links

As reported last week, the protest movement in Turkey has deep social roots. While the Turkish Prime Minister has now had talks with representatives of the protesters, the week has seen ongoing clashes between the riot police and demonstrators. Over 5,000 protestors are now thought to have been injured. Workers joining the protests have been highlighting the rise in precarious work and the need for higher wages. On the evening of Saturday the 15 of June, police moved in to clear all protesters from Gezi Park with water cannons and baton charges. This led to new mass demonstrations.

With continuing technological advances in the transport, communications and manufacturing sectors, the world economy is becoming increasingly more integrated every day. This can be seen in the effect of the current capitalist crisis on workers around the world.  We call this a ‘brutal race to the bottom’. It has become apparent that to safeguard our wages and our conditions, it is not enough to fight at the local level. We need to fight for global standards by developing global industrial campaigns. It can be done, it needs us to organise internationally.

Maruti Suzuki in India is currently promoting itself as an example of Corporate Social Responsibility. It has now teamed up with the Times of India newspaper to proclaim a New India. The reality is that Maruti Suzuki’s repression of its workforce is continuing unabated. While many of the leaders are in jail, solidarity actions have continued in India with recent demonstrations in Mumbai and in Hayana state. Auto workers internationally have a stake in the victory of the Maruti Suzuki workers.

Iran’s general election for a new president was conducted this week. While there were a number of candidates standing, the reality for workers is that austerity and repression will continue whoever wins. A recently released report stated that over 50% of Iranians now live under the poverty line, with many working more than one job in an attempt to make ends meet. This situation is compounded by an almost total lack of the legal right for workers to organise, with many trade unionists languishing in jail.

The great majority of ships that are past their use-by-date end up on beaches in Pakistan, India or Bangladesh to be broken up. In these localities, non existent regulations, low wages and almost no union presence make the task of dismantling these ships very cheap for their owners. On the other hand, these same conditions are deadly for workers, making shipbreaking one of the most dangerous occupations in the world. To document the full extent of the problem, a new website has been developed. An international co-ordinated response by workers is the only long term solution.

Since mid April of this year, the Saudi Arabian government initiated a wide ranging crackdown on migrant workers. Faced with a backlash from many industrialists who needed the workforce, it then gave a 90 day amnesty period for workers to regularise their status. This operation has continued to create problems, including the attempted burning of the Indonesian Embassy by enraged Indonesian workers. West Asia is home to millions of migrant workers, but many of them are routinely harassed and exploited. A video has surfaced of a Saudi immigration official attacking migrant workers.

It has only been six weeks since the collapse of the Rana Plaza in Bangladesh, and workers in our region have faced another disastrous event. On Monday June 3, a fire in a poultry processing factory in the north eastern Chinese province of Jilin killed over 120 workers. The reason so many workers died was that only one exit door was open, with the rest all closed from the outside to prevent workers from taking breaks outside. This is criminal behaviour on the part of the managers of the factory. They need to be tried for mass murder.