Yearly Archives: 2013

Three years ago, a sit in by ‘Red Shirt’ demonstrators was attacked by the Thai military and almost a 100 protesters were killed. No one has been brought to justice for these murders. Last week, tens of thousand of people held a commemoration to remember those that had died. Subsequent […]

Thousands of migrant construction workers in Dubai staged a four day strike against their employer, Arabtec, over unpaid wages and an increase in their allowances. Trade unions in Dubai are banned and migrant workers are employed on low wages and long days. Strikes are very rare. The workers faced harassment […]

This week the Ford Motor company announced the intention to close its factories in Melbourne, Australia by 2016. This will put an estimated 1,200 workers out of a job. This is not an isolated case with car companies all over the world shifting production, increasing the work intensity, and outsourcing […]

Since independence in 1957, the coalition of ‘Barisan Nasional’ has governed Malaysia continuously. In a worrying development given the government’s past use of the Internal Security Act (ISA), four leading opposition activists and politicians have been arrested and charged under the country’s sedition laws. Since the May 5 general elections, […]

On the 13 of May, Mr. Abdul Waheed Khan, a well known human rights defender, social activist and educationist was assassinated by unknown gunmen. This is the second time in as many months that an activist with the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) has been murdered. The OPP works with poor […]

Amid worsening economic conditions, unions in Sri Lanka organised a general strike against the recent electricity price hikes. Around 10,000 workers participated in the main rally. It has been three years since the end of the war against the LTTE in the north of the island, and this was the […]

In the aftermath of the Rana Plaza factory fire in Bangladesh, the deadliest industrial disaster since the Bhopal explosion in 1984, dozens of multinational clothing companies have signed on to a new Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. This agreement was initiated by a number of unions and […]

Events of the last week have shown that while the catastrophic collapse of the Rana Plaza in Bangladesh gained the world’s headlines, workers are routinely killed at their workplaces due to neglect, cost cutting and sub standard regulations. These are not isolated events but part of an economic system that […]

Last week the sixth meeting of the Rotterdam Convention, an international body that regulates hazardous substances, concluded without recommending that chrysotile asbestos be listed as a hazardous substance. This failure has outraged survivors of asbestos disease, community groups and unions around the world as it flies in the face of […]

We’ve recently reported on the struggle of workers at Hyundai Motor division for the right of permanent employment and a stop to sub-contracting measures. The same issue has been tragically highlighted in another one of Hyundai’s divisions. In Dangjin, South Chungcheong province, five workers were killed because of oxygen deprivation […]