After a four-year judicial process, a local penal court in Turkey has handed down prison sentences to the former management of the Soma mine following the killings of 301 people in the country’s worst ever mining disaster in May 2014. 

Unions at ArcelorMittal have formed a global network and committed to pursue global social dialogue with the world’s largest steel company.

Norway’s Aker Energy, which bought oil exploration and production licences for the Tano Cape Three Points Block in Ghana from Hess Corporation early this year will collaborate with trade unions on workers’ rights  including freedom of association and the right to organize, membership recruitment, and social dialogue.

“I will be smiling all the way to Kitwe,” says Brenda Mufika, the Copperbelt Regional Coordinator, of the Mine Workers Union of Zambia (MUZ), after signing a recognition agreement with Smech Engineering Services in the Sinazongwe District of the Southern Province of Zambia on 12 July.

Goodyear has unfairly dismissed dozens of workers employed at its factory in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, for the sole reason that they wanted to organize themselves in an independent, free and democratic union.

GEA management from Germany has agreed to attend talks with trade unions and local government officials in Italy over plans by the company to sell its oil and gas refrigeration division in Castel Maggiore. 

Around 250 workers from IndustriALL Global Union’s Turkish affiliate, Selüloz-Is, are on strike at factories of packaging company MM Süperpak Ambalaj, a subsidiary of Austrian-based Mayr-Melnhof, after the union rejected management’s offer of a zero per cent wage increase in exchange for employment security.

Some 800 miners in the Ukraine took part in a mass protest in front of the Ukrainian parliament on 5 July, demanding payment of salary arrears and the adoption of a law in support of the coal industry.

Sixty-five representatives from IndustriALL Global Union affiliates in the textile, garment, shoes and leather industries (TGSL) gathered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on 1 July for the IndustriALL Asia-Pacific regional sector conference.

After recruiting and organizing over 500 workers at the Dangote Cement plant in Masaiti on the outskirts of Ndola, Zambian unions are being prevented from meeting with their members and collecting membership fees because of the company’s blatant violation of workers’ rights and union busting practices.

A criminal court in Belgium has effectively criminalized the right to strike in the country after it found a local union leader guilty of the “malicious obstruction of traffic" following a national trade union picket close to the port of Antwerp two years ago.

The vice-president of the Tenaris TuboCaribe union in Colombia (Sintratucar), Jairo de Río, has called off his hunger strike after being hospitalized, but the struggle against union persecution continues

IndustriALL’s regional conference in Kuala Lumpur on 3 – 4 July, brought together unions from the region, providing a platform to highlight and discuss wins, struggles and how to promote women and youth in union structures.

Los Mineros of Mexico won a trade union election giving it the exclusive right to negotiate a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) at the Teksid company after a 4-year struggle. This represents a real triumph for all those who defend freedom of association.

IndustriALL Global Union is calling on Shell to respect the rights of hundreds and thousands of contract workers toiling at its operations around the world, as the company holds its annual green-washing festival in London. 

Despite difficulties and challenges, IndustriALL Global Union’s Georgian affiliate the Trade Union of Metallurgy, Mining and Chemical Industry Workers (TUMMCIWG) is actively organizing workers.

Anglo-Swiss multinational commodity trading and mining company Glencore has built global notoriety for trashing workers’ rights; one tactic is to hire lawyers instead of engaging with workers. This is what Glencore tried to do to break a month-long strike at its Tweefontein and Goedgevonden coal operations in Mpumalanga when it went to the Labour Court for an interdict to stop the collective job action. However, on 29 June, the court dismissed Glencore’s application to stop the strike saying it is not urgent.

The global agreement exists thanks to the commitment of all negotiating parties. It is the result of a collaborative negotiation process involving 11 national union federations for companies within the EDF Group and global union federations, IndustriALL Global Union and PSI. The 13 federations are signatories to the agreement which encompasses a number of significant and innovative commitments to social responsibility.

Thousands of workers protested against a three-month delay in announcing new minimum wages, demanding the mandatory national minimum wage schedules, which provide wage rates for key jobs within sectors and are published annually in the Lesotho Government Gazette in April, to be released.

IndustriALL Global Union, together with The Europe-Third World Centre (CETIM), submitted an official statement to the UN Human Rights Council (UN HRC) on violations of workers’ human rights by Glencore.