Global Union News from IndustriALL

IndustriALL Global Union held its first ever automotive workshops in China last month. The auto sector meetings took place in Shanghai and Beijing from 24 to 26 November.

The network of trade unions at Dutch chemicals and paint company AkzoNobel conducted a two-day activity on 30 November and 1 December in São Paulo, Brazil, including a social dialogue session with company management.

On 10 December, Human Rights Day, IndustriALL Global Union affiliate, the Independent Trade Union of Coal Miners of Ukraine, mobilized its members across the country to demand unpaid wages, state support for coal mining enterprises, and safe working conditions.

IndustriALL Global Union general secretary, Jyrki Raina, urged the Thai government to improve workers rights and freedoms in a meeting with the Ministry of Labour in Bangkok on 14 December 2015. 

IndustriALL Global Union held its Executive Committee in Cambodia as a show of support of its affiliated unions in the country.

Cooperation and efforts of the Federation of Somali Trade Unions (FESTU), IndustriALL Global Union and its Norwegian affiliate Industri Energi brought a fantastic result in Somalia. The first union uniting petroleum and gas workers saw the light during the founding national congress on 13-14 December 2015.

Union representatives of workers at Europe’s biggest packaging company, Smurfit Kappa established a trade union alliance on 14 December.

Unite the Union, IndustriALL Global Union’s affiliate in the UK and Ireland, has called on the David Cameron government to “be part of an effective solution to the problem of unsafe and unsustainable shipbreaking, and urgently ratify the Hong Kong Convention”.

In this issue of Global Worker, you will see how our affiliates are fighting to make the shipbreaking industry sustainable in South Asia, while our South African union is adapting to the new reality of the global garment sector. All of this is part of our joint worldwide struggle for a better life for our workers.

Workers in this industry face dangerous and precarious working conditions, with very little training, safety equipment and medical services, and they receive poverty wages. IndustriALL Global Union is campaigning to support organizing at the South Asia yards and is pushing governments in countries with major shipping industries to take responsibility for workers’ safety.

The Paris Agreement, released on Saturday 12 December, has already been hailed by some as an historic achievement, and by others as a historic failure. These reactions do not help us to understand what it is, and what it is not.

The final version of the Paris Decision and Agreement was released Saturday 12 December at the end of COP21 – the twenty-first Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The outcome is weak and imperfect in several areas, but may be the best that could be politically achieved at this moment, and may nevertheless mark a turning point for the planet.

This holiday season, unions are again calling on one of the world’s largest jewellery retailers to clean up its supplier of diamonds. They are urging Signet to demand that multinational mining and metals giant Rio Tinto respect workers’ rights, indigenous peoples and the environment.

IndustriALL Global Union's director of sustainability, Brian Kohler, reports from the crucial climate summit taking place in Paris...

Unions in countries across the Caribbean are taking joint action today, urging their respective governments to address precarious work and contract labour which is undermining decent work and sustainable jobs in the region.