The case of cobalt

Colombia's state-owned oil company, Ecopetrol, has unfairly dismissed Enrique Rodríguez, Joaquín Padilla and Wilmer Hernández, leaders of Colombian oil workers’ union, USO, which is affiliated to IndustriALL Global Union. 

Members of IndustriALL Global Union affiliate Unifor formed a blockade outside General Motors’ (GM) headquarters in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada on 23 January 2019 to protest the company’s plan to shut the local assembly plant.

For the first time since the submission of a complaint to the International Labour Organization (ILO) in 2000 against violations of trade union rights, Belarusian authorities have registered an independent local union.

IndustriALL Global Union congratulates its affiliate E tū members’ successful campaign in New Zealand, achieving a new collective bargaining agreement that improves the workplace.

Japhet Moyo, secretary general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), was arrested at Harare airport yesterday morning and charged with subversion after a ZCTU call for a general strike against a dramatic fuel price hike.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) has called for a human-centred agenda for the future of work in a landmark report launched today at its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. 

Multinational companies must stop the war on wages and give workers secure jobs with decent salaries, says IndustriALL Global Union as a new study from Oxfam shows that 26 billionaires own as much as the poorest 50 per cent of the world’s population. 

The bitter irony of a T-shirt promoting gender justice being made by women on poverty wages reflects an ongoing disconnect between campaigners in the West, and the realities of global supply chains.

As the German car manufacturer consistently refuses to accord the same rights to its workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee, US, as it does in the rest of the world, IndustriALL Global Union is today suspending its long-standing global agreement with Volkswagen. 

Through a meeting with high-level officials on 16 January 2019 in Brussels, Belgium, IndustriALL Global Union, IndustriAll European Trade Union, International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) through its Pan-European European Regional Council (PERC) and European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) brought concerns of deteriorating environment for democracy and fundamental rights in Belarus to the European Union authorities.

Workers at İzocam, a Turkish insulation manufacturer and subsidiary of French multinational Saint-Gobain, take strike action after failing to agree on a collective contract.

Two IndustriALL affiliates will jointly negotiate a collective agreement at Volkswagen plants in Kaluga and Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, after putting aside their differences to hold a joint organizing campaign, allowing them to achieve the legal recognition threshold. Negotiations are scheduled to begin on 1 February.

Tunisian union federation the Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail (UGTT) is taking strike action in the civil service and public sector today after failing to agree a wage increase with the government.

The Belarusian Radio and Electronic Industry Workers’ Union (REP) was formed in November 1990, at a time when countries that had been part of the Soviet Union became independent.

Protesting workers at ATG Ceylon, a British-Sri Lankan manufacturer of industrial gloves, are demanding the reinstatement of five terminated union officers and members, and an end to union oppression at the company. 

Malaysia's government is in the process of reforming the country's Employment Act, and IndustriALL affiliates in the country are coming together to form a response and propose amendments.

A network meeting of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) electricity sector was held in Amman, Jordan, on 17-18 December 2018.

Global corporate power is beyond anything we have ever seen. Some are calling it the triumph of the multinational companies. The limits on the power and will of national governments to call corporations to account for their adverse impacts are clear for all to see. Global corporations are tearing up the social contract, the understanding that in order to operate in a society, companies abide by certain rules in the interests of their workers and the broader public.

The second meeting of the Asia-Pacific region’s trade unions of Japanese pharmaceuticals multinational, Takeda, met in Tokyo on 15 November 2018. IndustriALL Global Union affiliates from Japan, Indonesia, Korea and the Philippines constituted this meeting of the global network committee.