A delegation of trade unionists and workers dismissed from Yves Rocher’s Flormar factory in Turkey visited the ILO in Geneva and the company office in Paris.

Around fifty trade union leaders in the chemical industries from 11 countries in the Asia Pacific region came together to discuss current challenges in the rapidly-growing sectors and agreed on a road map.

Meeting in Jakarta, energetic pulp and paper trade union leaders from IndustriALL affiliates throughout the Asia-Pacific region celebrated their network’s growth in strength and size, took joint action in solidarity with sisters and brothers at Kimberly-Clark, and agreed to join the global campaign for health and safety rights in the sector.

Garment and textile union workers are not relenting on their demands for better wages and working conditions despite the use of excessive force by the Royal eSwatini Police which led to the arrest and injury of scores of workers.

Ilva Group workers - members of the IndustriALL affiliates Fim-Cisl, Fiom-Cgil and Uilm-Uil – voted by a very large majority of 93 per cent to approve the new agreement concluded on 6 September between the Ministry of Economic Development, trade unions and ArcelorMittal.

There remain 540 million tons of excess steel capacity globally, putting steelworkers’ jobs at risk from massive dumping during the next industry downturn.

For the first time since the military dictatorship of 1964-1985, Brazil is slipping back into a dark era of arbitrary rule amid attempts to abuse the legal system and protect the corrupt elites who were behind the parliamentary coup and impeachment of the legitimately elected president, Dilma Rousseff in 2016.

Young and unionized workers in Zimbabwe live in a country in a state of flux but where there are immense opportunities to bring back the power of the unions whose existence is threatened.

Building solidarity and joint action, unions from around the world affiliated to IndustriALL and UNI Global Union have formed a new alliance of workers at the multinational paper and packaging company WestRock.

The automotive sector in Kenya is experiencing a growth spurt, with global companies Isuzu, Nissan, Scania, Tata, Toyota, and Volkswagen expanding assembly lines. With fewer permanent jobs and more precarious work, unions say this growth is of little benefit to workers.

IndustriALL Global Union held a cement union workshop on 10-11 September in Udaipur, India. Trade union leaders from across the country discussed trade union strategies for the growing cement sector on the Indian subcontinent.

Thirty-five members of Boilermakers Local D239 in Three Forks, Montana, have been locked out of an Imerys talc plant since 2 August 2018, after rejecting the company’s contract proposal to slash benefits and undermine working conditions. Among other demands, the company wants to freeze defined benefit pensions, end health care benefits for future retirees and gut established seniority protections.

Union leaders representing nearly 50,000 ArcelorMittal workers in Kazakhstan and Ukraine recently met in Kiev to discuss common problems and joint solutions at the world’s largest steel producer.

Building strong unions requires checking the pulse of the union in governance, union structures, operational policies, sound administration, an active membership, and the payment of union dues.

An IndustriALL Global Union mission has visited affiliates in the Philippines as unions celebrate a maternity leave legal victory.

Representatives of international trade-union organizations attended the Labour 20 Summit (L20) in Mendoza, Argentina, on 4 and 5 September 2018. They called on the G20 to take steps to reduce inequalities, combat precarious work and ensure a fair transition to a low-carbon economy.

After 12 years of self-imposed exile in Canada, the leader of the Los Mineros union, Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, has finally returned to Mexico, where he will take on a new role as senator for the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) party led by President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador. 

Following a global trade union meeting the leading paper and graphical unions from around the world publically condemn the current unacceptable behaviour of Kimberly-Clark towards its workers worldwide.

Over 10,000 workers from five factories in Nhlangano took mass action to vent their anger over low wages last week. At Zheng Yong, workers were locked in the factory when the employers ran away.

Unions in Trinidad and Tobago are calling for a national shutdown this Friday against government plans to close the Petrotrin refinery. A government minister has warned that workers who take action could be fined or imprisoned.