Australia Asia Worker Links

Friday, 19 March 2010 at 6:00pm at the State Library, Corner Swanston and Latrobe Streets, Melbourne

In the week after the global Israeli Apartheid Week Students for Palestine is organising a demonstration calling for the Australian government to break all ties with Apartheid Israel and for a Free Palestine.

Stop the settlements
End the siege
Tear down the wall

Following interviews on pesticide use with over 1,300 peasant farmers and agricultural workers from eight Asian countries, Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific has released its report Communities in Peril.

The study revealed that 66% of pesticide active ingredients used on vegetables, cotton, paddy rice, and other crops are highly hazardous. Exposure to these pesticides puts communities at high risk of developing severe permanent health problems.

Read more here, and read the report here.

Bangladesh unions and international labour rights organisations are calling for immediate action following a fatal fire on February 25 at the Garib & Garib Sweater Factory in Gazipur, Bangladesh which killed at least 21 workers and injured a further 50.

The fire started on the first floor of the seven story building. As the fire spread, workers became trapped on the floors above. It appears that emergency exits were blocked, the front gate was locked and fire extinguishing equipment was either missing or inappropriate. According to one survivor, rescue efforts were further hampered by the fact that firemen had to cut the window grills to access the building and rescue the trapped workers. Read the National Garment Workers Federation demands here, and find out more about the NGWF here.

The Bangladesh garment industry has a horrendous safety history. The Clean Clothes Campaign has highlighted 9 other similar cases with a total of 273 deaths since the year 2000.

Garment factory workers in the Shwe Pyi Thar Industrial Zone, north of Rangoon, downed tools on March 3 over low pay.

According to media reports thousands of workers in another Rangoon area, the Hlaing Tharyar Industrial Zone, and at the Sky clothing factory in the western part of Rangoon's Insein township, struck last month in support of their demands for better pay and working conditions. For more information click here.

IWD originated in the USA in 1908, when women garment workers held demonstrations protesting against their appalling and  dangerous working conditions. The exploitation continues as global capitalism increases its demands for ever lower wages and conditions for workers.

All unions must demand the right to work, the right to equal pay and full rights for women workers.

The Victorian Trades Hall Council is celebrating IWD on Friday 12 March at the VTHC with the launch of the Anna Stewart Memorial Project for Women Unionists DVD.

The Anna Stewart Memorial Project Dates for 2010 are:
May intake - Monday 3 May - Friday 14 May 2010
October intake - Monday 11 October - Friday 22 October 2010
More information on the Anna Stewart Memorial Project here.

Listen to 3CR radio coverage of International Women's Day here.

On February 25 the Nestle Ponda and Nestle Bicholim unions in Goa, India, held protest actions against trade union rights violations at Nestle Waters in Russia.

The unions, members of the IUF affiliated Federation of All India Nestle Employees, condemned union-busting at Nestle Domodedovo and demanded the reinstatement of the union vice-chair Sergei Strykov.

Last year Nestle unions in India won collective bargaining rights with the support of the IUF's global Nespresure campaign, and are now extending the same global solidarity to Nestle workers in Russia.

Six days earlier, on February  19, Nestle workers picketed the gates of the company's factory in Montevideo, Uruguay, to demand rights and recognition for Nestlé workers and their unions in Russia and Indonesia.

Find out more here

In 2004 Mulrunji Doomadgee was arrested by senior sergeant Chris Hurley for “disorderly conduct” and taken to a police cell on Palm Island, near Townsville. Within an hour, the Aboriginal man was dead. 

In 2006, Deputy State Coroner Christine Clements slammed the police’s investigation into the death as lacking "transparency, objectivity and independence". She found Hurley was responsible for Mulrunji’s death, but Hurley was later acquitted of manslaughter by an all-white Townsville jury in 2007.

In June last year, Townsville District Court Judge Bob Pack overturned the original finding of the state deputy coroner and ordered that the inquest into Mulrunji's death be reopened.

After the opening two days on Palm Island the inquest will move to the Supreme Court in Townsville from March 10th.

Background information can be found here and here.

 At the Australia Asia Worker Links Annual General Meeting held on 3 March in Melbourne it was decided that AAWL will consult with solidarity partners and affiliates on the feasibility of jointly organising a global labour movement meeting.

The purpose of such a meeting would be to:
Discuss a global labour movement charter of industrial and social demands;
Discuss strategies to coordinate international industrial action and solidarity to achieve workers' industrial and social demands.

We will publish more on this soon.

A new international coalition has announced the formation of a new campaign to demand that Samsung accept responsibility for the many deaths of its young workers from occupational cancer.

The new Coalition – the “Samsung Accountability Campaign” – includes Supporters for the Health and Rights of People in the Semiconductor industry (SHARPs), Korean Metal Workers' Union (KMWU), Asian Network for the Rights Of Occupational Accident Victims (ANROAV) and International Campaign for Responsible Technology (ICRT).

The Coalition also announced a new international petition campaign calling on Samsung to accept responsibility for the health of its workers. The petition is available here. And a video of some of the Samsung victims and their families is available here.

Union activist Seher Tümer, Branch Secretary of PSI affiliate SES (the trade union of public employees in health and social services), will spend International Women’s Day 2010 in prison.

Ms Tümer has now been detained for almost a year, with no clear charges being brought against her. PSI is convinced that her arrest is linked to her activities in the labour and women’s movements in Turkey, including participating in International Women’s Day activities last year.

PSI urgently calls on trade unions and concerned organisations to write letters of protest. For more information please click here.