17 April, 2012Pragatisheel Cement Shramik Sangh (PCSS), an ICEM affiliate, conducted a two-week tour of activities in Switzerland in April, educating trade union colleagues on the grave violations of work rights abuses by Holcim Cement of contract workers in India's Chhattisgarh region.
16 April, 2012These contracts deny workers the internationally recognised rights to the freedom of association and collective bargaining, impose long working hours, low pay, poor working conditions, abusive treatment and little access to health and maternity benefits and pensions because they are not permanent employment contracts.
17 February, 2012IG Metall puts rights of precarious workers at centre of its collective bargaining this year, along with demands for a 6.5 per cent wage increase in the metal and electrical engineering sector and permanent contracts for young people completing apprenticeships.
16 February, 2012IMF U.S. affiliate United Auto Workers (UAW) announced that General Motors Corp. (GM) workers will receive approximately US$ 7,000 in profit-sharing based on results of 2011 earnings. European Metalworkers Federation (EMF) insists GM should develop a long term sustainable business plan for the GM owned Opel/Vauxhall in Europe.
14 February, 2012In a trial in Turin Eternit owners, Stephan Schmidheiny and Baron Louis de Cartier de Marchienne, are found guilty in thousands of deaths and are sentenced to 16 years of jail. The case is unprecedented and can be exemplary for other producers and distributors of deadly asbestos worldwide.
27 March, 2012General Motors workers in Shushary (Saint-Petersburg area, Russia) secured a wage raise of 10.5 per cent starting from April 1, partly meeting the demands of the Interregional Trade Union of Autoworkers (ITUA).
22 March, 2012Six Zimbabwean activists were found guilty of charges of inciting public violence on March 19, causing uproar among labour and civil society organizations. Regional and international calls for the charges to be dropped swiftly shifted focus to put pressure on key government officials through a sms campaign to ensure that the lightest possible sentence would be handed down.
22 March, 2012The network Steering Group met and approved a work plan in Belgium shortly after the closure of Caterpillar's EMD plant in Canada.
2 April, 2012Apple finally admits to issues in it's supply chain, with the release of the Fair Labour Association (FLA) report on March 29, but identifying the problem is only a first step, Apple must rely on workers themselves to monitor the labour conditions in the production of its products, not on auditors alone.
1 April, 2012Over ten million workers supported a general national strike in Spain on March 29 called by two major union federations CC.OO and UGT.
