14 January, 2003A woman worker on strike outside a General Electric plant near Louisville, Kentucky, was killed as she walked the picket line.

12 January, 2003Two-day walkout is a reaction against the company's unilateral increase in employee health-care costs.

7 January, 2003IMF French affiliate FGM-CGT asks its government to intervene on behalf of the AAM and REI.

7 January, 2003The AMWU has launched a campaign for women workers in the manufacturing industry.

6 January, 2003

6 January, 2003

19 December, 2002Workers in the majority of European countries abandoned their trade unions in the 1990s. For the Finnish Metalworkers' Union the situation has been the opposite. The deep recession and mass unemployment at the start of the decade was followed by a unique increase in members, especially among young metalworkers. Metal World visited the northern outpost of Oulu, Finland's Silicon Valley.

19 December, 2002Dutch electronics transnational to transfer optical storage production to Taiwan.

19 December, 2002Luiz Inácio da Silva, better known as Lula, has been elected president of Brazil. IMF secretariat member Toni Ferigo gives his personal account of the former leader of the IMF metal-worker affiliate CNM-CUT.

18 December, 2002The Costa Rican distributor of Mercedes-Benz fired workers who were trying to form a local of the union "ANTEP".