23 September, 2011Workers of the Zaporozhye Ferroalloy Plant in Eastern Ukraine picketed in front of the government office in Kiev protesting against job cuts at the plant. Their union works closely with local and national authorities to find a solution to the acute jobs crisis.
22 September, 2011On September 20 the Swedish metalworkers' union IF Metall filed a bankruptcy petition against the ailing Swedish automaker SAAB at the local district court. The decision was taken unanimously at a video conference meeting of the IF Metall office, the Trollhättan local and the SAAB section.
21 September, 2011ArcelorMittal has announced the idling of its 2nd blast furnace in Florange, France, from October 3, 2011 for an unspecified duration. The IMF affiliates in France, the FGMM-CFDT, FO Métaux, FGM-CGT, and CFE-CGC criticise the decision.
6 October, 2011Three days after attending the IMF workshop on union building and organizing two Thai metalworkers' unions agreed to forge closer cooperation and build a stronger metalworkers union movement in Thailand with an estimated hundred thousand membership.
4 October, 2011Union leaders in metalworkers' organizations in the Philippines met for a national workshop on September 28-29 in Manila to find pragmatic solutions, boost cooperation and share information.
13 September, 2011Organizing new workers is never easy but in the United States it's tougher than most places. Participants at an Alcoa Global Unions meeting got to experience first- hand the challenges facing the US unions. The attendees from unions in Australia, Canada, Iceland, Brazil, Suriname, and United Kingdom, took part in an organizing drive assisting the United Steelworkers (USW) as part of their activities. The target company Traco is a subsidiary of Alcoa and employs around 450 workers. Incidentally "Here we go again" was the title of union busting materials Alcoa used in one of its plants and seems apt to use during this organizing drive.
21 April, 2011April 12 marks the day that Swaziland declared a state of emergency in 1973, which is still ongoing 38 years later, making it one of the world's longest running state of emergencies. It has been used to suspend the human rights and political freedom of the Swazi people and includes a ban on political parties. April 12, 2011 was chosen by pro-democracy campaigners for mass protests. Yet the protests planned for three days from the April 12 faced brutal crackdown by Swaziland security forces on anti-government protestors.
21 April, 2011The international labour movement marked the 5th anniversary of the deaths of Mario Alberto Castillo Rodríguez and Héctor Álvarez Gómez with a march in Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico and the submission of new evidence to the ILO highlighting the issue of violence against members of the SNTMMSRM. The murders of Rodríguez and Gómez, named in the ILO complaint (no. 2478), remain unsolved.
20 April, 2011To assist the two unions organizing metalworkers in Angola and strengthen their closer cooperation and mutual support, the IMF held a workshop in Luanda in April 2011, that was attended by union leadership and shop stewards drawn from 12 companies in the metal, chemical, electricity, energy and light industries.
19 April, 2011During a mission to Conackry, Guinea early in April 2011, a representative of IMF Africa met with union leadership and shop stewards of Forum intersyndical des societes minieres et industrielles de Guinée (FISMIG) and visited some of the organized plants in order to better understand the labour movement in Guinea and challenges facing workers and the union.
