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.
25 October, 2011By a 61% vote on October15, members of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1005 in Hamilton, Ontario, ended U.S. Steel's chokehold on the livelihoods of 900 Canadian workers. Union members accepted a three-year labour agreement that ended a 49-week lockout at the steel mill.
25 October, 2011In a statement to the G20 leaders meeting in Cannes on November 3-4 the Global Unions assert that good jobs are the only successful recipe for recovery and sustainable growth, that employment creation must be placed at the centre of macro-economic policies and fiscal policy adjusted to support growth and employment creation.
30 January, 2012"After three years of continuous crisis conditions in global labour markets and against the prospect of a further deterioration of economic activity, there is a backlog of global unemployment of 200 million," says ILO in its annual report, "Global Employment Trends 2012: Preventing a deeper jobs crisis".
24 January, 2012Over 150,000 workers came out on the streets of Norway to protest against the imposition of a new EU directive on temporary agency workers. The directive can undermine collective agreements by permitting temporary contracts which currently have to be agreed with the unions.
24 January, 2012In January Fair Labor Association, a non-profit organization dedicated to ending sweatshop conditions in factories worldwide, announced Apple was admitted as a "Participating Company". That means that Apple promises to clean its supply chains from labour abuses during the coming two years. While welcoming this move GoodElectronics promises to watch closely whether the membership means Apple takes action on key problems.
24 January, 2012Italian metalworkers' unions Fim-Cisl and Fiom-Cgil say the official EU report on arms exports is flawed, incomplete and too late. They are among the promoters of the Arms Control Network Rete Italiana per il Disarmo, one of the signatories of a critical appeal against lax European arms export control.
9 February, 2012Finnish-German telecom equipment maker Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) said on February 7 a previously announced global restructuring plan would entail 2,900 job cuts in Germany and 1,200 in Finland.
9 February, 2012The Confederation of Japan Automobile Workers' Unions (JAW) meets with the independent union STUHM and the International Metalworkers' Federation in Mexico and reiterates its expectation for fair and free union elections at Honda Mexico consistent with ILO Conventions 87 and 98.
