International unions

Trade union struggles outside the UK

Starbucks union drive accelerates

Across the USA, the unionisation of Starbucks continues at lightning speed, with at least 129 locations currently in the process. It’s had a knock on effect in other coffee chains, including independent chains in Detroit, Michigan and Wisconsin. Starbucks has hit back with bullying, harassment, even sackings of union organizers. Seven employees involved in a union drive in Memphis, Tennessee, were fired five weeks ago, after launching their union campaign on Martin Luther King Jr Day. “We were fired over mundane things. The things we were fired for are things that nobody has been fired over in...

ITUC: kick Putin's union out

"Peace Labour Putin" - Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia banner According to its website, the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR) is “a national trade union centre independent of the state, political and business structures.” Founded in 1990, it is the successor to the state-controlled labour fronts of the Soviet era, and it claims to be the largest national trade union centre in the country. It boasts of having some twenty million members -- “which is about 95 percent of all organised workers in Russia,” they say. They are one of two national trade union...

For Lithuania's workers, enough is finally enough

When the Soviet Union came crashing down three decades ago, among the very first republics to declare independence were the three Baltic states - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. This made sense as they had been among the last to be brought under Soviet rule, back in the 1940s. There were people living in those countries who remembered independence in their lifetimes. What many of us hoped for back then was a quick revival of the political parties that had been crushed under Communist Party rule, and the emergence of strong, independent trade unions to replace the state-controlled labour fronts...

Sudan in revolt

Mohamed Nagy Alassam is a Khartoum-based activist with the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors (CSSD) and the union coalition it is part of, the Sudanese Professionals’ Association (SPA). He spoke to Sacha Ismail on 10 February. There were more mass demonstrations in Sudan the day before we went to press, 21 February. The SPA was established in July 2018, involving doctors, lawyers, teachers, university professors, vets and engineers. It was central in the Sudanese revolution which began at the end of 2018; it was the organisation that announced the Charter of Freedom and Change, which...

Support striking cleaning workers in Kurdistan!

We share below an appeal from comrades in the Worker-Communist Party of Kurdistan, who are supporting a strike of cleaning workers. Workers' Liberty sends our support and solidarity to the strike, and encourages activists to email the Kurdistan Regional Government expressing support for the strikers. The WCPK's appeal can also be downloaded as a PDF, here. Cleaning workers in the Kurdistan Region have been protesting for six days over a salary delay in Kakamand's area (in Sulaymaniyah), and despite the fact that they have been without wages for 65 days. Neither the Kurdistan Regional...

Cambodia: Union busting sparks world-wide outrage

Chutzpah. There is no other word to describe the actions of the Naga World company, which runs hotel casinos in Cambodia. In a recent statement, the company boasted of its pro-union credentials: “Because of the strong dedication towards protection of interests and rights of the staff’s welfare, the company has encouraged and emphasised to the staff to unionise since the company’s inception in 1995”. That’s great — not only allowing workers to join unions but actually encouraging them to do so. Except that none of that is true. Naga World has a long history of union-busting going back at least...

Has someone kidnapped Eric Lee?

I read last week’s “Eric Lee” column and was increasingly alarmed. Eric Lee has clearly been seized by a gang of ultra-left maniacs, or maybe some stone throwing anarchists, and they’ve taken over producing his column. Because the real Eric Lee could never have written, “No one is working harder to get Trump back into the White House than the leadership of the Democrats.” And that, “the ‘moderate’ Joe Biden was supposed to … bridge the partisan divide… Things didn’t work out that way.” And last week “Eric” even noted, “Biden’s failure to enact one bit of legislation that unions desperately...

Health workers win in Berlin

Healthcare workers in Berlin have achieved gains through a month-long strike. Workers at the Charité (university-linked) and Vivantes (Berlin-local-state-owned) hospitals, organised in the trade union Verdi and the Berlin Hospital Movement, sustained 35 days of action for safe staffing levels and levelling up of conditions and pay between directly employed and subsidiary contract workers. In October agreements on safe working ratios were reached at both hospitals, including compensatory payments aimed at enforcing levels. It is estimated that this will mean an additional 1,000 nursing staff...

Support Palestinian food workers' fight for union recognition

Workers at the Ta'aman food factory, located in the Mishor Adumim industrial park in Ma'ale Adumim, a Jewish settlement in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, are organising to demand improved conditions, better pensions, and recognition of their union. They struck from 5-12 December, after the employer refused to recognise their union and negotiate over their demands. Workers began organising through the Workers' Advice Centre-Ma'an (WAC-Ma'an) in October. WAC-Ma'an is a radical workers' centre which organises in both Israel and Palestine, organising both Jewish and Arab workers, and often...

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