trade unions
United States: Occupy wake-up call caps remarkable year
Trade unionists join Occupy Wall Street.
[For more on the #Occupy movement, click here.]
By Jane Slaughter
December 30, 2011 -- Labor Notes -- It’s been an exhilarating year. Crowds of people finally moved into resistance after decades of misrule.
The year began with Egypt, moved quickly to the snowy streets of Wisconsin, and re-erupted in August with Verizon workers out on strike and longshore unionists in Washington state dumping scab grain onto railroad tracks.
What no one could have predicted was that a relatively small number of young people at Occupy Wall Street would touch off a wave of imitators across the country, from Detroit to Abilene.
November’s electoral victory in Ohio, where Governor John Kasich’s anti-union bill went down to sound defeat, capped off a remarkable year for US workers.
China: Workers' action and collective awakening -- the 2010 auto workers' strike wave
[For more discussion on China's economic and political development, click HERE.]
By Wang Kan*, translated by Ralf Ruckus
Sozial Geschichte Online #6 (2011), posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- On May 17, 2010, a strike erupted at the Honda parts plant in Nanhai, a city located in the Chinese centre of the manufacturing industry in Guangdong province. More than 1800 workers participated, and the strike disrupted all of Honda’s spare parts production facilities in China and led to the paralysing of Honda’s car production in China. On May 28, the strike wave spread to a Hyundai carfactory and on May 29 to US-American Chrysler’s joint venture Jeep factory, both in Beijing. On June 18, Toyota’s second car plant in Tianjin had to close, due to a strike.
In July, the Chinese media were universally asked to restrict their coverage of the strikes, but the strikes in the auto industry still did not stop. Prior to July 22, at least two of Honda’s joint venture factories saw strikes. The organisers and most important participants of these strikes were migrant workers (nongmingong, peasant workers). During the strike wave they showed very strong collective consciousness and capacity for collective action.
National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa: COP17 and class struggle
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa convened its first International Seminar on Climate Change and Clas
United States: Occupy protesters shut down major West Coast ports; Shutdown tactic debated
Above: December 13, 2011 Democracy Now! report on the port shutdown. Click here for transcript.
For more on the #Occupy movement, click here.
December 13, 2011 -- Socialist Worker -- Ports up and down the US West Coast were shut down or disrupted December 12 in a day of demonstrations organised by the Occupy movement to protest police repression and union-busting.
The call for the December 12 West Coast port shutdown originated in Oakland, where the high point of a general strike call on November 2 -- one week after a savage police attack on the Occupy Oakland encampment -- was a 15,000-strong march to the Port of Oakland and a community picket that stopped work on the evening shift.
COSATU leader on South African and Israeli apartheid
Address by Zwelinzima Vavi, general secretary of
Eyewitness reports: The 99% occupy Wall Street; The Battle of Brooklyn Bridge; Unionists join in
Photo courtesy of Flickr.com/AdrianKinloch.
[For more on Occupy Wall Street, click HERE.]
By Pham Binh, New York City
October 5, 2011 – First appeared at the Indypendent, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal/Green Left Weekly with the author's permission -- The entrapment and arrest of 700 peaceful Occupy Wall Street (OWS) activists on the Brooklyn Bridge has created a huge wave of support for their movement. The number of daytime occupants in Liberty Plaza doubled or tripled from 100 the week prior to 200-300 this past Monday and Tuesday (October 3 and 4).
These people are the core who maintain the occupation of the plaza, making it possible for several hundreds and sometimes thousands to hold rallies in the late afternoon and participate in the open-mic speakouts and general assembly meetings in the evening.
Trade unions must join the fight against climate change
Ian Angus speaking at the Climate Change Social Change conference. Photo by Alex Bainbridge.
September 29, 2011 -- Climate and Capitalism, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- Ian Angus, editor of Climate and Capitalism, is currently in Australia to speak at the Climate Change Social Change conference in Melbourne, September 30 – October 3.
During his pre-conference speaking tour, he was invited to address several meetings of trade union members. The following is a lightly edited transcript of the opening comments he made at union meetings in Melbourne and Geelong.
[For more articles by Ian Angus, click HERE.]
* * *
Thank you for inviting me to speak today.
Should China create a law on workers' strikes?
State-backed "trade union" officers (in yellow caps) harrass striking workers at the Nanhai Honda plant in 2010.
July 20, 2011 -- China Labor News Translations, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- Even though strikes frequently occur across China, the country actually has no law regulating labour strikes. There is no law permitting strikes, but at the same time there is no law banning them.
Swaziland: Urgent action needed: Trade unionists arrested; COSATU condemns arrests
May 14, 2011 -- The Swaziland Democracy Campaign has just received urgent news that a group of leading trade unionists have been arrested by the security police in the Lubombo Region of Swaziland. The comrades were attending a meeting to discuss the establishment of a regional division of the Trade Union Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA) the new democratic trade union federation that was launched on May Day this year, and which brings together all the trade unions in Swaziland into a historic single organisation.
Those arrested include the following:
