Crackdown in South Korea as President Lee emphasises need for "labour market flexibility"
Submitted by Django on May 8 2009 16:32
Nineteen former workers at the Kor-Tek guitar and bass factory in Dungchon, Seoul, have been indicted on serious charges relating to the occupation of the plant late last year. The charges, alongside similar cases, have led to protests from unions which describe them as “excessive” and “preposterous”.
The original dispute at the plant related to management plans to close the factory and move production to China. Workers quickly staged a sit-in strike, but this was broken up by police after only four hours. The strikers were rounded up, and two local union leaders were given one year sentences, which were later commuted to suspended sentences.
Okna Rabien: Calluousness and indifference towards workers in the name of profit.
Submitted by akai on Apr 28 2009 11:46
Dozens of Phillipino workers face deportation after problems with their employers at Okna Rabien near Lodz.
At the end of February / beginning of March, 98 workers from the Phillipines were employed at Okna Rabien window and door factory in Rabien, near Lodz. The hiring of these workers were part of management's plan to take on 200 cheap workers to replace 249 of them recently at the end of last year from the company.
Electronics workers save their jobs in France
Submitted by jef costello on Apr 15 2009 14:30
After an occupation and strike lasting over six weeks workers at the FCI Microconnections in Mantes-la-Jolie have saved their jobs.
The strike began on February 24th with workers demanding assurances on their future. Management refusal to give information on production at an equivalent factory in Singapore and an announcement that there was 'overstaffing' led workers to believe that the company was planning to shut the factory down and shift production.
1980: Poland mass strikes - Henri Simon
Submitted by Ex-temp on Apr 3 2009 17:22
Henri Simon's account of the successful strike wave which swept Poland in the summer of 1980 when the government raised the price of meat.
A NEW WORLD: FROM MEAT PRICES TO DIRECT DEMOCRACY
July 1980: Spontaneous Strikes Run Rampant Everywhere 1
- 1. This article is an extract from Henri Simon's excellent book, Poland 1980-82
China in crisis: reason to panic?
Prol-Position's outline and analysis of the development and extent of the 2008-9 financial crisis's impact on China, and its implications for working people in the region and across the world.
Institutionalization from below: The unions and social movements - 1970s Italy
Submitted by Ex-temp on Mar 5 2009 18:14
The chapter of Robert Lumley's excellent book on the mass struggles in Italy of the 60s and 70s detailing how the unions re-gained control of the social movements and channelled them into "representative" politics.
States of Emergency
Cultures of Revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978
Robert Lumley
First published by Verso 1990
Chapter 17
Continued tension in Greece with strikes, riots and urban guerrillas
Submitted by taxikipali on Feb 20 2009 10:45
A second tense week of strikes and protest marches in Greece seeing hospital doctors, public transport and lorry drivers on strike, solidarity demonstrations with K. Kouneva erupt in riots, and a return of the spectre of urban guerrilla warfare.
As K. Kouneva is slowly recovering from the assassination attempt against her with sulphuric acid in December by corporate thugs, solidarity towards her and the cleaners subcontracted by OIKOMET and other companies to the civil service and state-owned enterprises is on the rise.
More job cuts announced, more to come
Submitted by Ed on Feb 20 2009 02:25
As the economic recession restates its international nature, further job losses are to be announced in Jamaica and Ireland, while Swedish unemployment rate rises 14% in one month and the International Labour Organisation predicts 7.2 million workers to be made redundant in Asia in 2009.
Cider maker Bulmers is to make 120 people redundant, seven of them in Northern Ireland. The company's plant in County Tipperary will lose 103 posts, while 11 jobs will be cut in Dublin. Aidan Murphy of parent company C&C, said the cuts, made through voluntary redundancies, was needed to "safeguard the viability of the company".
Galvanising the steel strike, 1980 - Solidarity
Submitted by Ex-temp on Feb 9 2009 19:37
An article from Solidarity on the British Steel Corporation strike of 1980, which was one of the early blows of the Thatcher government against workers' organisation in the UK.
The advance publicity given to the steel strike promised us yet another confrontation between the government and the trade unions. It was a confrontation which the unions were determined to avoid, and the government equally determined to provoke.
Mexico: Former Nokia workers protest dismissals and actions of Manpower and Adecco agencies
Submitted by akai on Feb 8 2009 09:41
On Feb. 4, a group of former employees of the Finland-based Nokia company protested outside offices of the federal labor board. The company has not paid the severance packages which are required by Mexican law to a group of 1000 workers dismissed by Nokia last November.
Nokia has two plants in Reynosa, in the northern Mexico maquiladora area. In recent years, Nokia reduced their workforce in the US and has been moving the work to Mexico. The Alliance Corridor Factory in the Ft. Worth area was formerly the largest mobile phone factory in the world.
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