textiles

Rising food and consumer goods prices have led to a wave of strikes across Vietnam. The strike at Long An follows a strike and lockout of 17,000 workers in the same province last month.

The strike began when workers walked out of the Ching Luh factory in the southern Long An province on April 1, demanding a wage increase of 22%. A return to work negotiated by trade union officials after two days saw the majority of workers return to the factory, although the terms agreed to by the union amount to an increase of only 10%.

Workers agreed to give STEA and the government 48 hours before resuming the strike action. SMAWU President Alex Fakudze explained that workers suspended the strike last week hoping that STEA would be ready to negotiate a better deal, but failed to do so. The meeting held at Salesian sports ground was attended by about five hundred textile workers, mostly women.

Over 16,000, mostly female, workers have been on strike since March 3rd with workers participating in marches confronting police using clubs and teargas. At least a dozen have been reported injured. 93 percent voted for strike action, while six percent voted against and one abstained.

Employees became suspicious when upon returning from a Christmas break (which management had extended to 21 January without offering extra pay), they were locked out, told that the factory's doors had not been ordered open. Two days later, the workforce - comprising of at least 450, the majority of whom are indigenous women - learnt of their universal redundancies.

Khokon and Malek were apparently almost the last of the workforce on the premises at 8pm, as they were washing themselves before leaving. Five officials appeared and accused them of loitering with intent to rob the company. They then beat the workers severely:

Trouble in the garment industry has continued in Dhaka(see earlier report); yesterday (Tues) several thousand workers again fought cops in the Dhaka Export Processing Zone (DEPZ).

The action began when factory bosses locked out workers from SQ Sweaters Ltd in the Sheorapara area of the city; the lockout was in response to protests on the previous two nights when workers allegedly refused to work, seized management officials and held them hostage in the factory.

Workers’ representatives of the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in Mahalla el-Kubra, north of Cairo, met with the official government union and they agreed to grant the workers’ an additional 90 days pay, and negotiate over further increases.

Part of a wave of unrest which hit the USSR in the IPO, Lower Volga region, the Urals, Western Siberia, Ukraine and Belorussia, the strike was one of the most significant of the 1930s, winning reforms nationally as a result of the threat it posed to the Soviet authority.

This is a rough translation of one of two statements distributed by, the previously unknown, "7th December Movement - Workers for Change" in Ghazl el-Mahalla, 19th and 20th June 2007.

Thanh Nien Daily reported:

The workers at Top Royal Flash Ltd. said they had been forced to work overtime four or five days a week for the past four months. Though the company had deducted part of their salaries to pay social insurance for half a year, it did not send the amount to the authorities, according to the workers.

Aired June 1st 2007 and includes an interview with Hossam el-Hamalawy writer from the 3arabwy blog.