On January 8, IUF affiliates across India, together with tens of millions of rural workers, farmers, students and youth, joined the national strike called by national trade union centers against the anti-labour, socially regressive and anti-democratic policies of the Narendra Modi government.

Suspended union president Sithar Chhim has been reinstated at her job following a strike by union members at the Naga World Hotel Casino in Phnom Penh launched on January 9.

Trade unions help make workplaces safer and healthier for all workers, women and men, but often women's occupational health and safety (OHS) is neglected, putting workers at risk of injury and ill-health. The IUF has now published a resource on integrating gender into workplace health and safety.

Following the death by electrocution of two young workers at a McDonald's outlet in Lima, Peru on December 15, the general manager of the company's franchises in the country has acknowledged that the beverage machine which killed the two was known to be faulty.

A recent study from Thomson Reuters provides new evidence of how coffee produced under brutally exploitative conditions on farms in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais is sold at a premium price by multinationals thanks to certification schemes like Rainforest Alliance.

Management at The Coca-Cola Company's operations in the Philippines is using "red-tagging"- the public smearing of unions as subversive organizations to invite and legitimate violence and repression - in order to undermine union organization and spread fear among workers. The threat of violence is real: at least 43 trade unionists have been murdered since Rodrigo Duterte took office in 2016. The violence is not 'collateral damage' spilling over from the government's 'war on drugs'; it is highly selective and precisely targeted.

Action by the IUF-affiliated Hind Khet Mazdoor Panchayat has secured jobs for 570 agricultural workers in 4 villages in the state of Bihar’s Arariya District under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), boosting income and livelihoods for some 1,850 people including family members.

Trade union organizations around the world, national and international, are taking action on December 10, International Human Rights Day, to highlight organized violence against trade unionists and rights defenders in the Philippines. According to the Philippines' Center for Trade Union and Human Rights, at least 43 trade union leaders have been assassinated since Rodrigo Duterte took office in June 2016.

Trade unions are key to making workplaces safer and healthier for all workers but often women's occupational health and safety (OHS) is not given enough attention.

Neither the European Commission nor EU member states have formally challenged the ban on glyphosate adopted by Austria's parliament in July this year, paving the way for it to go into effect on January 1. Supported by a cross-party coalition in parliament, civil society, environmentalists, small farmer organizations and trade unions, including the IUF-affiliated PRO-GE, Austria becomes the first EU country to ban the world's most widely used herbicide, best known as Monsanto's 'Roundup'.

Workers at Jindi Cheese in Victoria, owned by French-based dairy transnational Lactalis, have ended their 15-day strike by unanimously voting to approve a new 4-year collective agreement which brings substantial pay increases.

Thousands of airline catering workers demonstrated at 17 major airports across the United States on November 26 to demand a living wage and affordable health care; hundreds were arrested in the mass protests.

November 11-17 was a week of global action for fast food workers fighting for union rights and recognition, better pay and a safe workplace. In cities around the world unions and fast food workers held strikes, public protests and rallies and took action on the job to highlight their demands.

Women cheese packers at Lactalis-owned Jindi Cheese in Victoria, Australia are on strike for pay equality with men at other Lactalis sites. The women are members of the IUF-affiliated United Workers Union, which is campaigning to end pay discrimination at Lactalis.