On October 19, the German Food Workers Union NGG organized a conference for IUF European meat affiliates at Rheda-Wiedenbrück, where Tönnies, Germany's largest meat processor is based. According to the NGG, 3500 of the 4000 employees in the production line at the local factory are employed under temporary work contracts.

Today police were deployed at the funeral hall where the family of Baek Nam-gi is attempting to hold a ceremony following his death on September 25 after 317 days in a coma.

IUF members at Ferrero's Nutella factory in Turkey have been on strike since 10 October. Management has responded to the strike by pressuring workers to resign. The 150 striking workers have vowed to continue until a new collective agreement is signed and their rights are protected.

Newly published leaked documents from the top secret Trade in Services (TISA) negotiations reveal the wide scope of the deregulatory agenda and attack on democratic governance at the heart of the negotiations.

The IUF-affiliate Unite Union and Restaurant Brands, which owns the rights to market KFC, Pizza Hut, Starbucks and Carl's Jr brands in New Zealand, have signed an agreement which fully guarantees workers' hours and shifts.

The right of workers to collectively withdraw their labour underpins the right to join a union and to collectively bargain the terms of employment, but the right to strike is under increasing attack, by governments and at international level through the employer offensive at the ILO. The full breadth of the growing assault on the right to strike is newly documented in a study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation published in the run-up to the October 7 World Day for Decent Work.

Another union activist has been murdered in the Philippines. Edilberto Miralles, a former taxi union president, was gunned down in a drive-by shooting on September 23 in front of the National Labor Relations Commission in Quezon City, where he was scheduled to attend a hearing. He is the seventh union and community activist to be murdered in September.

On World Tourism Day, workers are demanding that governments recognize the impact of climate change on tourism, and that protecting the rights and livelihoods of tourism workers be part of the response.

(NUHCTIE, Fiji)

On September 25, Korean farmer and rights activist Baek Nam-gi succumbed to injuries inflicted by police when massive force was used against a national demonstration in Seoul last November. After he was struck down by water cannon, police continued to blast him and demonstrators attempting to come to his assistance. Baek was taken, unconscious, to hospital where he remained in a coma for 317 days.

Over 40 members of IUF-affiliated trade unions representing Mondelez workers around the world marched on CEO Irene Rosenfeld's residence outside Chicago on September 21 to protest the company's systematic destruction of union employment. Most recently, the company has eliminated 600 union jobs at the Chicago Nabisco facility and announced the closure of its factory in Valladolid, Spain, with the loss of 220 jobs.

The IUF-affiliated Bangladesh Agricultural Farm Labour Federation (BAFLF) organized a mass rally and human chain in Gazipur near the capital Dhaka on September 21 to demand the arrest of the owner of the Tampaco Foils Factory and proper compensation to the families of those who perished in the September 10 explosion and fire.  At least 34 people are known to have perished in the explosion and blaze at the factory, which manufactured packaging materials for local and multinational companies including Nestlé and British American Tobacco (BAT).