The IUF together with the NGOs Misereor and FIAN is launching Harvesting Hunger - Plantation Workers and the Right to Food to mark World Food Day on October 16. The booklet highlights the massive violation of plantation workers' right to food resulting from their low wages and the routine exclusion of this scandalous situation from food security debates.

Thousands of European citizens took to the streets in dozens of European cities on October 11 to show their rejection of the proposed trade deals between the European Union and Canada (CETA) and the EU and the US (TTIP).

The IUF has called for urgent protective measures by the Colombian government following public threats by paramilitaries against trade union leaders it denounces as "guerillas in disguise". Threatening leaflets signed by a notorious paramilitary group have been distributed in the department of Magdelena, where 9 union leaders have been murdered so far this year.

The IUF, Public Services International (PSI) and Uni flagged the extreme dangers of the proposed Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) at the WTO Public Forum in Geneva on October 1. Over 100 participants - many of them trade delegates - took part in the meeting.

The Boston branch of IUF-affiliated UNITE HERE! has reached an agreement with Hyatt Hotels to compensate 98 Boston-area housekeepers who were fired five years ago and replaced by lower-paid outsourced workers.

Outsourced hotel housekeepers at the Park Hyatt Paris-Vendôme have won an important wage increase bringing pay into line with other luxury hotels following a four-day strike for better wages and working conditions begun on September 19.

A strategic meeting to advance the initiative took place in the Asia/Pacific region in Penang on September 12-13, with 47 participants from 13 unions including a number of housekeeper members. The meeting addressed specific health and safety issues linked to workloads, working conditions, employment status and gender.

Workers in the Citra Mina group of companies dismissed for forming a union brought a powerful message to the Philippines' annual Tuna Congress in General Santos City September 4-5: the tuna industry depends on workers as well as fish, workers have rights and Citra Mina is violating these rights.

The UK national center TUC adopted a resolution at its congress September 7-10 calling on the trade union movement to demand that the negotiations on the EU-US trade agreement TTIP be halted and that unions "adopt a clear position of outright opposition to TTIP, and the other trade agreements currently being negotiated."

The German Food Workers Union (NGG) have announced a successful conclusion to their fight for a first-ever collective agreement at Autogrill Germany, where workers in Bavaria and Thuringia have been holding strikes since April.