During June this year, the whole world witnessed thousands of Turkish citizens holding peaceful demonstrations demanding a more free and democratic State. These legitimate expressions of democracy were brutally repressed by the police forces.

A press conference highlighting the struggles of Egyptian workers punished for exercising their rights took place at the Press Club in Cairo on 14 September 2013.

Members of the IUF-affiliated Comisiones Obreras organized a strike on September 16 in front of Hotel Mercure Plaza de España to protest mass layoffs in the housekeeping department.

With great sadness the IUF has learned of the death on September 16 of the general secretary of Ivory Coast's national trade union center Dignité, Basile Mahan Gahé. Dignité was founded in 1988 and led the fight for trade union independence and pluralism in Ivory Coast, for which the organization and its members often faced violent repression.

The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released a report critical of the USDA proposal to remove federal inspectors from the line at poultry processing plants and to double permissible line speeds to 175 birds per minute. GAO criticised the evaluation of the USDA pilot programme for using inaccurate data and failing to address the food safety risks. The USDA must also give serious attention to the OSH risks posed by increased line speeds before proceeding with its 'modernisation'programme.

At a ceremony on September 8, during the AFl-CIO Convention in Los Angeles, the International Domestic Workers’ Network, IDWN, received the 2013 Meany-Kirkland Human Rights Award. AFL-CIO president, Richard Trumka, paid a vibrant tribute to the IDWN for its inspiring and innovating efforts to get domestic workers organized and their rights recognized worldwide.

This coming November, the Swiss people will be called on to vote in a referendum aimed at enshrining fair remuneration in the Constitution.

Four months after their mass termination for joining a union at two warehouses operated for PepsiCo India by Radhakrishna Foodlands (RKFL) the majority of the 162 workers have been forced to return to work under conditions that strip them of their human rights.

An estimated one in six agency workers in the UK are paid up to GBP 135 weekly less than permanent workers performing the same job for the same company. Under the UK transposition of the EU Directive on temporary agency work, the loophole known as “Swedish derogation” allows employers to circumvent the equal pay requirement for agency workers after 12 weeks on the job by simply making them permanent employees of the ‘temporary’ agency.

Unions at three sugar mills in the state of Maharashtra held protest actions in response to the threat by the Fiji Sugar Corporation (FSC) to bring in workers from India to break the strike by the IUF-affiliated Fiji Sugar and General Workers' Union (FSGWU).

As of July, major suppliers to Mondelez must wait a staggering 120 days for payment. An August 15 article in Fortune (A snack maker's unsavory business practices, available online to subscribers), calls the move "a  stunning example of one-upmanship."