In London contracting companies working for the major transport infrastructure project Crossrail have been caught blacklisting union members, effectively illegally denying them employment.

The IUF-affiliated Hotel Employees Federation of India (HEFOI) held a demonstration in Delhi as part of the "Destination Fiji" campaign to restore democracy and worker's rights.

Sugar workers in Karnataka and Maharashtra in India are holding rolling demonstrations to protest the announcement by the Fiji Sugar Corporation (FSC) that sugar mill engineers will be brought to Fiji from India to break the strike by the IUF-affiliated Fiji Sugar and General Workers’ Union (FSGWU).

The Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union [AMWU] has recently concluded a collective agreement with the transnational food company Heinz that includes a domestic violence clause.

It is based on the guidelines of the national center ACTU’s Work – Life Policy adopted in 2012, and provides for additional paid leave for absences related to family or domestic violence, flexible work arrangements, confidentiality, workplace safety strategies to ensure protection of employees, referral to appropriate domestic violence support services, adequate training of contact persons.

The German Food and Allied Workers Union NGG has long demanded a legal minimum wage of EUR 8.50 in its campaign to end wage dumping. Meat packing companies, in particular, exploit the absence of a legal minimum wage by hiring workers from eastern Europe through agencies which pay poverty wages. 

With support from the IUF and sugar unions around the world, workers and their union at the Timashevsky sugar factory in Timashevsk, Russia are fighting against the closure and sale of their factory and for wages owed them since May.

The IUF has welcomed a report in Bloomberg BusinessWeek which focuses on the appalling working conditions on palm oil plantations.

As part of the Regional Framework Agreement with Chiquita, the IUF and COLSIBA have signed a new appendix which commits all three to ”developing a joint understanding on sexual harassment, so that this kind of harassment will not be tolerated in the workplace”.

There is also a provision to work on “training strategies and sharing examples of good practice” and recognition that “every workplace must take necessary measures to ensure men and women workers have access to information about their rights in the workplace”.

UN special rapporteur, Olivier de Schutter, has called on the Malawian government to give “serious consideration ..to the intrinsic relationship between wages and the right to adequate food”  and to take steps to adapt the “absurdly low” national minimum wage to a living wage. He also called for collective bargaining to be applied in particular in tea, and for the right to organize to be respected.

Since the assassination of opposition MP Mohamed Brahmi at the end of July (after Chokri Belaïd, the second opposition politician to be killed this year) Tunisians have been protesting in the thousands, calling for the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly. The Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) and its 600,000 members are in the forefront of the protests.

Low wages are not the only problem in Fiji's sugar mills. At the end of July Samuela Sigatokacake was killed in a workplace accident at the Fiji Sugar Corporation (FSC) Lautoka mill.

The Ministry if Labour has now confirmed that, despite management threats and harassment, the majority of sugar mill workers have voted for strike action in support of demands for higher wages.

According to the IUF-affiliated Fiji National Union of Hospitality Catering and Tourism Industries Employees (NUHCTIE), Fiji's tourism sector employers are using the repressive political environment in the country to withdraw recognition and impose obstacles to collective bargaining. International hotel chains, such as Accor, are taking advantage of military dictatorship's repression of unions (click here for more) to increase precarious employment.

Workers in the hotel, restaurant and catering sector have gained a pay rise consistent with inflation rate as IUF-affiliated UTHGRA signed an agreement last July with the employers association in Argentina.