Geneva - workers thrown on scrapheap while hotel gets overhaul

11.04.13 News

Workers at Hotel Capitole in Geneva went on strike today to protest against lay-offs during the temporary closure of the hotel for renovation. Meanwhile, their employer, Capitole Management SA, is in advanced talks with Accor, French transnational hotel operator, for a management contract at the re-opening.

Agency workers at Nestlé Perm get direct employment

10.04.13 News

160 union members - former agency workers - will soon be on the company's payroll at Nestlé confectionary in the Russian city of Perm following the signing of an agreement that ended the union campaign against the growing use of precarious employment at the factory.

Workers' rights in Thailand - the real cost of 'cheap fruit juice'

08.04.13 News

Cheap supermarket "own label" products often come at a high price. In Thailand that can include forced labour, illegally low wages and dangerous working conditions.

India: Alternate Hotel Workers’ Conference denounces ‘worst employers’

07.04.13 News

The IUF-affiliated Hotel Employees Federation of India (HEFOI) organized the Alternate Hotel Workers' Conference on April 3 to challenge the official Hotel Investors’ Conference held at Grand Hyatt Mumbai.

India: dairy workers face suspensions, wage cuts in fight for decent jobs

06.04.13 News

In a revengeful attack on 1,500 union members fighting for decent jobs for milk collection workers, the GSK Horlicks management slashed the wages of 500 workers by 18% and suspended 16 workers. Another 11 workers face false charges and possible suspension. This comes days after cutting the wages of 248 workers as punishment for joining union protest rallies.

India: IUF supports demand for investigation into working conditions at APPL/Tata

05.04.13 News

The IUF is supporting a complaint by tea workers about bad working conditions in Amalgamated Plantations Private Ltd (APPL) tea gardens in Assam. APPL is an associate company of Tata Global Beverages. The complaint, which documents abusive living and working conditions, child labour, interference with trade union rights and poor health and safety, has been made to the Compliance Officer of the International Finance Corporation, the lending arm of the World Bank, which has a 20% share in the APPL.

McDonald's fined USD 4 Milion in Brazil for workplace practices

05.04.13 News

McDonald's has been fined in Brazil for its fraudulent working time scheme, by which workers sat in the "break rooms", without being paid, until the employer determined that a sufficient number of customers were present for hours to be counted. With this scheme, says Samuel Da Silva Antunes, lawyer for the IUF-affiliated Contratuh, many workers failed to earn the national minimum wage.

Revenue down, rights abuses up - Mondelez CEO 2012 compensation leaps 40% to USD 28 million

04.04.13 News

New documents filed with the US regulatory authorities show a substantial increase in Mondelez CEO Irene Rosenfeld's total compensation for 2012 - a year marked by significant human rights violations "executional missteps" (the company's phrase) and falling revenue for the snacks maker.

Guestworkers strike at McDonald's USA

04.04.13 News

Young workers from Latin America and Asia working at McDonald's in the US state of Pennsylvania on J-1 "cultural exchange" visas stopped work on March 6 to protest extreme exploitation. Supported by the National Guestworker Alliance they have demonstrated outside McDonald's headquarters and are planning an international day of action for June 6.

Rights violations and lockout threat at Mondelez Pakistan

03.04.13 News

Management at Kraft Foods Pakistan (formerly Cadbury, now Mondelez-owned) has moved to lock out  union workers and attacked union leaders in retaliation for the union's defense of the rights of the factory's hundreds of contract workers. Mondelez makes Cadbury confectionery products in Pakistan with 53 permanent and over 350 contract workers, over 150 of whom are in 'core' manufacturing jobs.

Pakistan: management and police collude in new round of brutal repression at Pearl Continental Karachi Hotel

02.04.13 News

Workers at the upscale Pearl Continental hotel in Karachi, Pakistan believed their decade-long struggle for rights and recognition was ended when the courts ordered the reinstatement of dismissed union members and officers. Management, however, refuses to accept life with a union, and with the collusion of the police union members have been suspended, beaten and subject to mass arrests.

India: Struggle against union-busting at GSK Horlicks escalates

01.04.13 News

Three years after winning permanent jobs for 452 workers employed for more then a decade as casuals at the GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Horlicks factory in Nabha, northwest India, the union faces a vicious backlash from the company.

Study of workplace amputations confirms hazards of agency work

28.03.13 News

A recent study of workplace amputations in the US state of Illinois points to a "public health emergency" and puts agency work at the center of that emergency. The researchers looked at nearly 4,000 amputations - over three-quarters of them involving fingertips, but also arms and legs - and found that half of the employers with the highest number of amputations over a 7-year period were temp agencies.

Outsourced Netherlands Unilever workers in week 5 of industrial action

28.03.13 News

Striking Unilever workers seeking just compensation for their transfer to Sodexo made a dramatic appearance at the FNV Bondgenoten Congress in the Hague on March 21, calling on the company to meet their demands.

Hotel workers block Las Vegas Strip in fight for union contract

28.03.13 News

Over 2000 hotel workers and union leaders of Local 226, Las Vegas branch of the IUF-affiliate UNITE HERE, demonstrated on the famous Strip in front of the Cosmopolitan Hotel March 20 to highlight their demand for a collective agreement.

Pages

Subscribe to IUF UITA IUL RSS