isocr's blog

Around the world, some governments and companies are taking advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to attack working people and their unions.

In Indonesia, the government has introduced an "Omnibus Bill on Job Creation" which, according to the unions, will reduce wages, remove entitlements and erode workers' rights in the country.

The government of President Joko Widodo is arguing that this bill rewrites 79 existing laws in order to allow greater foreign direct investment, support economic growth and create job opportunities for Indonesians.

In Jordan, the teachers' union had concerns about the way the government was handling the coronavirus crisis.

The government's response was to arrest leading members of the union, raid the union offices and shut the union down for the next two years.

Riot police were then deployed to break up peaceful demonstrations by teachers denouncing the crackdown on trade union rights.

If this story sounds familiar, it's because it has happened before.

Four women workers have been dismissed from SF Trade in Izmir, Turkey, for organizing a union at the leather and textile company.

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On 6 July, the Zimbabwean government arrested 13 nurses at the Harare hospital. They were protesting their deteriorating pay and working conditions. Those nurses have since been released on bail -- but have been dismissed from their jobs. With the inflation rate hovering around 1000%, the cost of living has risen so rapidly that public sector salaries are now almost worthless.

Ryanair is known to be hostile to trade unions and this has been proven once again in the Czech Republic.

A union for cabin crew workers on the airline was recently registered there and the company was duly informed of this.

The new union asked to meet with management.

But just one day after telling Ryanair that a union now existed, three union leaders -- Matteo Pizzolato, Andrea Schiraldi, and Izhar Arcos Poveda -- were sacked.

Erlan Baltabay, a leader of the Independent Oil and Energy Workers' Union in Kazakhstan, has been in prison since 16 October 2019.

The government of Kazakhstan has been the focus of a major international protest campaign which has the support of 5,252 trade unionists so far.

But the authorities are now attempting to fabricate another case against Erlan in order to keep him in jail, even though his first sentence was due to end next month.

We have received an urgent update from the Education International -- please read on
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Despite international solidarity, human and trade union rights abuses continue in the Philippines. The red-tagging and vilification campaign targeting members of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers is escalating, with support from the Department of Education of the Duterte regime.

The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) reports renewed attacks on its members.

Reminder: as good as German social and liberal capitalism is for workers in comparison to the rest of the world, it is still a capitalist state.

Workers have gone on strike demanding fair wages. But their employer is having none of it, and sacked 14 of those workers without warning. The employer then threatened to lay-off 800 more workers if the strike continues.

So far, that sounds like a lot of campaigns we've run in the past.

Except that this time, the workers are in Germany.

Germany has one of the oldest and strongest trade union movements in the world.

Suspended union president Sithar Chhim has been reinstated at her job following a strike by union members at the Naga World Hotel Casino in Phnom Penh launched on January 9.

On 20 August this year Rio Wijaya, a trade unionist from the Indonesian dockers' union, was brutally attacked by security guards at Hutchison Port's terminal in Jakarta.

Later, he was arrested and detained under false allegations of defaming and assaulting the security guards.

What happened to Rio is part and parcel of an increasingly anti-union climate at the biggest container port in Indonesia.