New ITUC Worldwide Report Reveals Catalogue of Murder, Violence and Intimidation Against Trade Union

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.union-network.org/uniflashes.nsf/By+Date/BFB84B8625AEC609C125735A0050F372?OpenDocument

New ITUC Worldwide Report Reveals Catalogue of Murder, Violence and Intimidation Against Trade Unionists

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An appalling total of 144 trade unionists were murdered for defending workers’ rights in 2006, while more than 800 suffered beatings or torture, according to the Annual Survey of Trade Union Rights Violations, published by the 168-million member International Trade Union Confederation. The 379-page report details nearly 5,000 arrests and more than 8,000 dismissals of workers due to their trade union activities. 484 new cases of trade unionists held in detention by governments are also documented in the report.

“Workers seeking to better their lives through trade union activities are facing rising levels of repression and intimidation in an increasing number of countries. Most shocking of all is the increase of some 25% in the number killed compared to the previous year”, said ITUC General Secretary Guy Ryder. “In many of the countries highlighted in the report, repression continued during 2007”, he added.

Colombia remained the most perilous place in the world for union activity, with 78 killings, almost all of which were carried out with impunity by paramilitary death squads linked to government officials or acting at the behest of employers. Of 1,165 murders documented between 1994 and 2006, only 56 perpetrators have been brought to trial, and a total of 14 have been sentenced. A wave of anti-union violence in the Philippines is also documented in the Survey, with 33 unionists and worker-rights supporters murdered, in some cases by killers acting in collusion with the military and the police. The report gives accounts of mass dismissals, beatings, detentions and threats against workers and their families used, sometimes routinely, in countries in each region of the world.

Dictatorships and authoritarian governments in Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, North Korea and several Gulf countries maintained their suppression of independent trade unions, with more than 100 Chinese workers detained in prisons and forced labour camps in appalling conditions. The Zimbabwean government continued its violent repression of the country’s trade union movement. Of 265 participants in a trade union protest who were arrested by the authorities, 15 including the top leaders of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions were severely beaten whilst in detention.

The Survey also reports growing government hostility to fundamental workers’ rights in some industrialised countries, in particular in Australia, where the government’s deceptively-titled “WorkChoices” legislation stripped workers of a raft of rights and benefits, and imposed heavy restrictions on union activity, with harsh penalties for individual workers and union officials. The government launched prosecutions against 107 construction workers, who faced heavy fines for taking industrial action in support of a health and safety representative who was dismissed. In the United States a National Labour Relations Board Ruling deprived millions of the right to organise, extending the definition of the term “supervisor”, while in Switzerland the government, in a move eventually defeated by the ITUC’s Swiss affiliate, tried to invalidate the authority of the ILO’s Committee on Freedom of Association with regard to Swiss labour laws.

The anti-union activities of a number of multinational companies, including repeat offenders such as Coca Cola subsidiaries and suppliers, Wal-Mart, Goodyear, Nestlé and Bouygues come under the spotlight. Heavy repression by suppliers to well-known global brand names, especially in the textiles and agriculture sectors, is also described. Several multinationals took advantage of an increasingly hostile environment in Poland to clamp down on workers’ rights and conditions.


FULL story at link.