Unions and social movements have much to learn from each other. If we can combine the best of both, we can transform the world.
Unions and movements differ in recruitment, funding, means used to mobilise, and ways of achieving their goals. Most social movements, the peace movement included, recruit people based on their agreement with the movement's goals. If a social movement can get one percent of the population to turn out to a demonstration -- half a million people in Britain,…
The Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU) is a 26,000 member-strong trade union based in the south of Iraq, which is also organising in the centre and north of Iraq. The Federation recently held a conference in Wasit province in the centre of Iraq on the oil law .
Activists have been meeting workers, management, tribal leaders, religious authorities, political party representatives, academics and oil policy experts to organise cross-constituency unified opposition to the oil law.…
No Sweat is an activist,campaigning organisation, fighting sweatshop bosses, in solidarity with workers, worldwide. Sweatshop labour is modern global capitalism stripped bare. From the small, back-street sweat-shop to some of the biggest corporations in the world - child labour, forced overtime, poverty wages, unsafe conditions, harassment of women workers and intimidation of trade unionists are commonplace.
No Sweat stands for workers' solidarity. We are for:
A living wage Safe…There were solidarity pickets outside Tesco stores up and down Britain on 4 August after two Polish agency workers were sacked. Zbyszek Bukala and Radek Sawicki were both dismissed from Greenhills Distribution Centre in Dublin by their respective employment agencies - they say at the behest of Tesco - after refusing to load boxes based on excessive quotas.
In a joint day of action, pickets took place in Dublin, Liverpool, Glasgow, Leeds, Nottingham, Oxford and London. The aim was to…
While May Day might have been a relatively muted post-Iraq war affair in much of northern Europe and the US, across Latin America hundreds of thousands took to the streets to highlight and take action on a wide range of issues. Protests also took place in Korea, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Japan, India and many other countries.
Traditional worker struggles - unemployment, pay, conditions and workplace control - featured strongly, along with the wider issues of global capitalism, poverty,…
London: After all the fuss beforehand, May Day in London was a fairly peaceable affair.
With 6,000 police, threats of tear gas and rubber bullets, and a stated “zero tolerance” approach, parts of central London still ground to a halt. The generally fluffy and colourful band of several thousand displayed creativity and humour in the face of repressive policing. Hundreds participated in a critical mass action in the financial district.
Seoul: About 20,000 workers took to the…
