Portside

At the International Labour Conference, PSI has also underlined that corporates that made huge profits at the expense of workers and people’s rights are to be held accountable for the multi-layer crisis we are facing.

"Where human rights are the compass, we will be better placed to overcome this pandemic and build resilience for the future”. This includes the right to freedom of association, and to strike, without fear of retaliation.

Trade union activities are seen as suspicious by Turkish authorities. Unionists have been arrested and convicted for participation in unauthorized protests.

Delegates to the Duluth AFL-CIO Central Labor Body passed a resolution calling on the national AFL-CIO to release sealed documents on its history with AIFLD, the American Institute for Free Labor Development. In 1992, workers at a Ford assembly plant in Mexico were attacked after a strike, leaving 12 workers wounded and one dead. Questions remain that have not been answered about AIFLD's role in what happened.

Delegates to the Duluth AFL-CIO Central Labor Body passed a resolution calling on the national AFL-CIO to release sealed documents on its history with AIFLD, the American Institute for Free Labor Development. In 1992, workers at a Ford assembly plant in Mexico were attacked after a strike, leaving 12 workers wounded and one dead. Questions remain that have not been answered about AIFLD's role in what happened.

The systematic and deliberate withholding of wages of seafarers working on the high seas thousands of miles from home effectively amounts to a form of compulsion requiring workers to remain in abusive working and living conditions.

Women in migration are not ‘vulnerable,’ in need of ‘rescue’—they are advocates and agents of change. Current migration policies must be changed from being about ‘protecting women’ to ‘protecting women’s rights. The rights of capital to move freely across borders is unchallenged. There must be a commensurate expansion of the rights of migrant workers forced to cross borders.

The OECD should be in the business of helping people build democratic institutions that give them economic and political voice—guardians of equality and democracy. The alternative to addressing wage stagnation and the status of working people in the global economy is not more of the same elite dominated globalization. The alternative is an escalating crisis where the false promises of authoritarianism and racism threaten to overwhelm the democratic ideal.

One month after at least 28 workers lost their lives at a shipbreaking facility, little has changed. And until the government of Pakistan shows the political will to institute radical reforms to protect the lives and improve the wages of underpaid shipbreaking workers, little will change.

Downgrading workers and their jobs in the global supply chains must be stopped. Strong union organising, intelligent union strategies and collaborative working underpinned by robust international standards, is the way to do it.