International solidarity: support sacked Indonesian workers

In May 2016, the agrofood conglomerate Gunung Sewu Group announced the immediate closure of its tapioca-based starch factory in Lampung, Indonesia, with no prior notice and without any negotiations with the union, SBMUJA. Four years on, Gunung Sewu still refuses to negotiate with the union to remedy these violations of fundamental rights: the withdrawal of union recognition and the workers' right to freedom of association which accompanied the overnight closure.

In response to the union’s ongoing campaign for negotiation and recognition of their rights, the company is now vindictively demanding that workers repay outstanding loans to the company, despite the fact that when the factory closed Umas Jaya Agrotama did not pay their final month’s salary! Many workers occasionally relied for survival on soft loans from the company due to the low wages.

Umas Jaya Agrotama is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Gunung Sewu Group's Great Giant Pineapple. Great Giant Pineapple is one of the world's largest pineapple producers, whose canned products are exported worldwide. Despite its international reputation and its claim to be working for "individual and collective empowerment" ("That's why we still have employees who have been with us for 20 and 30 years"), Gunung Sewu Group ruined the lives of hundreds of families in a rural community in Lampung when it ordered the immediate closure of the factory. The casual workers on precarious contracts exploited for years were abruptly terminated and tossed on the scrapheap.

With the support of the IUF, SBMUJA continues to fight for their rights. Click here to send a message to top management of the parent company insisting that it remedy these violations of fundamental rights by entering into good faith negotiations with the union.

Support Coca-Cola workers fighting for their rights

Coca-Cola continues to violate the fundamental rights of workers in Haiti, Indonesia, Ireland and the USA. In Haiti Coke's bottler La Brasserie de la Couronne continues to systematically deny workers their right to form and be represented by a union, SYTBRACOUR.

Haiti is a dangerous place to live and to work. Companies should, at a minimum, be alert to this situation and exercise maximum due diligence. In July 2019, a Coca-Cola truck driver was shot in his vehicle while at work. The Coca-Cola Company has made no meaningful independent investigation of this killing, choosing instead to rely on a version of events provided by their local bottler, which sought to shift blame onto the driver. Subsequent IUF investigations into this case have exonerated the driver and exposed a callous disregard for the truth on the part of the Coca-Cola bottler and The Coca-Cola Company.

In Indonesia Coca-Cola bottler Amatil pursues its long running attack on the rights of independent, democratic trade unions.

In Ireland, The Coca-Cola Company closed two of its directly owned concentrate plants, both of which were strongly unionized, and shifted production to the remaining plant in Ballina, where it refuses to engage in collective bargaining with the IUF-affiliated SIPTU.

In the USA the Company's bottler spent more than 330,000.00 US dollars hiring a union-busting consultant firm to persuade workers at its Greenfield bottling plant to not join the RWDSU/UFCW.

Please show your support for these workers and the fight for rights in the Coca-Cola system.

Click here to send a message to Coca-Cola's CEO and Chairman James Quincey, expressing your outrage over these ongoing human rights violations and demanding the Company act to remedy them. Your name will also be added to a petition that will be delivered to The Coca-Cola Company.

International solidarity - Cambodia

Union President suspended at Cambodia's giant Naga World Hotel Casino for defending her members' right to bargain their wages!

The 5-star Naga World Hotel Casino in Phnom Penh has 1,685 rooms and suites - but no room for the right of its thousands of employees to collectively negotiate their wages through collective bargaining - a universally-recognized human right.

For nearly two decades, the Labour Rights Supported Union of Khmer Employees of Naga Hotel (NHW) has struggled for rights and recognition against a hostile management. In May, 2019 the union launched a campaign to bargain wages for the first time and now faces a management backlash. Union president Chhim Sithar, who is also a member of the IUF Asia/Pacific Regional Youth Committee and IUF Women's Committee, was suspended on September 20 for allegedly breaching company rules after she assisted a union member being harassed by security over union materials in her bag.

On October 15-16, mass membership meetings of the union's more than 4,400 members unanimously confirmed their commitment to fighting Sithar's suspension and continuing their struggle for wage bargaining rights.

You can support their struggle - click here to send a message to Naga World corporate management demanding the company rescind the union leader's suspension and bargain wages in good faith with NHW!

Union members assaulted in Bangladesh

They were calling for an end to child labour.
After a long fight for legal collective bargaining status at global confectioner Perfetti Van Melle's Bangladesh factory, PVM Union leaders and members have been the target of threats and physical assault. Central to this fight against abusive labour practices was the PVM Union's call for an end to the exploitation of child labour supplied by Perfetti Van Melle's third party labour and services provider Rahat Corporation.

Click here to send a message to Perfetti Van Melle calling on the company to: remedy and compensate for the harm it has caused to child labourers exploited by Rahat Corporation; guarantee the safety of all union members; end its business relationship with Rahat Corporation immediately; and engage in good faith collective bargaining with the PVM Union with the purpose of ultimately negotiating a collective bargaining agreement with the union.

International solidarity. Freedom of association is a right, not a crime!

The People's Republic of China is now a one-party capitalist state ruled by an elite that still unashamedly calls itself the Communist Party.

The government continues its relentless repression of workers seeking to exercise their right to freedom of association. Over 40 workers and labour rights supporters are currently in criminal detention following efforts by workers to form a trade union at Jasic Technology in Shenzen last summer. In July 2018, workers attempting to form a union at Jasic were dismissed from their jobs, beaten by thugs and taken into criminal custody, with the active complicity of the state-controlled trade union organisation ACFTU.

The repression has widened steadily since then, with the arrest and 'disappearance' of worker activists and labour rights supporters in Shenzen and across China. Some of those detained have been denied legal assistance and contact with their families. Workers in China continue to take collective action in defence of their basic rights; strikes and work stoppages have continued in Shenzen and elsewhere in China, despite the crackdown on the Jasic workers.

The Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU) - the only independent trade union in China - continues to defend the rights of workers on the mainland despite the growing restrictions on democratic rights in Hong Kong. The HKCTU has launched an online campaign with LabourStart to pressure the government to release the detained workers and their supporters. Click here to support the campaign.