May 9 Recall Walker unity rally. Photo: Wisconsin AFLCIO

I just had to post about this latest revelation from our colleagues in the US trade union movement. Scott Walker, the Republican Governor of Wisconsin, has started a firestorm by abolishing public sector workers’ collective bargaining rights. It has split the state and unions have run a fantastic campaign to recall him which we have covered before. Governor Walker claimed that he took this step to save the state money, a claim that unions always doubted. Now the truth is out, with a video of Governor Walker telling a billionaire funder that his plan is actually to turn Wisconsin into a ‘right-to-work’ (ie non-union) state.

Yup, he really is just out to get unions. Good luck to the Wisconsin AFLCIO in their efforts to make sure he fails.

Reza Shahabi, like Mansour and Ebrahim, comes from the Tehran bus workers’ union. He is currently serving a six-year jail sentence on vague charges, but Amnesty maintain he is in prison solely for his peaceful trade union activities. On top of this, Reza is in poor health and not receiving appropriate medical care.

Zabihollah, on the other hand, is a steelworker who was arrested on or about 24 April as he left the Moharakeh Steel Plant in Estahan. His whereabouts are unclear and his family and lawyer have not been granted access to him.

These are not the only trade unionists in jail in Iran, where the regime is backing employers who don’t want independent trade unionists interfering in their exploitation of the workforce – it’s got little to do with religion. So as well as protesting about individual cases, the TUC is working with the International Trade Union Confederaton to raise Iran’s failure to comply with ILO core conventions on freedom of association at this summer’s International Labour Conference.

But in the meantime, please write to the Iranian authorities to help our fellow trade unionists in Iran. Because stronger trade unionists anywhere mean stronger trade unionists everywhere.

Marchers at London's May Day march, 1 May 2012

The ITUC chose the eve of May Day -  international workers’ day – to launch its new enquiry into the impact of the global financial crisis on workers’ rights around the world. Former head of the South African trade union movement Jay Naidoo, former Portuguese Labour Minister and ETUC Deputy General Secretary Maria Helena Andre and the former Prime Minister of Denmark Poul Nyrup Rasmussen will be on the enquiry panel. They will investigate at first hand how the crisis has impacted on workers and their unions in Bulgaria, Greece, Indonesia, Mexico, Portugal and Romania, where the right-wing Government was toppled last week because of its economic and social policies.

This enquiry is part of the growing resistance of workers and unions around the world to austerity policies which often target not only public services and public spending, but workers’  wages (pay and social benefits).

The ITUC argues that elites are using the excuse of the global financial crisis to further erode workers’ living standards and job security, despite the fact that growing inequality between the rich and the rest of us caused the crisis in the first place. 60% of workplace reforms by governments have taken away workers’ rights. 15 out of 25 countries studied by the ITUC have relaxed collective dismissal rights for economic reasons. 65% of workplace reforms have taken away rights from temporary workers.

But as May Day - and other recent developments like the first round of the French Presidential election – have shown, workers are beginning to fight back all over the world. Over 100,000 members of metalworker unions marched in Mexico. They demonstrated against precarious jobs, subcontracting and deunionisation in Istanbul. Public sector unions demonstrated in Kathmandhu in Nepal at Martyrs’ Gate, as well as in Indonesia. And trade unions demonstrated across Africa in one of the most powerful shows of strength for decades, in countries like Cameroon, Mali and Tunisia. There were marches across Europe, in Athens, Lille, London, Madrid, Paris, Turin and elsewhere. In Spanish cities like Barcelona, young people were key parts of the marches; as they were on the New York Occupy May Day march (and a big hello to Occupy LSX who finally did what it says on the tin!)

Statements were issued by the global unions about how to create a sustainable recovery, and the ETUC called for social justice and jobs for the 5.5 million unemployed young people in Europe. Leader of the US trade union movement Rich Trumka said: “America’s working families will continue to stand together in their fight to reestablish fairness and opportunity so everyone can have access to their own American dream.” There will be many more demonstrations this weekend, including in the UK (the Tyne and Wear May Day March and Rally is on Saturday, as is one on the other side of the world, in Melbourne, Australia), and there are many other events and initiatives – like the publication May Day: A Graphic History of Protest.

You can find much more news about May Day protests on 1 May and the days to follow at LabourStart.

Hasan’s release followed a two-week long online campaign by LabourStart which generated nearly 8,000 messages to the Serbian government. Jyrki Raina, General Secretary of the International Metalworkers’ Federation, said:

“Worldwide mobilisation, including the immediate reaction of LabourStart activists and unions pressing the Serbian government through the EU, embassies and other diplomatic channels has clearly been decisive in winning Hasan’s release.”

Here’s a great video from the US Transport Workers Union, part of their campaign against worse terms and conditions at American Airlines and American Eagle, whose parent company has filed for bankruptcy. It contrasts the commitment that workers give to their job with the rewards they – and management – receive, emphasising a dignity of labour/respect at work agenda. TUC surveys over the years find that – although we all grumble about our jobs and our employers – most workers are proud of the work they do, and want their employer to demonstrate the same about them. So, does this video work? Is it the sort of thing that UK unions should be doing?

Reza Shahabi

UPDATE: 19 April – Ebrahim Madadi (mentioned below) has been released at the end of his jail term.

Reza Shahabi, Treasurer of the Vahed bus workers’ syndicate (union) in Tehran, and a bus worker himself, has been jailed for six years after nearly two years of harassment and imprisonment by the authorities in Iran. As usual, the sentence was handed down not by the usual criminal or civil courts, but by by Judge Salavati in Branch 15 of Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court, which is not bound by the usual rules of evidence or proof. This sentence includes a year’s prison sentence on charges of “propaganda activities against the system” and five years in prison on charges of “conspiracy with the intention of acting against national security”.

The true nature of the ‘offence’ Reza has been punished for is revelead by the fact that in addition to his prison term, Reza has been prohibited from all union activities for a further five years. The Iranian regime is hell-bent on ensuring that workers have no independent voice, despite the regime’s claim to uphold the workers’ rights laid down by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Global unions will be pressing for the ILO Committee on the Application of Standards to hear a case against the Iranian government over freedom of association this June.

The Vahed bus workers’ syndicate is affiliated to the global International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF). Its General Secretary, David Cockroft, said: “This sentence is outrageous. A man whose health is failing is being condemned to years of imprisonment on farcical charges. The Iranian government has stooped to a new low. Surely there are still some within it who can reverse this horrendous persecution.”

Other Vahed union leaders persecuted by the Iranian authorities include Mansour Osanloo, who was finally released on bail last summer, and Ebrahim Madadi, who remains in prison.

The deregistration, which will hamper the newly merged TUCOSWA’s attempts to organise, is a flagrant breach of ILO Convention 87 on freedom of association – and could hit the Swazi employers’ federation too. The TUC and ITUC will be raising the issue at the ILO conference this June, and adding it to the lengthy charge sheet against the last feudal monarchy in Africa.

Hasan Abazi

Hasan Abazi, 65-year old President of the Kosovan SPMK industrial union was seized by the Serbian authorities on 28 March as he travelled to an international union meeting in Croatia. Held for 50 hours in solitary confinement, without access to a lawyer, he has now been returned to jail for a further 30 days. It is believed by Amnesty International that his arrest – on charges dating back to 1995 - was in retaliation for the arrest of four Serbian officials in Kosovo.

LabourStart has initiated an e-action you can take to convey your concerns, as requested by the International Metalworkers Federation to which SPMK is affiliated, and the TUC has protested to the Serbian Embassy in London.

There are several worrying features of this case – the retaliatory nature of the arrest, the worrying solitary confinement and denial of access – as well as the simple abuse of freedom of association involved. But there may be a way we can influence the Serbian authorities, who are keen to join the European Union: we can make this case a test of the EU’s commitment to free trade unionism, by raising it with MEPs and the European Commission. The TUC has, accordingly, raised it with Labour MEP Richard Howitt and with British Commissioner Baroness Ashton (who just happens to be responsible for the EU’s external relations), as well as with the ETUC.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), the peak body and sister organisation of the TUC, is about to change its Secretary, with Dave Oliver taking over from Jeff Lawrence (former nurses’ union leader Ged Kearney stays as President.) He was profiled in Melbourne-based The Age newspaper today.

Dave Oliver is currently head of the manufacturing union AMWU, and comes from the left of the movement like Jeff – who came from the services sector union United Voice. And it may presage a shift of emphasis to concentrate on manufacturing which has been hit by the strength of the Australian dollar while the rest of the economy has boomed.

But the main reason given by union leaders for the change is the need to revitalise the movement and project a younger, more active image, as Labor fights for its life in the next General Election. The ALP’s rising state Labor star, Premier Anna Bligh, just saw a Liberal landslide almost wipe the ALP in her state of Queensland, following the recent, not-quite-so-bad-but-still-bad-enough loss in New South Wales.

Fiji languishes under a brutal military dictatorship, with meetings effectively banned, collective bargaining and union organisation illegal, and civil society leaders (especially trade unionists) regularly arrested, harassed and beaten. But the democracy the dictatorship replaced wasn’t worthy of the name, civil society is riven by divisions between the descendants of Indian contract workers and ethnic Fijians, and we’ve already got bodies like the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth (Fiji is suspended from both), the EU and the ILO to take action. What more can we do?

The consensus of opinion so far is that we need to do more to spread awareness about what’s going on in Fiji, through the media, websites and solidarity from trade unions in France, India, Indonesia and Japan (on top of the work global union bodies in sugar, hotels and transport, the ITUC and the Australian, British, New Zealand and US trade union movements are doing).

We need to concentrate our work on the meetings ban which – in a country where workplaces and workforces are almost all small, and people need to organise outside the workplace to make internal action worthwhile – is the death knell for trade unionism and other bodies like the Methodist Church; as well as on the restrictions on collective bargaining and representation which employers are taking advantage of. But to do this we need to make sure the voice of ordinary Fijians is heard, and the impact on jobs and wages is put centre stage.

So we’re designing a website to raise the profile of the abuses conducted by the Fijian military, and targeting the impact that the dictatorship has on ordinary working Fijians. The future of Fiji must be decided by Fijians themselves, but trade union global solidarity can lend them a hand in turning what they want into reality.