Owen Tudor's Archive — Page 2

Owen Tudor

I’ve been the Head of the TUC’s European Union and International Relations Department since 2003 and have worked at the TUC since 1984. I’ve been a member of the Health and Safety Commission, the Civil Justice Council, the Social Security Advisory Committee and the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council and now I’m on the Wilton Park Advisory Council. I’m particularly interested in the trade union movements of Australia, Iran and Iraq, the Middle East and the USA, and I’m interested in migration, trade, and building trade union capacity. I’m the Secretary of TUC Aid, the TUC’s charitable union development arm and on the Robin Hood Tax campaign steering committee.

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http://www.tuc.org.uk/international

Owen Tudor
Get union leader out of Swazi jail: Take action today

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Jailed Swazi trade union leader Wonder Mkhonza

I wrote last week about the protests in Swaziland marking the 40th anniversary of Africa’s longest state of emergency. The Swazi security services sank to a new low, bursting in on a Catholic Church funeral because they suspected it was an illegal protest meeting and only leaving when the coffin actually arrived.

But they also arrested the organiser of one protest meeting, Wonder Mkhonza, Secretary General of the Swaziland Processing Allied Workers Union. His comrades are worried that he hasn’t been seen since he was detained on Friday. They say that the normal reason why lawyers and family members can’t visit people who’ve been seized is because they’re being tortured, and the police don’t want the evidence to be too obvious.

You can take action by signing an online petition to be sent to the Swazi Minister for Foreign Affairs, initiated by the National Union of Metalworkers in South Africa (NUMSA), Wonder’s sister union.

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Posted on April 17th, 2013 by Owen Tudor filed under: Global solidarity
Owen Tudor
Stop Thai company using law to silence workers’ rights advocate

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I’ve known Andy Hall, off and on, for over ten years. He’s a dedicated, committed activist putting his considerable skills to use on behalf of workers in some of the least propitious environments, especially Southern and South-Eastern Asia.

Next month, he’s due in court in Thailand charged with criminal defamation of the Natural Fruit Company, whose disgusting exploitation of Burmese refugee labour he exposed in a report for a Finnish labour rights NGO, Finnwatch.

Please take a moment to join the global e-action – promoted by LabourStart and global unions BWI and UNI – to persuade the company to drop the case, and instead, address the abuses his report reveals. And reflect, too, on the way so many corporations use their wealth and legal powers to try to stifle dissent rather than clean up their act, as Human Rights Watch have pointed out.

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Posted on April 13th, 2013 by Owen Tudor filed under: Global solidarity
Owen Tudor
Solidarity with Swaziland’s people and unions

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King Mswati III in a still from 2008 documentary “Without the King“, First Run Features

Today is the 40th anniversary of the declaration of a state of emergency in Swaziland, and it isn’t over yet. The last remaining feudal dictatorship in Africa continues to ban political parties, harrass trade unionists, and bans demonstrations, meetings and even religious ceremonies. Meanwhile the economy is falling apart, the country has the highest HIV/AIDS infection rate in the world, and food aid destined for the country’s poor – in a country where one in three are malnourished but sugar is one of the main exports – has been sold off by the regime to pay for its repulsive rule.

So, today, we express our solidarity with the unified Trades Union Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA), its leaders, unions and members, in their struggle for democracy, human rights and trade union freedoms. Over the coming year, we will be working with our sisters and brothers to demand the Commonwealth suspend Swaziland, insist that the regime allows free and fair elections by unbanning political parties, and keep up the pressure for ILO standards on freedom of association and collective bargaining to be observed.

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Posted on April 11th, 2013 by Owen Tudor filed under: Global solidarity
Owen Tudor
Undermining fundamental rights at work in Fiji

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The Fijian military regime has finally produced its draft constitution. It’s several months late. It’s not – as previously announced – going to be reviewed by a constituent assembly. And it’s not so much a statement of the fundamental rights and freedoms of the Fijian people as an extended essay about how those rights and freedoms will be taken away!

Although the draft promises freedom of association, freedom to bargain collectively, the right to a decent income, freedom of speech and religion, sub-sections of each clause set out – sometimes in comprehensive detail – how those freedoms and rights can be taken away whenever the government of the day feels like it.

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Posted on April 2nd, 2013 by Owen Tudor filed under: Global solidarity
Owen Tudor
UK bus drivers rally for respect: transatlantic solidarity

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Unite and Teamsters members take their message to the UK offices of National Express.

UK trade unionists are showing practical solidarity with their colleagues in Canada and the USA. It’s another example of multinational double standards, and the trade union response.

In the UK, National Express recognises Unite the Union and 94% of the workforce are covered by a collective bargaining agreement. But in the company’s North American subsidiaries, it’s a different story. The second-largest provider of school bus services in North America (known as ‘Durham’ in the US and ‘Stock Transportation’ in Canada) is resisting union recognition and only 32% of the workforce is covered by a union contract.

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Posted on March 27th, 2013 by Owen Tudor filed under: Global solidarity
Owen Tudor
Defend Iraq’s oil union leader

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Hassan Juma’a Awad is the leader of the workers’ union at the Southern Oil Company that produces most of Iraq’s oil. In February, oil workers struck and demonstrated over management failure to meet their demands, and over management corruption. Now Hassan faces jail because the Iraqi Government continues, ten years after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, to use his laws to repress trade unions.

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Posted on March 26th, 2013 by Owen Tudor filed under: Global solidarity
Owen Tudor
Great achievements on film: Spirit of ’45 & Made in Dagenham

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This weekend, I watched two films, one which I should have seen already, the other not yet on general release. Made in Dagenham, the first, was a story I knew vaguely, and to be honest, more from what I’d heard since the film came out than from when the actual events happened (honest, I was seven, and on the other side of London!) The other was Ken Loach’s new film, Spirit of ’45, which will be launched next weekend, and which deals with the legacy of the Attlee government.

In many ways they are very different films – one fictionalised, the other documentary – one full of people familiar as actors, the other with quite a few activists I know personally – and one made by the BBC, the other Channel 4! But they both describe enormous steps forward, whether towards equal pay for the women sewing machinists at Ford’s (actually only achieved in 1984 as a result of an ECJ judgment), and the other the 1945 Labour Government.

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Posted on March 11th, 2013 by Owen Tudor filed under: Union news