As I noted in my blog in July South Korea’s trade unions have been subject to a sustained attack . Under President Park, trade unionists are being sent to prison for carrying out normal trade union activities.KCTU President Han Sang-Gyun has been imprisoned for five years in the Seoul Detention Centre for helping to organise public protests. Han is…
Turkish President Erdogan’s purges of anyone he sees as a threat continue at a pace. He has recently fired a further 10,131 public employees, bringing the total number of public sector workers dismissed or suspended since the failed 15 July military coup to more than 100,000. The dismissals, across 35 different government ministries and agencies, were mainly…
The 23 August is the UN International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery – a day to remember the horrors of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Estimates vary but around 11 million people were taken from Africa and shipped across the Atlantic to the Americas. Estimates vary partly because of the length of time that…
The deficiencies in Turkey’s democracy cannot be remedied by armed force. The fact that the attempted coup by a section of Turkey’s armed forces failed is to be welcomed; what is not is the death of over 300 people in the conflict and the wounding of over 1,000. Turkey’s military must accept that they are…
Unfortunately South Korea’s appalling record on the rights of workers and trade unions is being added to. Han Sang-gyun, the President of Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) has been sentenced to 5 years imprisonment this week On 5 January, 2016, Han was indicted for charges related to the “obstruction of public duty”, “destruction of…
I had the good fortune to accompany the General Council’s delegation to Palestine and Israel at the beginning of the year. In little over three days we traveled around the West Bank whilst being based in East Jerusalem. We saw and meet many people, and I will long remember what I saw and heard in those…
Sadly and as I have repeatedly reported on in my blogs, Turkish workers, their unions and wider civil society are under constant attack from their ever autocratic government. The latest example of which is the Bill before the Turkish parliament on agency work. The Bill would give companies the right to use agency work in case…