China Labour Net

The “Liberal Party Concern Group on Foreign Domestic Helpers” and “Support Group for Hong Kong Employers with Foreign Domestic Helper” is organizing a protest today. They demand Hong Kong government allow employers to have the rights of immediate dismissal of migrant domestic workers. This violates the principle of equality and the spirit of the rule of law. They also commonly discriminate based on race and sex discrimination. They are ignoring the true cause of the problem and violating basic principles of labour law.

1200 workers from 101 factories signed an appeal calling for the full implementation of the social security fund. The appeal points out that what had happened to the Dongguan Yue Yuen workers’…

After three years of engagement at three Foxconn factories in China, the FLA has released its third and final verification assessment. Despite big promises to deliver labour rights improvements, the Fair Labor Association (FLA), tasked by Apple to remedy rights violations at its supplier Foxconn, has achieved little.

In FY2012, wages of national government employees were reduced by 7.8% in order to relocate fund to programs for reconstruction from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami disasters. The pay cut was extended to local government employees in FY2013 and salaries of teachers and other personnel working for public schools in Fukushima Prefecture were reduced by 4.44 to 7.77% in July 2013. "The workloads of teachers and other school personnel have increased since the disasters, and they have been striving in difficult situations. The government is indebted to them and ought to have increased allowances. Instead, the government reduced their salaries. It is totally unacceptable," said ABE Akihiko (photo), the secretary general of Koriyama Branch of Fukushima Teachers' Union in an interview conducted on December 12. 534 divisions of the union, including all the divisions of Koriyama Branch, adopted a resolution opposing to the pay cut. As a result, the government decided to discontinue it as of January 2014. (By YUMOTO Masanori)

300 laid-off steelworkers from the Wugang Iron and Steel factory in Henan province protested last week over lack of compensation following their dismissal. The workers are reported to have marched to the city government offices for help recovering the compensation. However when government officials did not come out to speak with them, the workers blocked a road.  The authorities then sent more than two hundred police to forcibly disperse the workers, resulting in several workers being injured.

HKCTU will organize a protest against the Korean Government to condemn their violation of the right to strike of Korean Railway Workers’ Union (KRWU) and to call for release of all the arrested strikers. The KRWU launched a general strike since December 9 against the move to privatize the state-run rail operator (Korea Railroad Corp). According to the statement of KRWU, their intention of the strike is to protect the public ownership of the Railway in Korea. However, their fight for justice was under violence attack by the Korean Government. On December 22, hundreds of riot police raided the KCTU's headquarters in Seoul injuring hundreds due to the use of pepper spray and violence. Since then, warrants for the arrest of 28 union officers have been issued based on criminal charges of ’obstruction of business’.

The company is called Yantai Dongxing Pipeline Co. Ltd. According to its website, it is a Sino-foreign joint venture.  According to the workers’ report, it manufactured spare parts for Honda and BMW.

The Chinese working class plays a Janus-like role in the political imaginary of neoliberalism. On the one hand, it’s imagined as the competitive victor of capitalist globalization, the conquering juggernaut whose rise spells defeat for the working classes of the rich world. What hope is there for the struggles of workers in Detroit or Rennes when the Sichuanese migrant is happy to work for a fraction of the price?

One person was killed and 20 others injured after police in Cambodia clashed with protesting garment workers, according to rights groups.

The Philippine Airlines, Inc. (PAL) and the Philippine Airlines Employees’ Association (PALEA) have finally settled a dispute over an outsourcing program implemented in September 2011.