China Labour Net

Scotland breathed a collective sigh of relief at the eleventh-hour reprieve for the Grangemouth petrochemical plant, Scotland's biggest industrial site. 800 workers had faced unemployment 48 hours earlier, when its owner INEOS had announced its closure and liquidation. Another 550 oil refinery workers and 2,000 contract workers faced the same fate – with all the devastation, poverty and social destitution such shameless economic vandalism threatened.

Hong Kong faces severe lack of affordable housing. The middle-class cannot afford to buy; the grassroots must wait extensively in the increasingly long queue for public housing. Everyone is forced to pay exorbitant rent meanwhile. The problem lies in the government’s unequal distribution of land and housing resources in favor of the real estate lobby. It tries to manipulate the situation by divide and rule, pitting one distressed constituency in Hong Kong in need of housing against another and create unnecessary social divisions, like persuading urban population in need of housing to endorse the demolition of rural homes in order to build their own. The government claims the “shortage of land” to justify large-scale development projects and the real culprit is the real estate hegemony. But unfortunately, some people disregard this core problem behind the government's “blind rush to grab land,” take the government’s claim on face value, and attribute the problem to “too many new immigrants” coming in. They displace the blame onto new immigrants with One Way Permits through a malicious analogy: turning the “reduce waste at the source” slogan into their “reduce population at the source” slogan, implicitly comparing immigrants to waste matter. This imagined population problem is a way to divert attention from and downplay the problem of uneven distribution of land and housing resources. By so doing, they become de facto accomplices of the real estate hegemony and also reinforce the prejudice against new immigrants, aggravating social schism in Hong Kong.

Some 300 striking delivery workers at the Coca-Cola factory in Sha Tin went back to work yesterday after the company's management agreed to their demands following hours of talks about work conditions overnight.

To Mr. Xu Qin, Mayor of Shenzhen City, Mrs. Luoli, President of the municipal federation in Shenzhen We are writing to ask the Mayor of Shenzhen City and the municipal federation in Shenzhen…

Social movements and civil society organizations from different parts of the world have met on 3 -4 September 2013 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on the eve of the G20 Summit and in a context of the threat by the United States of America (USA) to attack Syria. With the participation of more than 30 international delegates of world social movements, our G20 Counter-Summit, was hosted by the Post-Globalization Initiative.

On the 3rd and 4th of September a large scale international Counter Summit, intended as an alternative to the September Summit of the G20, will be held in St Petersburg, Russia. It will take place at the Международный Деловой Центр, nab.reki Smolenki 2. Organized by the Post Globalization Initiative, the Summit’s ambition is to develop new principles of economic and social policy which are not based on the Washington Consensus. As part of the Summit, world renowned experts, economists, politicians, and social scientists from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas will come together for panel discussions, seminars, and public lectures.

June 28 the parents of MORI Mina, who killed herself due to overwork at Watami, visited Liberal Democratic Party headquarters to ask party leaders why it was sending a person who intentionally killed their daughter to the parliament. WATANABE Miki, ex-president of the Watami fast-food restaurant chain, is going to stand for the upcoming upper house election from the LDP in the proportional representation constituency. Mori’s father, Takeshi, strongly criticized Mori at the press conference. “Watami’s motto is ‘Work 24 hours a day 365 days a year till your die’. So I can say the company deliberately killed my daughter. They employed her with the intention to kill her and made her work for low wages and said they were not accountable for her death. I should call him a hardened criminal.” When asked what he was going to ask the Party, Mori replied,” I just want to ask ‘Are you really going to run someone like him as a candidate?’.” (MATSUMOTO Chie)

This statement was made by Fatma Ramadan, member of the Executive Committee of the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions on Friday, July 26, 2013.

近年一些社會事務的衝突事件都涉及一些背境不明的新興組織，手法似以團體鬥團體。本署亦出現一個背境和財力不明的新興工會，以低廉會費和回贈利誘同工入會，積極推高會員數字以增加該會代表性。無形之手已滲入公務員工會內。大家應客觀理性分析問題。言論自由是香港的瑰寶！除靠法例保障外，還要有不畏强權，伸張正義的人，無論市民抑或公職人員都應在崗位上各自發揮，互相尊重，團結一致，香港才有進步！所以，本會欣賞林慧思老師的仗義執言，用詞是否文雅，與不平則鳴的勇氣，維護香港的言論自由的態度是两碼子的事，不應混為一談。如有任何查詢，請與本會主席李美笑聯絡。

Nearly 5,000 Chinese workers at a Sino-US joint venture tyre manufacturer are on strike in protest at the American parent company's US$2.5 billion takeover by an Indian firm, a union leader said on Wednesday.