Monitoring TNCs

This report exposes the most problematic and unethical business practices of breastmilk substitutes (BMS) manufacturers.

Labour NGOs have played a role, especially in southern China, in raising Chinese workers’ consciousness. This paper takes a historical perspective and argues that the relationship between labour NGOs and workers has changed in the past three decades, from one of workers’ dependency on Chinese labour NGOs and these NGOs’ dependency, in turn, on foreign NGOs in an asymmetrical relationship, to one more of partnership.

The Hong Kong government was urged on Friday to tighten oversight of how baby milk formula is advertised after an overseas advocacy group accused Nestlé of unethical marketing tactics and manipulating customers around the world.

On 21 June, the Walmart Chinese Workers’ Association (WCWA) announced in its blog that it and its American counterpart, OUR Walmart (Organisation United for Respect at Walmart), had joined hands in cyberspace to discuss how to move forward in their struggle against Walmart. This marks a new stage in recent Chinese labour history. This time the news is not about a leader of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), the official government trade union, shaking hands with a leader from a foreign trade union. Nor is it Han Dongfang, the well-known director of the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin, shaking hands with the world’s trade union leaders. Instead, a group of workers have themselves, through persistent efforts to break through Chinese walls, finally succeeded in reaching out to co-workers overseas. This is the culmination of a number of breakthroughs in the last ten years.

On International Women's Day a coalition of global campaigners are organising a series of actions aimed at the Japanese-owned corporation UNIQLO. The immediate goal is for UNIQLO to take responsibility for 4,000 workers in their supply chain. Protests in front of UNIQLO's stores are taking place in Hong Kong on Wednesday, running parallel to a letter petition targeting UNIQLO's CEO.

This is the WCWA 2016 report by Zhang Jun in both Chinese and English. The report is a brief summary of the major work done by WCWA in 2016. Since 2014, besides providing effective legal support for Walmart employees shops all over China, including preparing documents for litigation (arbitration), strategy and evidence for court cases, WCWA has become a major platform to support Walmart workers’ communicate with each other, in voicing their grievances and later in the nationwide campaign platform to resist Walmart’s Integrated Working hours System (IWHS).To better support the Walmart employees’ actions against the IWHS, the Association has tried hard to raise funds to support those having financial difficulties in hiring lawyers for their litigation.

This is the letter sent by; The Brotherhood of Railroad Signalman (BRS) to CEO of Walmart China, regarding to support Chinese Walmart workers; demand on its & Flexible Working Hour Scheduling

A coalition of Cambodian garment workers’ unions has called on workers and labor rights supporters around the world to demand multinational apparel brands producing in Cambodia raise the wages.

June 20, More than 40 people from Hong Kong and Indonesia labour gorups gathered in front of the adidas office in Hong Kong to show solidarity to the workers in China and Indonesia. They are the Chinese workers in disputes with Dongguan Yue Yuen and Guangzhou Dynamic Casting, and the 1300 Indonesia workers from PDK who were unfairly dismissed in 2012. Among these factories, there is one thing in common: they are all producing for the international footwear giant adidas.

Between 5 April and 28 April 2014, workers from Yue Yuen Dongguan factory have gone on strike. Striker size flew up from 1,000 to 50,000 in only few days. Almost all factory workers have joined the strike, including frontline production workers and various ranking management staff. This shows the anger of workers towards government and the company has reached the limit. Reports say the strike expansion to Yue Yuen’s Jiangxi factory too. Until intervention of massive police force which forced the strikers to go back to work at the end of the month, the strike was forced to come to an end.