East Asia
China: did new Foxconn strike happen?
Reports of new wildcat strikes involving 4,000 workers at a Foxconn plant in Henan province are denied by the company—and harsh control of information bars corroboration.
Tag: labor
Central Asia
Kazakhstan sentences opposition leader to prison
A court in Kazakhstan sentenced an outspoken political activist to seven-and-a-half years in jail for allegedly colluding with a fugitive billionaire to overthrow the government.
The Andes
Third-party candidates marginalized …in Venezuela
In Venezuela as in the US, third-party candidates were roundly ignored by the media—including a veteran labor leader who challenged Hugo Chávez from the left.
Mexico
Mexico: center-right bloc pushes ‘labor reform’
The Chamber of Deputies passed changes to the labor code that union lawyers said would take the labor movement back to where it was before the 1910 Revolution.
Africa
South Africa: Marikana massacre survivors charged with murder
Workers arrested at South Africa's Marikana mine have been charged with the murder of 34 of their colleagues shot by police, under an apartheid-era "common purpose" law.
The Andes
Colombia: paramilitaries issue death threats in Barrancabermeja
A reconstituted paramilitary group is threatening to execute a union leader and members of human rights organizations in Colombia’s river port of Barrancabermeja.
The Andes
Colombia: GM and hunger strikers agree to mediation
Former employees of GM’s subsidiary in Colombia agreed to end a three-week hunger strike and enter into mediation to resolve a dispute with the company.
The Andes
Colombia: fired GM workers go on hunger strike
Former employees of General Motors' Colombian subsidiary are on hunger strike to demand reinstatement and compensation for injuries they say they received on the job.
Africa
South Africa: paranoid politics of platinum mine massacre
South Africa’s National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), linked to the ruling ANC, and the upstart AMCU accuse each other of being controlled by the mineral industry.
Iran
GIG
As in the Venezuela crisis, Donald Trump, the great enthusiast for dictators, is making a cynical pretense of concern for democracy in Iran. Fortunately, his latest bit of exploitation of the Iranian protesters has blown up in his face. Noting the anniversary of the 1979 revolution, he issued a tweet featuring a meme with an image of a student protester from the 2017 anti-austerity uprising and the words: "40 years of corruption. 40 years of repression. 40 years of terror. The regime in Iran has produced only #40YearsofFailure." Now, the courageous photographer who snapped the image at the University of Tehran in December 2017, Yalda Moayeri, comes forward to express her outrage at its co-optation by Trump. Alas, Masih Alinejad, the Iranian-American feminist who last week met with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, seems not to get how she is endangering opposition activists in Iran, allowing the regime to paint them as pawns of imperialism. (Image via @realDonaldTrump)
Mexico
mosque162
World oil prices remain depressed despite an uptick this month, driven by the Venezuela crisis and fear of US-China trade war. Yet this month also saw Zimbabwe explode into angry protests over fuel prices. The unrest was sparked when the government doubled prices, in an effort to crack down on "rampant" illegal trading. Simultaneously, long lines at gas stations are reported across Mexico—again due to a crackdown on illegal petrol trafficking. Despite all the talk in recent years about how low oil prices are now permanent (mirrored, of course, in the similar talk 10 years ago about how high prices were permanent), the crises in Zimbabwe and Mexico may be harbingers of a coming global shock. (Photo via Amnesty International)
Central Asia
mosque150
A top US sportswear company announced that it has dropped a Chinese supplier over concerns that its products were made by forced labor in detention camps in Xinjiang. Reports have mounted that the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Uighurs believed to be held in a fast-expanding system of detention camps are being put to forced labor for Chinese commercial interests. An Associated Press investigation tracked recent shipments from one such detention-camp factory, run by privately-owned Hetian Taida Apparel, to Badger Sportswear of North Carolina. After long denying that the camps exist, Chinese authorities now say they are "vocational training centers" aimed at reducing "extremism." (Photo via Bitter Winter)