In recent weeks, Hungary has again made international headlines. This time, it was a popular movement born out of resistance to the latest rewriting of the labor code—which the ruling Fidesz party had already modified in 2011 to the benefit of employers—that made the news. On 12 December, amid (...)
Demonstrations erupted on the streets of Budapest after the Hungarian parliament—controlled by the fourth consecutive super majority of Fidesz government—had just passed three crucial laws in a rapid parliamentary voting on 12th December, which oppositional parties claimed unlawful. The three (...)
From Brussels to Barsa, gilets jaunes have brought visibility to people and their grievances
It started on 10 October, with a Facebook appeal launched by two fed-up truck drivers from the Seine-et-Marne department, east of Paris, calling for a “national blockade” of France’s road network in (...)
Rarely has the Milanese sky and its foggy metropolitan area been so open and starry as tonight. But maybe it is climate change that has also caused this.
Getting up at six in the morning and seeing this sky makes us think that it will be an important, beautiful day, maybe it is a portent. (...)
On November 11 2018 a protest called on the people of Sofia to rise up against the prices of fuel, of the mandatory car insurance and the proposed new taxes to be levied on old cars. The protests quickly spread engulfing more than 30 cities and towns, blocking highways and borders. Though (...)
Repression fell on the RiMaflow factory, place of an emblematic fight. The president of the cooperative, Massimo Lettieri, was arrested and is still in detention, while the cooperative fights to survive. A call for solidarity has been launched.
RiMaflow is located in the declining industrial (...)
The response of unions in Germany to the growth of the platform economy can teach us important lessons about the challenges of ‘platform labour’ as an emerging category in the labour market, and in particular to the limitations of pan-national responses. Problems for national and international (...)
As Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ net worth topped $150 billion last week, making him the richest man in modern history, thousands of Amazon workers across Europe went on strike.
The work stoppage, which lasted three days at some facilities, was one of the largest labor actions against Amazon to date, (...)
Global capitalism is a precarious system, relying on the steady flow of goods across the world. When Amazon arrived in Poland, it was attracted by cheap labour costs and strict union laws, little did it know that the high-pressure working conditions it institutes would produce wildcat strikes (...)
Campaigners demand that the Japanese fast fashion chain takes responsibility for 2000 Indonesian workers, collectively owed $5.5 million in unpaid wages and severance payments.
Labour rights activists from War on Want, Labour Behind the Label and the Clean Clothes Campaign last night beamed (...)
What is in the agreement?
For the months of January to March, €100 in a single payment, less than one per cent of the average wage in the industry. From April 1, wages will increase by 4.3 per cent. In July 2019 at the latest, the payment of a “27.5 per cent supplement of a monthly salary” will (...)
The sight of Michael O’Leary, who declared once that Hell would freeze over before he would allow a trade union in to Ryanair, having to eat his words is indeed enough to bring a glow to the heart of any class conscious worker. At the company AGM in the Autumn O’Leary gloated that “I don’t even (...)
The largest union in Germany is bracing for a combative start to the new year as it presses demands for a 28-hour working week, warning employers to expect mass strikes in the battle for a better work-life balance.
The mighty IG Metall union, which represents some 3.9 million workers in the (...)
Abstract
The main Czech trade union confederation launched a campaign in 2015 for »An End to Cheap Labour« with initial targets of five percent pay increases wherever possible. This was initiated by a new leadership and linked with new methods of advertising union activities. There was a (...)
The one-day general strike on 3 October 2017 in Catalonia was the biggest mobilisation in more than forty years on this territory. It was called by the Intersyndical Alternativa de Catalunya (IAC, an inter-professional federation of combative Catalan trade unions), the Confederació General del (...)
Horrific events like the Barcelona and Cambrils terror attacks now seem horribly familiar in the west (though worse examples are regular occurrences in the global south). But this time there was one unusual, and overlooked, factor: the territory that was targeted is the focus of a national (...)
For the vast majority of unions in Britain, the idea of the Labour party fighting a general election with a dream leadership team of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell was manna from heaven after the era of New Labour. From 1997 to 2010, many unions believed Labour governments were a case of (...)
It cannot be an accident that Jeremy Corbyn launched what may be his one and only general election manifesto in the city of Bradford. One of the forerunners of today’s Corbyn-led Labour Party was the Independent Labour Party (ILP) . It was a full-blooded left wing party, founded in 1893 in (...)
The month of May witnessed the second round of massive general strikes to hit Greece in 2016. Mobilizations on May Day were followed by four days of strikes in the lead-up to the Syriza government passing its austerity pension bill. The next day the so-called Euro-group of finance ministers met (...)
How can we explain the 15M movement five years later, its consequences, its limits and its potential? It’s not an easy task, but we must try, because the way we read it determines the political choices we make.
These ten theses are not intended to give a concluded or final explanation but raise (...)
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