PAKISTAN: VIOLENCE TARGETS LIPTON TEA WORKERS

The ongoing struggle by Lipton Tea workers in Pakistan has turned ugly, as contractors collude with factory management to instigate violent attacks on the workers. The IUF is calling on Unilever (which owns Lipton) to stop the violence and negotiate with the workers. They need all of us to sign up to the latest online campaign:

http://tinyurl.com/qyetop

USA/UK: TRADE UNION CONGRESSES GO ALL WEB 2.0

Two of the world's largest and most important trade union movements are holding their national congresses this week -- the AFL-CIO is meeting in Pittsburgh and the Trades Union Congress meets in Liverpool.

Both organizations are making exceptional use of the Internet, with dedicated websites featuring streaming video, integration of social networking tools Twitter, Flickr and Facebook, and more. The TUC takes things a step forward by allowing visitors to the congress website to actually post comments and get involved in the discussion.

The sites can be found at http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/thisistheaflcio/convention/2009/ and http://www.congressvoices.org/

ISRAEL: SUCCESS FOR ARAB RAILWAY WORKERS, ANTIQUITIES WORKERS FIGHT CONTINUES

Several months ago we told you about the struggle being waged by Israeli Arabs employed by the country's railways who were threatened with dismissal due to the fact that they had not served in the army. This week a long struggle by those workers and their supporters has resulted in a major win. According to a press release issued by Sawt el-Amel (The Laborer's Voice), "This morning, [the] Tel Aviv Labour Court ruled that until a final court decision, Israel Railways cannot lay off any Arab railway crossing guard as a consequence of its new employment policy." For the full statement, go here:

http://www.laborers-voice.org/article_details.aspx?TopID=1074&catid=45

We have also been telling you about the struggle of low-paid workers employed by the Israel Antiquities Authorties (both Arabs and Jews) who have become the latest victims of the process of casualization that affects workers around the world. Their struggle has included legal battles, street demonstrations and a big LabourStart campaign, In the next few weeks we should see some legal decisions -- including results of the libel action brought by the employer against our partners in the Workers Advice Center (WAC). WAC has written up a detailed account which I encourage you to read:

http://www.labourstart.org/israel/wac.pdf