Asia

  • Pakistan’s Union Activists Face Death Penalty

    Body:

    Thousands of Pakistani citizens have been arrested for joining widespread protests against the declaration of emergency rule in Pakistan. When President Pervez Musharraf suspended the constitution, fired supreme court judges, and enacted martial law in early November, crackdowns on labor ensued as well.

    Two days after the decree, outspoken union leader Rana Ayub Aki was arrested and jailed. Aki is the leader of the 130,000-strong union inside the Pakistani Water and Development Authority. In the wake of these crackdowns, many labor leaders are being forced into hiding.

    Union members and other activists organized a protest in early November at the Karachi Press Club, where police violently disrupted the gathering and arrested journalists, lawyers, and two labor leaders. One, Liaqat Ali Sahi, a leader at the State Bank of Pakistan and in the Hotel Workers Solidarity Committee, has been charged with treason for calling for the return of democracy at the November 5 rally. Musharraf’s emergency rule has given military courts the power to try civilians, and Sahi and three others face the death penalty.

    Expiration Date:
    Mon, 12/31/2007 - 11:59pm

  • Global Labor Stands Up to Global Capital

    by Kim Moody

    They didn't start in Seattle. Protests against the impact and institutions of corporate globalization have been mounting around the world for some time. As global capital pokes its sticky fingers into one corner of the planet after another in search of profits, disrupting lives and communities, destroying jobs and the environment, spreading low-wage high-stress work, and subordinating entire nations to its goals, resistance has grown.


    Yes
  • 'The Kids Are All Right'...and other thoughts from IUE visitors to Seattle

    by Jeffy Crosby, President IUE Local 201

    I went to Seattle with 15 members of the North Shore (Massachusetts) Labor Council. Eleven were from IUE Local 201 at the GE plant in Lynn and Ametek Aerospace in Wilmington. Contrary to the musings of Robert Reich and others that the primary loss of jobs in the United States through "free trade" would be unskilled work, both GE and Ametek aircraft engine work are headed to Mexico, Russia, China, Brazil, and other countries. The engineering and planning work is going as well.


    Yes