LabourStart: Where trade unionists start their day on the net.
LabourStart is the news and campaigning website of the international trade union movement.
Founded in 1998, we are the web's best source of trade union news, uploaded by our volunteers in dozens of languages. Our online campaigns, offered free of charge to trade unions, often help win victories for workers around the world. And from time to time, we hold Global Solidarity Conferences in different cities.
Please visit our website at https://www.labourstart.org and support with a donation (if you can) here: https://www.labourstart.org/pico/?en/donate. THANK YOU!
Episodes
54 episodes
Europe: Interview with Mark Bergfeld, Director of Property Services at UNI Europa
We chatted today with Mark about the two groups of workers represented by UNI Europa's Property Services department -- security guards and cleaners. (UNI Europa represents 7 million workers in 272 national trade unions in 50 countries.)&n...
South Korea: Interview with Chanyoung Heo, Kuehne+Nagel Korea Labour Union
Chanyoung is leader of a small union in Korea that represents workers at Kuehne+Nagel, a German-owned logistics company. For 20 years, industrial relations at the company were good. Now they aren't. What happened? Why di...
Interview with Sean Sweeney, coordinator of Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED)
Sean Sweeney is the founder and coordinator of a global network of trade unionists who are trying change the way we deal with the global climate crisis. Instead of failed neo-liberal solutions, TUED is pushing for 'public pathways' to con...
Kenya: Interview with Joseph Ndiritu Karobia, General Secretary of the Public Transport Operators Union (PUTON)
Joe's union has managed to win a couple of legal battles ensuring that drivers working in Kenya's informal sector have rights. But employers are resisting and the struggle is not yet won. Joe tells us about some of the challenges that his...
Turkey: Interview with Kivanc Eliacik
According to the International Trade Union Confederation, Turkey is one of the worst countries in the world for workers' rights. Union leaders continue to be arrested and jailed. But recently, a number have been released, thanks in ...
Australia: Interview with Sally McManus, Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions
The lowest gender pay gap ever recorded. Food delivery workers winning new workplace protections and a new minimum hourly rate of pay, above the minimum wage. Workers winning a 'right to disconnect' -- meaning that their employers c...
Taiwan: Interview with Lennon Wang, from the Taidoc Technology Labor Union (TTLU).
Filipino women migrant workers at TaiDoc Technology Corporation, a medical equipment company based in Taiwan, R.O.C., have faced discrimination, forced labour conditions and union busting. In response, they organised a union. Listen...
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"The stronger the union, the cooler the workplace." Interview with union educator Stirling Smith
The International Labour Organisation estimate that 70% of the world's workforce is now vulnerable to extreme heat. How is this affecting workers? What can unions do? We interviewed Stirling Smith, a trade union educato...
International trade union delegations blocked from entering Palestine
In the last three weeks, two high-level delegations of trade union leaders from around the world were blocked by Israeli authorities from entering the Occupied Palestinian Territories (West Bank). The general secretaries of two global uni...
USA: Interview with Chelsie Glaubitz Gabiou, President of the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation AFL-CIO
Tomorrow (23 January) will see trade unionists and other citizens of Minneapolis shutting the city down in protest at the actions of Donald Trump's ICE thugs. People won't go to work, they won't shop, their kids won't go to school. ...
Global: Interview with Pamela Morinière - International Federation of Journalists
In this short interview, we talked with Pamela, who is the IFJ's head of communications, about the IFJ's
60 seconds on ... Christmas shopping
With the run-up to Christmas, retail workers are preparing to face a tsunami of abuse and even violence. Unions representing shop workers in dozens of countries where Christmas is celebrated are campaigning to protect workers from over-st...
60 seconds on ... Lee Cheuk-yan, jailed leader of Hong Kong's trade union movement
"60 seconds on ..." is a new podcast series hosted by LabourStart and aims to provide the international trade union movement with bite-size nuggets of information about important campaigns and news. In today's episode, we focus on Lee Che...
USA: Professor Yiran Zhang on care work
Professor Yiran Zhang is a prominent emerging voice in the field of labor and employment law, focusing on how care work is governed at the complicated intersection of informal labor markets, the welfare state, and the household. At Cornell’s IL...
Netherlands: Union leader Pawel Rudzki, unfairly dismissed for his activism
Pawel Rudzki has not worked for the Albert Heijn supermarket chain for some two months now. An exemplary worker, never late, with a spotless record, he was bullied and lied about, given warnings he could not reply to -- and then summarily sacke...
Is this the Nobel Prize for the international trade union movement?
Today we spoke with Amalie Hilde Tofte from the trade union Styrke in Norway. They're the sponsors of the annual Arthur Svensson International Prize for Trade Union Rights. (LabourStart was a recipient a few years back.). Amalie tol...
Serbia: Interview with SKL union leaders
This week, we talked with two leaders of the Sindikat kontrole letenja (SKL), the union representing Serbian air traffic controllers, who have been dismissed after their security clearances were revoked based on a vague "negative opinion from t...
Lesotho: Interview with Solong Senohe, General Secretary of UNITE
Solong is the general secretary of the United Textile Employees Union in Lesotho -- a union currently involved in a major struggle for workers' rights and dignity at Quantum Apparel. In this interview, he tells us about a whole series of ...
USA: Interview with Chris Garlock of the Labor Radio and Podcasting Network
Chris, who's based in Washington, D.C., is the founder of the Labor Radio and Podcasting Network. With around 200 members, the network shows the very widespread adoption of podcasting by activists in the trade union movement. ...
Canada: Interview with Paul Finch, President of the British Columbia General Employees Union (BCGEU)
This week we talked with Paul Finch at a particularly interesting moment. His union, the largest in the Canadian province of British Columbia, is on strike. The employer in this case, the provincial government, is a social democrati...
USA: Interview with Shawna Bader-Blau from the Solidarity Center
Shawna Bader-Blau heads up the Solidarity Center in Washington DC which has for many years been one of the great sources of support for workers around the world trying create and sustain independent, democratic trade unions. But with the ...
Canada: Interview with Gil McGowan, President of the Alberta Federation of Labour
The Alberta Federation of Labour and some 25 Alberta unions, representing more than 300,000 workers, recently unveiled the Solidarity Pact, a commitment to collective defence against any attack on workers by public- or private-sector employers....
USA: Interview with Dr Debbie Goldman, author of Disconnected: Call Center Workers Fight for Good Jobs in the Digital Age
Dr Debbie Goldman worked for 28 years at the Communication Workers of America (CWA) and is an expert on the subject of call centre workers. In this short interview we discussed her new book,
Belarus: Interview with Luc Triangle, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)
Luc Triangle, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), was LabourStart's guest this week on our podcast. The ITUC represents around 200 million workers in 169 countries and territories and has 340 national...
