Workers Rights are Human Rights

Somali journalists are calling on the UN to restore workers' rights at the UN-funded Radio Bar Kulan (RBK) which broadcasts from Kenya into its troubled and dangerous neighbour. Journalists' unions from 25 African countries and beyond...

A month ago, the Fijian military dictatorship expelled a mission from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) which included a member of the International Court of Justice because the regime rejected the mission's terms of...

Commonwealth Foreign Ministers meet this weekend in New York to approve the draft Charter of the Commonwealth which sets out the values that member states are due to uphold, and Commonwealth trade unionists are demanding that they get...

The TUC has joined trade unionists globally in protesting to the Government of Cote d'Ivoire about the continued imprisonment of Basile Mahan Gahé, General Secretary of the Ivorian trade union confederation (DIGNITY), which like the...

A new report out this week records a year's worth of violations of fundamental human rights for working people. Breaches of the ILO's eight core conventions (banning forced and child labour as well as discrimination at work, and...

Trade unions expressed outrage at the actions of the employers’ group at the International Labour Organisation Conference for blocking any debate and discussion on some of the worst cases of worker rights violations at the meeting in...

A schoolteacher in Swaziland waiting for a bus was arrested last week just for carrying a bag with the logo of the newly united union confederation TUCOSWA, the Trades Union Congress of Swaziland. Wandile Ndlela was approached by...

The Iranian regime has jailed another trade unionist in its continuing, and unsuccessful, attempt to get workers to shut up about the repression and exploitation they suffer. Reza Shahabi, Treasurer of the bus workers' union in Tehran...

Iranian academic and teacher trade unionist Prof Abdolreza Ghanbari is facing the death penalty in Iran. Like many, his crime if "enmity towards God", a catch-all offence used primarily to trigger reference to revolutionary courts not...

The TUC has joined with sister organisations in Australia, New Zealand and the USA to press our respective governments to take action over restrictions on union rights imposed by the military dictatorship that runs Fiji. These include...

Kamal Abbas, the General Coordinator of the Egyptian Center for Trade Union and Worker Services (CTUWS) has just been sentenced to six months imprisonment for comments he made at the International Labour Organisation (ILO) last year...

Colombian trade unionist, human rights defender and academic Liliany Obando was released from the Buen Pastor women's prison at 8:30pm on Thursday night, and was greeted by a delegation from the UK trade union solidarity organisation...

Should we be keeping human rights out of sports? No, of course not. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) Olympic charter proclaims the values of fairness in sport and that should apply to the working conditions of people who make...

The TUC continues to be deeply concerned about the attacks on workers' rights in Turkey. Free trade unions are being subject to a continuing campaign of intimidation and repression spearheaded by both private sector employers and the...

Our friends at Human Rights Watch have condemned a new wave of arrests of independent trade unionists in Iran - earlier attacks on free trade unionism have been catalogued on this blog and at Justice for Iranian Workers . They report...

I've posted on the TUC Touchstone blog about what the Dow Chemicals sponsorship case tells us about ethics and the Olympics. The TUC has registered our opposition to the sponsorship deal with the London Organisating Committee for the...

Please help a global trade union campaign to get Mahdi 'Issa Mahdi Abu Dheeb, the President of the Bahraini Teachers Association (BTA), released from jail. Mahdi's health is rapidly deteriorating and the authorities have refused him...

Over a dozen Greek trade unionists from the energy union GENOP, including union President Nikos Photopoulos, will be in court on Tuesday (10 January) facing charges that could see them jailed for up to 5 years – and all for opposing...