Workers Rights are Human Rights

Readers of this blog and of the Amnesty trade union web pages will be familiar with the case of Mansour Ossanlu, leader of the Tehran bus workers union, who has been jailed on several occasions, most recently in July 2007, with a five...

Reza Shahabi is in an Iranian jail for no other reason than the part he played in the leadership of the Tehran busworkers' union. He has now been in jail since his arrest in June 2010, and his health has not been good. His situation...

Today, 25 November, has been the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and it seems a fitting moment to ask the government to reaffirm its commitment to eradicating violence against women with a very tangible...

The UN'sInternational Labour Organisation (ILO) this week issued a strong condemnation of Fiji'smilitary Junta over severe violations of labour rights (see pages 809-847). The ILO's Committee on Freedom of Associationdescribed the...

The Tehran bus drivers’ union the Vahed Syndicate, of whichimprisoned Iranian trade unionist Reza Shahabi is a board member, has raisedconcerns about his state of health. According to the union he has been returned to prison after...

The global trade union movement has launched an electronic action aimed at the military dictatorship in Fiji, who have arrested the leaders of the Fiji Trades Union Congress, one of them already charged with plotting to overthrow the...

After the arrest last weekend of Fiji Trades Union Congress (FTUC) President Daniel Urai on his return from CHOGM in Western Australia, this weekend saw the release of FTUC General Secretary Felix Anthony. Twelve police officers are...

The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting decision at the weekend not to even mention Swaziland looks more ridiculous than ever with the news on Monday (31 October) that the Royal Swazi Police have even stopped workers holding a...

Fijian trade union President Daniel Urai spent last week in Perth WA at the Commonwealth People's Forum, a civil society gathering ahead of this weekend's Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). He was briefing civil society...

The global union for transport workers, ITF, has expressed concerns about summonses to attend court issued to Seyed Davood Razavi, a former treasurer of the Tehran bus drivers’ union, the Vahed Syndicate, and to his fellow Vahed...

Air-traffic controllers , busdrivers , journalists , academics ,and nurses ,among thousands of others have been back on the streets of Egypt demanding that the interim military government deliver on the demands of theirrevolution. Help...

Today (6 September) is Independence Day in Swaziland, but for the ordinary people, independence has led to neither freedom nor prosperity. The last remaining feudal dictatorship in Africa has created one of the world's poorest country...

The TUC has joined a global trade union campaign – bcked by Amnesty International – to protest at the attack on human and trade union rights in Fiji. Please join the protest online or outside the Fijian High Commission in London on...

The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has released the 2011 Annual Worldwide Survey of Trade Union Rights Violations, and it's a depressing picture. Colombia continued to be the most dangerous place in the world to be a...

We were overjoyed to hear that Tehran bus workers’ leader Mansour Osanloo was finally freed on Thursday after nearly four years in the notorious Evin jail. Mansour has been the focus of continuous campaigning by unions in Britain and...

Jamal Abdul-Jabbar is the President of the Kirkuk Oil and Gas Workers Union in northern Iraq. Recently, he led his members out on strike for safer working conditions, and more rights for contract workers. Now his employers, the state...

Amid all the fuss in Britain about whether journalists can report on footballers' sex lives, a reminder that in some parts of the world, superinjunctions are the last thing reporters worry about. The head office of the National Union...

Behind the war of words over Iran's Islamist regime – repressing democracy, developing nuclear weapons capability, interfering in local countries from the Lebanon to Iraq and the Gulf – there is a secret revolution going on...

King Mswati III of Swaziland is the last feudal monarch of an African country, and he presides over a country with the highest rates of HIV/AIDS in the world, where 80% of the population live in absolute poverty and political...

The TUC is supporting a lunchtime vigil on Monday 18 April – the 31st anniversary of Zimbabwe's independence – to protest about the rising level of violence in that country. The vigil will take place outside the Zimbabwean Embassy on...