Employers at ILO Conference Attack Right to Strike
Living Wage Agreement for Striking South African Mine Workers
Steelworkers Join With Employers in Fight for American Middle Class
Author: laborradio
-
Employers at ILO Conference Attack Right to Strike
By JoAnne Pow!ers
The International Labor Organization Committee on the Application of Standards collapsed this week at the ILO’s International Labor Conference, ending today in Geneva. Representatives of business at the ILO refused to endorse the committee’s consensus findings on a range of serious cases involving labor violation cases.
Jeffrey Vogt, Legal Advisor to the International Trade Union Confederation, says that since 2012 the employers have tried to disrupt the way the ILO functions by insisting that the right to strike does not exist at the international level.
[Jeff Vogt] “They’re trying to undermine the ILO generally by saying that its expert interpretations on a whole range of conventions are incorrect, but doing it’s gonna disrupt the oversight of cases on some of the worst labor violators in the world.”
For decades, ILO Convention 87 on freedom of association and the right to organize has been consistently interpreted by experts within the ILO as guaranteeing the right to strike:
[Jeff Vogt] “Their arguments are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of freedom of association, and the entire international legal framework in which the ILO’s worked…in the UN, in regional courts of the Americas, of Europe, even the African commission. There’s very well settled that a right to strike does exist as a part ILO convention on Freedom of Association and to argue otherwise is wishful thinking on their part”.
The United States is one of the few countries that has not ratified ILO convention 87.
-
Living Wage Agreement for Striking South African Mine Workers
By JoAnne Pow!ers
The world’s top three platinum producers announced Thursday that they have reached an informal agreement with unionized South African Miners that could end the longest and costliest mining strike in the country’s history. 80,000 members of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union walked off the job in January, demanding a basic minimum wage increase of more than double for underground workers. The strike has crippled South Africa’s economy, costing mining companies more than two billion dollars in lost revenue. The union is putting the agreement to its members, and it is not yet clear if they will accept the proposed offer.
-
Steelworkers Join With Employers in Fight for American Middle Class
By JoAnne Pow!ers
A July 10th determination from the commerce department could have serious implications for whether or not steelworkers will retain family-supporting union jobs around the country. America’s steel manufacturers and workers have joined forces to fight back against dumped imports of steel pipe used in the extraction of America’s oil and natural gas reserves. The Alliance for American Manufacturing, a partnership between the United Steelworkers and leading steel manufacturers, is calling for a thorough investigation of steel imports from South Korea being dumped on the US market below cost. Scott Paul, President of the AAM:
[Scott Paul] “They will always have disagreements, but they agreed that having a focus on the importance of manufacturing and good-paying jobs to our domestic economy was something that made a lot of sense. And we find that elected officials have nowhere to run when you bring in both the business side and the labor side to talk about a set of issues like we do. And I think we’ve at least woken up the white house and congress as to how important this is. Getting them to do something…is another story.”
AAM has been holding a nationwide series of ‘Save Our Steel Jobs’ rallies. Learn more at American manufacturing dot org.