Italy's trade unions to call strikes on

Demonstrators protest against pension reform in Milan
The savings plans of a new government of Italy chief Mario Monti meet with fierce resistance: In protest against the planned cuts by major unions have called for nationwide strikes this week.

In Italy, workers and employees of a call for a nationwide strike followed. In many cities, the people gathered on Monday (12/12/2011) on the streets to protest against government austerity measures. Thus opened the week with Italian unions strike many short-term work stoppages in different industries and sectors. The start went for three hours, dock workers, employees of highway maintenance and transit operations. The metal workers went on strike for eight hours. The targeted by Prime Minister Mario Monti savings träfen especially the workers and pensioners, rather than the rich, the bosses of the three leading unions, the first coordinated strikes justify the past six years.

The protesters are demanding more equity in the savings
The new Italian government had decided to start a savings program until December 2014, the expenditure cuts of around 30 billion €. In addition to a pension reform, property tax, luxury tax and the fight against tax evasion are also planned. The unions defend themselves, especially against the planned pension reform and tax on residential property. Monti had on Sunday evening or informally consult with the heads of the three major unions, CGIL, CISL and UIL - without success.

Unity in Parliament

"Given the emergency situation, the government will reform and savings plans in the sum does not change," admitted the government is still known in the early hours of Monday. The chairman of the CISL union, Raffaele Bonanni, said the unions were the one with Monti believes that Italy is in a "serious" crisis is. But the austerity measures must be balanced.

The pressure of financial markets remains high on Italy
Monti had brought the multi-billion austerity package a week ago in a high speed on the road to the heavily indebted Italy to bring the attention of the financial markets. Former EU commissioner wants to bring the reforms and cuts through parliament before Christmas. Except for the populist Northern League all parliamentary parties have announced their support. Even the EU, U.S., and not least the financial markets responded positively in recent days on Monti's plans.

Interest on government bonds fall slightly

Measured in terms of economic output Italy to Greece, the highest debt of the euro zone and stands at around € 1.9 trillion in debt. Even the promised savings, and the decisions of the EU summit have let fall the high interest rates on Italian government bonds only slightly. Rome on Monday gave bonds with a maturity of one year for a total of seven billion euros and had to pay interest of 5.952 percent. In early November the rate had been lying still at 6.087 percent. Are traded on the secondary market where previously issued government securities, yields on ten-year increase, however, Italian debt again.

The legend of the frugal Chinese workers

China discovers his own history as the "Middle Kingdom" in the 21
Century and again: While the Western world is suffering from the
financial crisis, Beijing developed palpable awareness of foreign
policy power. At the same time, however, the country must find
solutions for a variety of problems. In a four-part series-nd four
authors describe their views from different angles on different
aspects of life in China.

In April, hundreds of truck drivers went on strike in Shanghai's
container ports against rising fuel costs.

Coming soon is the first time in the history of the Communist Party of
China, one of the richest men in the country (and world) to be a
member of the Party Central Committee. For some time, permit the
statutes of the party membership of entrepreneurs. According to
conservative estimates by the delegates to the Party congresses are a
maximum of 1 to 5 percent, which is attributed to the Chinese working
class itself. It may be doubted whether the working class ever in the
history of the People's Republic of China "historical subject" was.
Currently, at least - and that is where are the experts agree, due to
various investigations - should the social reputation of the workers
have reached a historic low.

What was even more recognition to Mao's times, most people in China
today feel as a burden: to belong to the working class. In the country
with the highest growth rates and long-lasting membership of the
working class, not a "privilege" is more, but an economic and social
burden.

And yet, sometimes the "moribund" Chinese working class, a much talked
about. Many legends have been created not least by foreign investors
and disseminated: Chinese workers to be modest, unassuming, modest and
little conflict-oriented. They would exercise their rights do not
usually, anyway since none of the Chinese legal disputes and
considered themselves to Confucian tradition with their supervisors
and employers would prefer some amicably.
Defense reactions at Foxconn and Honda

One must doubt that these legends have ever had a real background. It
is clear that was limited in the Chinese media coverage of strikes and
labor disputes ever. But since the media had reported extensively for
a short period on the appalling conditions on the extended workbenches
of the iPhone manufacturer Apple, the Chinese workers are once again
come into focus. Obviously, the signals emanating from the numerous
public suicides at Foxconn. A wave of indignation captured the
country. Here were the conditions at Foxconn and are by no means the
worst. But in the Chinese world of work, there is not much different
than in the working world of capitalist industrial nations to
spectacular events, it is not always where it goes to the workers at
their worst. Rather, plus numerous subjective and objective
conditions.

Migrant workers from their containers on a residential construction
site in Fuzhou.

At Foxconn, it was the fact that there have been systematically abused
in cooperation with state institutions, students and young students,
under the pretext of "internships" as cheap labor and the company did
not make the smallest institutions to keep promises. Completely
inexperienced students, who were often overwhelmed with the work
physically and psychologically attacked, in their desperation to the
spectacular view from their means of suicide. From the Chinese trade
unions, they received no support. Worse, most of these young workers
did not even know that there was a trade union.

But the suicides at Foxconn were not the only nor even typical defense
response of workers to exploitative working conditions in Chinese
factories. On the contrary: thanks to the fact that Japanese
entrepreneurs in the Chinese public are not necessarily highly
regarded, was the labor dispute at Honda first reported in detail.
There, the workers had resigned on imaginative ways to work and
mobilize the Chinese public over the Internet. Because of the Chinese
trade unions, who are regularly on the side of the company and the
government, no help could be expected, they sought advice from one of
the most renowned professors of labor law in China. Professor Chang
Kai of Renmin University in Beijing, led the negotiations with
management on a collective agreement. All the strikers' demands were
met. The strike leader was a 19-year-old (!) Worker who had made over
the Internet and contact with the labor law professor. In retrospect,
the official trade unions legalized the procedure.
The strike sparks should not skip

Honda served as an example for many other strikes, which were not only
higher wages demanded, but was asked in particular the requirement for
independent unions. "Independent" was not here, regardless of the
official trade union federation, but elected freely and
democratically. Under the present political and legal conditions in
China alone, the requirement applies to so-called free trade unions,
independent of the trade union federation, to be extremely dangerous.
It is also not true that the state authorities had been watching for
most of the strikes carried out since 2010 only. On the contrary:
While the majority of strikes were tolerated, many strikes were
actually successful, but at the same time strictly respected the
police that the strike by some demonstrations not spread to other
companies. Add to this that in the majority of labor disputes the
claims but were formally successful, the same but changed the business
strategies: Foxconn, for example - one of the largest companies
worldwide - outsourced many enterprises to central China, and
exchanged in this way simply from the workforce. Could experience
labor disputes, or even "class consciousness" does not arise in this
way.

The party and state leadership hopes that the workers "on the"
individual path can refer to the law enforcement. Not by chance, she
has promoted the exercise of individual rights through the Employment
Contracts Act of 2008. This law actually contains a variety of new
rights, which go as high as over the Western European standard.
Legally required overtime pay of up to 150 percent in Germany are as
unknown as statutory redundancy payments when entering into settlement
agreements (excluding social plan!). Recent studies show that the law
has actually led to a significant increase in labor disputes in the
employment services. But the law came in 2008 almost too late: A
significant part of the Chinese working class was in fact for decades
by the general labor excluded: The 200 to 250 million so-called
migrant workers were regarded "as" rural workers and do not fall under
the labor law. Add to this that particularly in the construction
industry a sophisticated legal and most secure system of
"subcontractors" is, the more difficult the exercise of rights purely
factual. Often, the workers did not know who is actually their
employer.
Dr. Rolf Geffken is a specialist in employment law and director of the
Institute for Work - ICOLAIR in Hamburg. In 2004 he organized in
Canton, the first Sino-German Conference on Labour, which was followed
by other conferences. Geffken is a lecturer at various German
universities and author of numerous scientific publications and
fiction. The band 'strike in China? ", Which he published in 2010,
Chinese and German experts to deal with the current and future
relationship of the Chinese workers to the local unions.

"Tolerated" in their own country

The new labor contract law also extends to working conditions of
migrant workers. But in many areas, has not yet gotten around and
migrant workers are still discriminated against. Especially the fact
that migrant workers because of the so-Hokou principle in the cities
usually can not legally resident, leads to the fact that they are in a
quasi semi-legal status. Legally, her condition was similar to the
long period of rejected asylum seekers in Germany. They were tolerated
up to "". And this in their own country!

But China is far from a unified country. This also applies to working
conditions and the structure of the working class. The situation of
workers in factories around the high-tech industry in Shanghai or
Beijing is usually completely different than in the labor-intensive
industry of Guangdong in the south of the country. Between the migrant
worker from central China who tries in the coastal regions, to sell
his labor and his children do not attend public schools in the city
and allowed the other hand, the workers still-state-owned enterprises
in Shanghai, there are significant differences. The generation that
experienced the process of transformation from socialist economy to a
market economy directly, is now largely retired from the labor
process. In its place, either well-trained skilled workers or cheap
wage slaves from rural regions, or "interns" have come from the middle
schools. It has created a completely new and different workforce than
those who belonged to the losers of the privatization wave in the
early 80s.

But all is equal, that they have no authentic mouthpiece. Still, the
official trade unions are not regarded as representing the interests
of employees and perceived. And this is how the strike wave of the
past year as represents what strikes were also in the
industrialization phase of Western Europe: germ cells of a future
union organization.
Difficult path to advocacy

However, the way is just as difficult as it appears in Germany in the
19th Century, was also there for the freedom of association had to be
laboriously fought against the state: It was the result of the
November Revolution of 1918. As long as the state institutions in
China to defend against this law and do not acknowledge it, the
development of China at this point take a similar course. It is still
not completely clear whether the official trade unions of their task
to represent the interests of the working class in China needs.

Poland: Protests against planned pension reform

The Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk from the targeted pension reform
meets resistance from unions and other interest groups. "If someone
with 15 years begins to work in the vocational school, then he has
worked with 65 well-not too little," said Piotr Duda, head of the
union "Solidarnosc", towards the media and threatened now with
demonstrations. Tusk wants to raise the retirement age for women and
men of 60 or 65 years to 67 years.

Tusk's government also proposed the declaration on Friday, no longer
boarding houses for a certain period of time proportional to the
development of the salaries are adjusted, the trade unions do not
consent. The prime minister wants to increase pensions for some years,
the only fixed amounts, which would reduce the gap between high and
low salary. "We can not punish those who have paid the high posts,"
said Jan Guz, head of the union OPZZ, told the newspaper
"Rzeczpospolita". Moreover, "no question" could be that the pension
reform has been digging in 2013, so Guz, since it needs to be
discussed only in society.

The Solidarity leader Duda holds demonstrations possible. "We've shown
that we can mobilize our members, although we do not really want to
talk with the government on the road," he said. With protests
threatened the representatives of the miners. "We can defend
ourselves," Kazimierz Grajacarek, Chairman of the Mining Section said
in the "Solidarity" to journalists. Tusk had said that only those who
are directly "involved in breaking" should, before you retire. Through
such a scheme would arise "two categories of miners who work
underground," said a representative of the workers in the copper
industry.

Tusk also announced talks with associations of lawyers and policemen.
Both professional groups will lose some pension privileges. For
example wool, the police unions assert that officers can continue to
go with 50, not, as suggested by Tusk with 55 years in retirement. So
far this is possible after 15 years of service with 35 years already.

Business organizations have criticized that the employer share of
pension contributions to rise by two percentage points. That could
lead to higher unemployment, said Marek Goliszewski, director of the
Association of BCC.

Tusk received praise for his announcements by economists, however. By
the arguments put forward measures could the Premier achieve its
desired goal, the national debt today 54 percent of the gross domestic
product to lower until the end of its term to 47 percent, said Piotr
Kalisz, chief economist at the Bank Citi Handlowy, the radio station
RMF FM. The reforms would have a positive impact on the
creditworthiness of Poland, according to a report by the rating agency
Moody's on Monday. "The key question is how the plans are
implemented," said Piotr Kowalski, director of rating agency Fitch in
Poland, the television station TVN.

World Cup 2022: trade unions feared 'slavery'

Cologne (AFP) - Several international labor unions to football's world
governing body FIFA against "modern slavery" in the construction of
stadiums for the World Cup 2022 in Qatar have been warned.

"We have the FIFA General Secretary (Jerome Valcke) asked if they want
to have stadiums built by slaves," Ambet Yuson, the General said,
"Building and Wood Workers International." "94 percent of workers in
Qatar are immigrants." Most workers come from India, Bangladesh and
Naples, so Yuson Valcke after a meeting in Zurich with: "Their
passports are withheld and sometimes they do not get paid I was in the
Wohnquatieren the workers - it's a bad situation.."

The problems at the stadium in Brazil for World Cup 2014 Youson looks
extremely critical. "The haste can lead to accidents," said Youson.
"The salaries are very low and not sufficient safeguards."

FIFA would react in the coming weeks and look at the criticism of the
authorities in Qatar a solution. "In addition to awards at the
upcoming World Cup and employment law criteria in the application
process are included with" it said in a statement.

Labour related issues

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