Unlawfully detained trade union members released
The five members of FTUB who were arrested unlawfully on April 1, 2009, are back in their homes in Rangoon It was through international solidarity that the five were released. The charges on which they were arrested were never announced, and the FTUB strongly condemns these unlawful arrests.
The following five FTUB members were released on 10 April 2009.
1. U Zaw Myint Aung (49 years old, Teacher, South Okkalapa, Rangoon)
2. U Soe Oo (37 years old, Textile Factory Worker, Shwe Pyi Thar, Rangoon)
3. Maung Tun Nyein (22 years old, Worker, Shwe Hninsi Textile factory, Hlaing Thayar, Rangoon)
4. Ms. Khine Lin Myat (22 years old, Worker, UMH Textile factory)
5. Ms. Shwe Yi Nyunt (25 years old, Nurses Aide and Law Student, University of Western
Rangoon, and Member, FTUB Women’s Committee)
A number of the family members of these five were also arrested. They have now all been released.
On behalf of the released members and their families, FTUB extends its thanks and continuing appreciation to all international and national trade unons who responded to our call, including those unions affiliated to the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the Global Union Federations, the ITUC-Asia/Pacific, and the Asean Trade Union Council (ATUC). We also wish to thank the ILO for its prompt intervention, and add our sincere appreciation to those national Governments who took up the cause of our members.
FTUB requests the international trade union movement, the ITUC and its members, as well as the ILO to
assist the development of the workers’ social and economic conditions in Burma by continuing with the
following demands upon the SPDC Burma regime:
1. The SPDC must gaurentee that the five who were unlawfully arrested and relased do not loose their jobs.
2. The SPDC must strictly abide by ILO Convention 87 of the International Labour Organization on Freedom of Association, which Burma has ratifed, as well as all International Core Labour Standards, which Burma is required as a member of the ILO to enforce.
3. The SPDC must denounce the actions of the authorities involved in arresting our members, and immediately order an end to all actions to prevent workers from forming trade unions and exercising their labour rights in Burma.
-ends-
ဧျပီ(၁)ရက္ေန ့တြင္ဖမ္းဆီးခံသမဂၢအဖြဲ ့၀င္မ်ားျပန္လည္လြတ္ေျမာက္မွဳနွင့္ပတ္သတ္၍ FTUB မွ ေႀကညာခ်က္
Solidarity Center Condemns Arrests of Burmese Union Members
Solidarity Center Condemns Arrests of Burmese Union Members
The AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center and the global union movement are condemning the April 1 arrests of five members of the Federation of Trade Unions of Burma (FTUB) by the Burmese military junta. The union members were arrested as they returned home from the first national FTUB Congress.
No charges have been announced in the arrests. According to a statement by the FTUB, the delegates are likely being held in interrogation centers in the Rangoon area, and FTUB spokespersons believe they may be being tortured.
Solidarity Center Director Ellie Larson says:
These arrests are clearly unlawful and violate international human rights standards that the Burmese government has ratified. They are an insult to the global trade union movement and to workers everywhere.
The five union members served as nonviolent advocates and campaigners for workers’ rights and better wages and working conditions for workers in Burma. A key feature of the Congress was the reaffirmation of the FTUB’s commitment to ending military rule and the introduction of democracy in Burma. Union representatives from Southeast Asia, Asia-Pacific countries, Europe and North America attended the historic Congress.
The five persons under arrest include U Zaw Myint Aung, a teacher; U Soe Oo, Maung Tun Nyein and Khine Lin Myat, all textile factory workers; and Shwe Y Nyunt, a nurses aide and law student who is also a member of the FTUB Women’s Committee. In addition, a number of family members were arrested, threatened and put under pressure to compel cooperation from the five detainees.
“We join the International Trade Union Confederation, the International Labor Organization and the FTUB in condemning the arrests of these brave trade unionists,” Larson says.
Workers must be allowed to exercise their right to freedom of association.
This is a crosspost from the Solidarity Center websid
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[Ye Yint Thet Zwe] အလြမ္းသႀကၤန္
လြမ္းတယ္
ဟိုး တုန္းကသႀကၤန္ကို
ငါ့လိုပဲ လြမ္းေနမယ့္
တပ္ဦးက ရဲေဘာ္ေတြကို
လြမ္းတယ္ ၊
ႏွစ္ေတြ ႏွစ္ေတြ
အခ်ိန္ကာလ ျမစ္ေတြက
တိုက္စား၀ါးၿမိဳ
တန္ဖိုးထားရာ
ယဥ္ေက်းမႈဆိုတာေတြလည္း
အဲဒီ ကာလျမစ္ကပဲ ၿဖိဳခ်သြားခဲ့တာလား
ငါတို ့ကိုယ္တိုင္က
ကိုယ္ခံအားနဲခဲ့လို ့ ၿပိဳက်လာသလား
အေတြး၀ကၤပါထဲကေန
ရာဇ၀င္ေတြထဲက သႀကၤန္ကို
လြမ္းတယ္
သေျပခက္နဲ ့ ေရပက္တဲ့ သႀကၤန္ကို
လြမ္းတယ္
မႏၱေလး သႀကၤန္ကို
လြမ္းတယ္
သႀကၤန္မိုးကို
လြမ္းတယ္ ၊
“တႏွစ္တခါ ပြင့္လာတာ
သစၥာရွိတဲ့ ပိေတာက္ပါ” ဆိုစကား
အခုမ်ားေတာ့
ယံုတမ္းစကားသာလိုလို
လက္ေဆးမိုးေလး တၿပိဳက္ႏွစ္ၿပိဳက္
ပိေတာက္ေတြ အဆုပ္လိုက္ အခိုင္လိုက္
ခ်စ္ျခင္းေတြ ၿပိဳင္ခဲ့သမွ်လည္း
အခုမ်ားေတာ့
အိုဇုန္းလႊာ ပါးလာတာကိုပဲ
ယိုးမယ္ဖြဲ ့ရေတာ့မလို ၊
တကယ္တမ္း
ဘာမွမဆန္းဘူး ၊
တိုင္းျပည္ကို အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္သူေတြက
မင္းက်င့္တရားနဲ ့မညီ
ကတိေတြမတည္မွေတာ့
ရာသီေတြ ေဖါက္ျပန္တာ
ဘာမွမဆန္းဘူး ၊
လူေတြစိတ္ဓာတ္ ပ်က္စီးကုန္တာ
ဘာမွမဆန္းဘူး ၊
ယဥ္ေက်းမႈေတြ ၿပိဳပ်က္ယိုယြင္းလာတာ
ဘာမွမဆန္းဘူး ၊
မ်ိဳးဆက္ေတြ ကိစၥတုံးခံေနရတာ
ဘာမွမဆန္းဘူး ၊
ဆန္းတာက
ငါတို ့ေတြ ဘာမွမလုပ္ႏိုင္ၾကေသးတာ
အဲဒီ စစ္ေခြးေတြကိုယ္၌က
ကံေကာင္းေနေသးတာလား
ငါတို ့ေတြကပဲ
ညံ့ေနေသးတာလား
ပ်ိဳမ်စ္ျခင္းနဲ ့ မ်ိဳးဆက္ေတြ
ယဥ္ေက်းမႈနဲ ့ စိတ္ဓာတ္ေတြကို
ေအာင္ပြဲနဲ ့အတူ
ဒီမိုကေရစီ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္သစ္ဆီကို
ေခၚေဆာင္သြားဘို ့အတြက္
ငါတို ့အားလံုးမွာတာ၀န္ရွိတယ္ ၊
ဘယ္ေတာ့ ဘယ္အခ်ိန္
ဘယ္ကာလ
ေအာင္ပြဲရမလဲ မေမးနဲ ့
ေရာက္တဲ့ေနရာ ေရာက္တဲ့အရပ္ကေန
ကိုယ္လုပ္ႏိုင္တာ ၀င္လုပ္ၾက။ ၀င္တိုက္ၾက
သမိုင္းေပး တာ၀န္အရေပါ့ ၊
ဘယ္လိုပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္
လြမ္းတယ္
ဟိုး တုန္းကသႀကၤန္ကို
ငါ့လိုပဲ လြမ္းေနမယ့္
တပ္ဦးက ရဲေဘာ္ေတြကို
လြမ္းတယ္ ၊
ဲဲဲဲ
--
Posted By Ye Yint Thet Zwe to Ye Yint Thet Zwe at 10/06/2008 01:49:00 PM
Suu Kyi's US backers plead to keep sanctions
http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/world/5477015
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Congress supporters of Myanmar's democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi pleaded to keep sanctions on the military regime as a key senator said efforts to isolate the junta had failed.
President Barack Obama's administration is reviewing strategy on Myanmar , also known as Burma , whose ruling junta has crushed dissent and kept Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for 19 years.
In a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton , 17 members of Congress said they were "greatly concerned" by indications that the United States was considering lifting sanctions on Myanmar .
The lawmakers, led by longtime Aung San Suu Kyi champion Joseph Crowley, said that Myanmar's leader Than Shwe had shown no desire to engage with the world's only detained Nobel laureate.
"Than Shwe's regime continues to perpetuate crimes against humanity and war crimes so severe that Burma has been called 'Southeast Asia's Darfur,'" they wrote.
They noted that Congress approved a law last year subjecting the Myanmar junta to sanctions until it releases all political prisoners and starts dialogue on bringing in democracy.
"We urge you to join us in standing firmly alongside Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma's democracy movement," they said.
But Jim Webb, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Asia, said the United States needed a more "constructive" policy on Myanmar .
"Certainly the way that we approach it now I don't believe has had the results that people want it to have," Webb, a member of Obama's Democratic Party, told a luncheon at the Council on Foreign Relations.
"What I think we should be doing in Burma is trying to open up diplomatic avenues where you can have confidence builders... and through that process work toward some way where you can remove sanctions," he said.
State Department official Stephen Blake last week paid the first visit by a senior US envoy to Myanmar in more than seven years, quietly holding talks both with the junta and the opposition.
The State Department played down the significance of the meeting, stressing that the Obama team was still reviewing policy on Myanmar .
Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg said Wednesday the United States was seeking a common approach with Asia on Myanmar and said the six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear program could serve as a model.
Nearly all Asian nations maintain full relations and trade with Myanmar , distancing themselves from the sanctions policy of the United States and the European Union.
China is the key commercial and military partner of the junta, which crushed 2007 protests led by Buddhist monks.
The previous US administration of George W. Bush strengthened decade-old sanctions against Myanmar -- imposed under his predecessor Bill Clinton -- while his wife Laura was an outspoken critic of the military regime.
Senator Webb -- a Vietnam veteran who has also been a journalist -- said the United States should take a lesson from how it opened relations with China and Vietnam despite human rights and other concerns in the two communist states.
Webb said that when he returned to Vietnam in 1991 -- four years before Washington and Hanoi established relations -- the situation was worse than when he visited Myanmar in 2001.
BURMA: China’s Thirst for Oil Ignores Environment, Rights
http://democracyforburma.wordpress.com/2009/04/03/burma-chinas-thirst-for-oil-ignores-environment-rights/
2009 April 3
tags: Human Rights, Junta, Burma, Gas, Thugs and Thieves, oilby peacerunningBURMA: China’s Thirst for Oil Ignores Environment, Rights
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Oct 31 (IPS) - The largest island off Burma’s west coast is emerging as another frontier for China’s expanding plans to extract the rich oil and gas reserves of military-ruled Burma.
Initial explorations by a consortium, led by China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC), has left a deep scar on Ramree Island, which is twice the size of Singapore and home to about 400,000 people. ‘’They have destroyed rice fields and plantations when conducting the seismic surveys and mining the island in search of oil,’’ says Jockai Khaing, director of Arakan Oil Watch (AOW), an environmental group made up of Burmese living in exile.
‘’The local communities have been directly and indirectly affected,’’ he Said during an IPS interview. ‘’Hundreds of people have been forced to relocate as a result of the drilling conducted near their communities. The locals hate the Chinese; their world has become crazy after the Chinese arrived.’’
CNOOC has been pushing ahead with its work since early 2005, with no attempt to consult the local residents and showing little regard to such notions as corporate social responsibility, adds Jockai. The Chinese company, which is listed on the New York and the Hong Kong stock exchanges, has ‘’not conducted the required environmental impact assessments and social impact assessments that are recognised internationally as a must before exploration work begins.’’
To dispose the waste from its drilling sites, ‘’CNOOC workers dug shallow canals designed to carry the (toxic) ‘drilling mud,’ or wastewater containing oil, away from the drilling sites and into Chaing Wa Creek, which curves past several local farms before flowing into the Bay of Bengal,’’ states a report by AOW, released in mid-October. ‘’This arbitrary disposal can make soil in surrounding areas unsuitable for plant growth by reducing the availability of nutrients or by increasing toxic contents in the soil.’’
Concerns about the cost of letting China tighten its grip on the natural resources in Burma (or Myanmar) has also been expressed by other groups, like EarthRights International (EI), a U.S.-based group championing human rights. There are 69 Chinese companies involved in 90 ‘’completed, current and planned projects’’ in the oil, gas and hydropower sectors in Burma, EI revealed in groundbreaking report released in late September.
That number marks an over 200 percent increase in the number of Chinese energy developers thought to have had existed a year before. ‘’Given what we know about development projects in Burma and the current situation, we’re concerned about this marked increase in the number of the projects,’’ the rights lobby stated in the report, ‘China in Burma: The Increasing Involvement of Chinese Multinational Corporations in Burma’s Hydropower, Oil and Natural Gas, and Mining Sectors.
‘’China is using Burma’s military dictatorship to its advantage as it goes in search of oil and gas. There are no rules and regulations for Chinese companies to follow in Burma,’’ Ka Hsaw Wa, executive director of EI, said in an IPS interview. ‘’This will hurt the future of Burma.’’
Such criticisms come at a time when China has begun to show signs that the environment cost of its projects abroad cannot be ignored. ‘’The country lacked comprehensive environmental protection policies in its overseas projects, although investment had been expanding,’’ states a report released in mid-September by the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning (CAEP), according to the ‘China Daily’ newspaper.
‘’China’s overseas investment and aid mainly focuses on exploring oil and other resources, processing and manufacturing, and construction in African and Southeast Asian countries,’’ the English-language daily added. ‘’Without proper management, such projects are likely to cause environmental problems, the (CAEP) report said.’’
Burma, in fact, will prove to be an ideal testing ground, given that China emerged as the military-ruled country’s biggest investor in the country’s power sector. The money flowing in from such foreign direct investments and the sale of gas has helped to prop up a junta notorious for suppressing its people through many forms of abuse.
In 2006, the junta earned an estimated 2.16 billion U.S. dollars from sales of natural gas to Thailand, which accounts for close to half of Burma’s export earnings and is the single largest source of foreign earnings. In 2008, Burma is expected to earn 3.5 billion US dollars from export of gas, according to one estimate.
But little of these benefits trickled down to the country’s beleaguered people. Consequently, Burma ranks as one of the world’s least developed countries. And having an abundance of natural resources has not improved the power supply in the country for the people either. Regular blackouts are frequent in Rangoon, the former capital, and elsewhere.
The junta has profited in other ways, too, from China’s energy interest in Burma. ‘’Beijing has come to the junta’s rescue and protects it from criticism at international forums like the U.N. Security Council,’’ says Win Min, a Burmese national security expert teaching at a university in northern Thailand. ‘’A strong relationship of mutual benefit has developed since 1988.’’
In exchange for letting Chinese companies exploit its natural resources, the Burmese dictatorship has got military hardware from Beijing. They range from fighter jets and armoured carriers to small weapons, Win Min told IPS. ‘’The junta will open the country to China because the military regime needs Beijing more than the other way around.’’
(END/2008)
[Ye Yint Thet Zwe] ေၾကကြဲစရာေတြထဲမွာ ငါ့ကိုထားခဲ့
ကမၻာဦးအစ
အာဒမ္ က ဧ၀ ကို
ေထြးပိုက္ထားခဲ့သလိုမ်ိဳး
အိပ္မက္ကို
နင္သယ္ေဆာင္လာခဲ့တယ္ ။
ဘယ္အရာမွ မတည္ၿမဲဘူး
ေက်းဇူးျပဳၿပီး ေနာက္ကို
ေထာင္၀င္စာ မလာပါနဲ ့
မ်က္ရည္ေပါက္ေတြက
ငါ့ႏွလံုးသားကို တ စ ဆီ ေျခြ ။
လြတ္လပ္မႈ တန္းတူညီမွ်မႈ
ဒီမိုကေရစီ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္
အသက္စြန္ ့သြားတဲ့ ရဲေဘာ္
အဲဒီ ေအာက္ဆံုးမွာမွ
အခ်စ္ဟာ ရွင္သန္တယ္
နင္ မငိုပါနဲ ့ ။
နာရီလက္တံေတြက
မ်က္ရည္တာရိုး ရိုက္ခ်ိဳးေနၾကတယ္၊
စကားလံုးေတြက
ႏႈတ္ဖ်ားမွာ အလုအယက္ ဆြံ ့အ
မ်က္လံုး တလုံးက
မ်က္လံုး တလံုးကို ညိႈ ့ယူဖမ္းစား ။
ဘာမွာဦးမလဲ
ဟိုး အေ၀းႀကီးက ေျပးလာရသလိုမ်ိဳး
ေမာဟိုက္ ႏြမ္းလ် တိုးတိမ္တဲ့ အသံ
ငါ့ စိတ္ကို မိုင္ကုန္ျမွင့္တင္လိုက္တယ္
က်န္းမာေရးကို ဂရုစိုက္
သင့္ေတာ္မယ့္လူေတြ ့ရင္
အိမ္ေထာင္ျပဳလိုက္ပါ စကားသံအဆံုးမွာ
သံတခါးပိတ္သံနဲ ့အတူ
ရႈိက္သံသဲ့သဲ့ရယ္
က်ီးတအုပ္ၿပိဳဆင္းသြားသံသာ
ငါ့ဘ၀ရဲ ့ ေနာက္ဆံုး ။
Six-party Talks on Burma Proposal Gets US Support
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By WAI MOE
Thursday, April 2, 2009
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The US is prepared to tackle the Burma issue by joining six-party talks along the lines of those held to discuss North Korea ’s nuclear program, according to a senior State Department official. Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg told the National Bureau of Asian Research think tank on Wednesday that the US wanted a “collaborative and constructive” approach on Burma , saying nations with sway over the junta should avoid “recreating a mini version of the Great Game.” Steinberg said: “Viewing relations with a notorious authoritarian regime like Burma as a zero-sum game is in no nation’s interest. We want to discuss a common approach with Asean [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations], with China , with India and with Japan to find a policy that will improve the lives of the people of Burma and promote stability in this key region.” The US was open to setting up new “flexible” frameworks similar to the six party talks on Pyongyang ’s nuclear program, Steinberg said. Some analysts are skeptical, however, pointing out that the six-party talks on North Korea had not halted Pyongyang ’s nuclear program. The talks brought together the US , China , Japan , Russia and the two Koreas . “I do not think it [six party talks on Burma] is a promising idea to resolve the issues, but it could be very useful in making sure that this is an issue that gets the global attention it deserves,” said Jeff Kingston, professor of Asian Studies at Temple University, Japan. Kingston said he was not optimistic that the US could forge a common strategy with Asia, given that its concerns about human rights and democracy are not shared by India , China and Asean. President Barrack Obama’s administration is conducting a review of US policy towards Burma .
KNU demands international community rescue Burma
http://www.mizzima.com/news/regional/1928-knu-demands-international-community-rescue-burma.html
KNU demands international community rescue Burma
by Salai Pi Pi
Thursday, 02 April 2009 19:39
New Delhi (Mizzima) – An armed ethnic Burmese resistance group, Karen National Union (KNU), has urged the international community to take stern action against Burma's military regime in order to restore peace and stability in the volatile Southeast Asian country.
Saw David Takapaw, vice-president of the Karen National Union (KNU), which is waging the world's longest running civil war against the Burmese regime, on Thursday said the international community’s concerted and timely action against the junta is needed in order to address the political deadlock inside the country.
“We made the call as we [opposition groups and the Burmese regime], by ourselves, cannot successfully address the problem at this time,” Takapaw told Mizzima.
Takapaw continued, “For example we [KNU] have been waging war against the Burmese regime for nearly six decades but there has been no tangible result to come of it,” adding, “We think it is better if the international community solves the problem."
The KNU in its statement on the peace effort released on Saturday also said that the widespread use of drugs and the country's poor record on human rights, refugees, human trafficking and illegal migrant workers, have all negatively affected the international community and now threaten global peace.
“Drugs are spreading to the region and there are many illegal migrant workers staying in neighboring countries. Burma has become an international problem,” Takapaw implored.
Moreover, the KNU reminded the international community to be conscious of the true ideology of the Burmese regime when approaching them, warning, “otherwise their good intentions will be easily defeated.”
The KNU, and its armed wing the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), has held talks with the Burmese regime on five previous occasions since launching their campaign for self-determination in 1948.
The two sides were able to reach a verbal ceasefire agreement, commonly known as the “Gentlemen's Agreement," after the last round of formal talks between the KNU’s late leader, General Bo Mya, and former military intelligence chief, General Khin Nyunt, in the former capital of Rangoon in 2004. The talks, however, came to a standstill after Khin Nyunt was purged from the military hierarchy.
The KNU, in Thursday's statement, said, “Peace negotiations between the KNU and successive Burmese regimes have consistently failed because sincerity was lacking on the side of the regimes in power.”
Last month, the Burmese military, during Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya’s two-day visit to Burma, asked Thailand to persuade the KNU to contest the upcoming 2010 election.
However, Takapaw last month said the KNU will only hold talks with the Burmese regime if they are genuinely aimed at addressing the ongoing conflict in Burma.
“If the regime is willing to solve problems in peaceful ways, we are ready to talk with them,” said Takapaw, adding that the KNU will insist the regime first convene a tripartite dialogue and amend the constitution.
The KNU in their statement further reiterated that the government, without reform, will continue to violate the democratic rights of the people and commit human rights violations in the country well after the culmination of the 2010 elections. As a result, argues the KNU, the ethnic resistance will continue and the country will remain unstable – politically, socially and economically.
Japan's Myanmar refugees rally
http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/SE%2BAsia/Story/STIStory_357822.html
April 2, 2009
TOKYO - SEVERAL dozen Myanmar protesters rallied outside Japan's foreign ministry on Thursday, calling on Tokyo to freeze all aid to their country's military regime.
Some 30 asylum seekers from the isolated Southeast Asian country also known as Burma chanted slogans against the junta and held a banner that read: 'The Japanese government must stop supporting the Burma Army Regime.'
Myanmar's ruling generals say they plan to hold elections next year under a constitution approved last year, but critics have called the vote a sham designed to entrench the junta's rule.
'Japan, stop supporting the 2010 election!' the Myanmar nationals chanted, waving photographs of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner under house arrest in the capital, Yangon.
Myanmar has been ruled since 1962 by the military, which ignored a 1990 landslide win by Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy and has been condemned for widespread human rights abuses.
'I want the Japanese government to condemn the military junta and completely suspend all of its foreign aid,' said rally leader Myint Swe, 28.
'If they keep offering aid, even if it's some funding for training purposes, it may end up being misused by the corrupt regime.'
Japan in 2003 suspended most of its assistance to Myanmar other than emergency aid and some training funds, and it cut its assistance further after the regime cracked down on pro-democracy demonstrations in 2007.
But Japan refuses to join Western allies in slapping sanctions on Myanmar.
China, which often spars with Japan for influence, is Myanmar's main political and commercial partner. -- AFP
Thailand to Register 400,000 Foreign Workers
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=15423
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By LAWI WENG Wednesday, April 1, 2009
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The Thai Labor Ministry will register 400,000 foreign migrant workers to compete in the labor market, mostly in low-paying jobs shunned by Thai nationals.
Jackie Pollock, a founding member of the Chiang Mai-based Migrant Assistance Program, said “It is good for the Thai government to recognize the need of migrants. But they also need to stop the current crackdown and deportation of illegal migrants.”
The Thai Labor Ministry will register 400,000 new foreign workers, granting them permission to work legally in the kingdom, according to a ministry announcement on Tuesday.
Employment department director general Pichai Ekpithakdamrong was quoted by The Nation newspaper, saying: "We have decided to push for the registration of more alien workers because we have found that Thais are not interested in working in the fishery, construction and cold-storage sectors,"
According to the Thai Labor Solidarity Committee (TLSC), based in Mahachai in Samut Sakhon Province, most migrants work in the so-called "three Ds," in the "dirty, dangerous or degrading” sectors of the job market.
The group said there is a need for about 150,000 workers in Samut Sakhon Province, a center for the fishery industry.
“Thai workers don’t want to do the ‘three Ds’ because the work is unhealthy. But it is a good opportunity for Burmese migrants,” said a TLSC member.
Thailand is believed to have nearly 4 million migrant workers. About 500,000 are legally registered.
Most foreign workers live in highly concentrated areas like Mae Sot on the Thailand-Burma border, a center of the Thai garment industry, and Samut Sakhon, a hub for the labor-intensive seafood processing industry, located southwest of Bangkok.
According to the Labor Rights Protection Network, based in Mahachai, there are 200,000 Burmese migrants in Mahachai; an estimated 70,000 workers are legally registered while others are working illegally in hope of qualify for worker permits.
Recently, the global economic crisis in Thailand has forced many Burmese migrants to return to Burma because they can’t find work. The labor ministry estimated 2 million Thai workers are currently unemployed.
The Thai government earlier this year announced it would not offer illegal migrants a chance to register for legal status this year and have increased crackdowns and deportation. About 400 illegal migrants were arrested in Bangkok this week.
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy.org
Unions press G20 leaders to end 'casino capitalism'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/01/g20-trade-unions
Richard Wachman
The Guardian,
Wednesday 1 April 2009
Article
history
Union bosses representing 170 million workers around the world have called for an end to the "unleashed casino capitalism" that they say is to blame for 50m job losses since the credit crunch erupted in 2007.
Representatives of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), including Brendan Barber, general secretary of the TUC, met Gordon Brown last night to warn him against "a return to wheeler-dealer financial markets" when the economic crisis subsides.
Barber said: "Laissez-faire, unfettered market capitalism has been found wanting and we cannot simply go back to the old ways when, and if, the situation eases."
International trade union officials have been lobbying politicians ahead of the G20 summit in London tomorrow to secure more government intervention to safeguard employment and to ensure tighter regulation of global capital markets.
They want a new international fund established by richer nations to protect and create jobs, particularly in developing countries. Ebrahim Patel, head of the South African Clothing and Textile Workers' Union, said: "Poorer countries are being devastated by the slump, with people's lives ruined as unemployment goes from bad to worse. That is why it's essential that we get a united global response from G20."
The unions have held discussions with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy; Spain's prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and the German finance minister, Peer Steinbrück.
Barber urged European countries to boost spending to create jobs in "green industries" and match the federal funds that Barack Obama has set aside for growth in the US. "We need an [economic] stimulus to get us back to growth. When I look around Britain, you still see the ravages of the recession of 30 years ago; we don't want to make the same mistakes again."
Aso orders new stimulus, extra budget
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nb20090401a1.html
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Timing of general election could hinge on DPJ's reaction to move
By MASAMI ITO
Staff writer
Prime Minister Taro Aso ordered the government Tuesday to come up with a new set of economic measures, including the drafting of an extra budget, aimed at digging the economy out of recession.
Aso added that he may call an election before the enactment of the extra budget for fiscal 2009, depending on how the Democratic Party of Japan responds.
If the DPJ "refuses to approve the extra budget, I will make a decision depending on the situation at that time on whether to wait 60 days and make sure it is enacted or end the discussion and call for an election by presenting the extra budget as our proposal," Aso said.
The Lower House, where the Liberal Democratic Party-New Komeito bloc enjoys a majority, can override an Upper House rejection of the budget after 60 days.
Speaking at a news conference, Aso said that further economic steps are necessary to prevent the economy from hitting new lows, to secure employment to ease public anxiety and to invest in new fields so the economy can grow.
"I believe that people are demanding the mobilization of finances from the government," Aso said. "I will not be a slave to past circumstances and will do my best using bold ideas."
The package to come includes supporting the use of technology to increase solar power generation and production of environmentally friendly cars as well as promoting the country's strengths in "soft power" areas, such as animation, fashion and J-pop, to boost international business.
Aso added that it is necessary to look into cutting the inheritance and gift taxes to encourage the elderly to pass their assets on to their children before they die and stimulate consumption.
The scale of the package has not been decided yet, Aso said, but some in the ruling bloc have said more than ¥10 trillion will be necessary.
Aso's call for additional economic measures came just before his departure for the two-day Group of 20 financial summit this week in London. There, he is expected to introduce Japan's latest economic measures as well as stepsto aid developing countries, hoping to demonstrate tothe international community that Japan is taking action to overcome the recession.
The added steps are also an attempt to attract public support for the Aso Cabinet, which until recently has steadily been losing popularity since its inauguration last September.
Political analysts, however, called the added economic measures, including the drafting of an extra budget, only a "life-support system" keeping Aso in power.
Some political insiders expect Aso to wait at least until the extra budget passes the Diet before dissolving the Lower House. Many in the LDP have begun urging Aso to dissolve the Lower House and call a snap election once the extra budget is enacted.
"As I have repeatedly said, I am prioritizing economic measures over politics," Aso stressed. "I will decide when to dissolve the Lower House at an appropriate time."
Only last week the support rate for Aso and his Cabinet showed signs of recovery thanks to the political funding scandal that resulted in the arrest and indictment of DPJ President Ichiro Ozawa's chief secretary.
But critics speculate that the improvement is only temporary and that the support rate will drop again when the commotion over Ozawa and the DPJ fades.
The government is expected to submit the extra budget for fiscal 2009 with the economic measures before the end of the month for enactment by the close of the current ordinary Diet session on June 3.
Japan’s Jobless Rate Jumps to Three-Year High of 4.4%
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=acW.yLh.Xl5U&refer=home
(Update1)
By Toru Fujioka
March 31 (Bloomberg) -- Japan’s recession deepened as the unemployment rate surged to a three-year high, wages fell and job openings plunged at the fastest pace in three decades.
The jobless rate rose to 4.4 percent last month from 4.1 percent in January, the statistics bureau said today in Tokyo. The ratio of jobs available to each applicant tumbled to 0.59 from 0.67, the biggest drop since 1974, the Labor Ministry said.
Companies from Toyota Motor Corp. to NEC Corp. are firing thousands of workers, increasing pressure on the government to give more assistance to the nation’s jobless, most of whom don’t receive benefits. Prime Minister Taro Aso said the government plans to unveil a stimulus package in mid-April that will include aid for households.
“We don’t think this is the ceiling for the unemployment rate,” said Kyohei Morita, chief economist at Barclays Capital in Tokyo, who expects it to reach a record 5.7 percent this year. “Manufacturers are going to keep cutting costs by suppressing employment.”
Wages slid 2.7 percent as a record slump in exports forced manufacturers to slash production and overtime. Household spending fell 3.5 percent, a 12th monthly decline, indicating domestic demand is unlikely to make up for the collapse in exports. Purchases by consumers account for more than half of the economy.
The yen fell to 98.27 per dollar at 5:57 p.m. in Tokyo from 97.36 before the reports, and is heading for its biggest quarterly loss in seven years. The Nikkei 225 Stock Average fell 1.5 percent.
Sentiment Tumbles
Sentiment among the nation’s largest manufacturers probably tumbled to its lowest level in more than 30 years, the Bank of Japan’s Tankan survey is expected to show tomorrow. Exports fell an unprecedented 49.4 percent in February from a year earlier. Factory output slid 9.4 percent from January, when it declined a record 10.2 percent, a report showed yesterday.
Suzuki Motor Corp., Japan’s fourth-largest automaker, said yesterday it will shut some domestic factories for up to seven days next month to get rid of inventories.
Overtime compensation dropped an unprecedented 18.5 percent last month as manufacturers cut extra working hours by a record 47.7 percent, today’s Labor Ministry report showed.
Aso, speaking to reporters before heading to the Group of 20 summit in London, said compiling his newest stimulus package is his highest priority and the government needs to take measures to prevent the economy from “falling apart.” Since he took office in September, Aso has announced stimulus measures in two plans totaling 10 trillion yen ($102 billion).
Debt Burden
The government’s ability to spend may be limited as the nation’s debt burden is set to rise to 197.3 percent of gross domestic product next year, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in a report today. The ratio is the highest among OECD-member countries and almost double that of the U.S., where the ratio is projected to rise to 100 percent, OECD data show.
Some 77 percent of jobless people aren’t getting unemployment benefits, the highest figure among Group of Seven nations except Italy, whose data weren’t available, the International Labour Organization said in a report last week.
“The policy response has been pretty slow in creating a safety net for unemployment, which is putting downward pressure on the whole economy,” said Noriaki Matsuoka, an economist at Daiwa Asset Management Co. in Tokyo.
The jobless rate will reach a postwar high of 5.5 percent in the first quarter of next year, according to the median estimate of 14 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.
Oki Electric Industry Co., a maker of communications equipment, said it will cut administrative workers after weakening demand forced it to widen its loss forecast this month.
Harder to Find
New jobs are also becoming harder to find as companies try to contain costs. A total of 1,845 graduates had their job offers rescinded as of March 23, up 17 percent from February, the Labor Ministry said.
Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, this month said it will almost halve recruitment of graduates in Japan to the lowest in 14 years after forecasting its first loss in almost six decades. NEC, Japan’s largest personal computer maker, said it plans to cut new hires by almost 90 percent to 100 people.
NEC said in January that it will eliminate 20,000 jobs worldwide and Toyota plans to trim its workforce by at least 3,000.
“Japan’s labor market will keep deteriorating,” said Yoshiki Shinke, a senior economist at Dai-Ichi Life Research Institute in Tokyo. “The question is how much consumer spending will become a drag on the economy as wages and employment conditions worsen.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Toru Fujioka in Tokyo at tfujioka1@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: March 31, 2009 05:14 EDT
Villagers afraid to report forced labour to ILO
March 31st, 2009
DVB : The International Labour Organisation has stated that complainants of forced labour in Burma are at greater risk of imprisonment if they have affiliations with political opposition groups. The comment came after reports surfaced that villagers in Irrawaddy division had been forced to work on the reconstruction of a road, and were afraid to make a complaint to the ILO for fear of imprisonment.
“We heard about two men from central Burma who were recently thrown into prison for reporting a case to the ILO,” said one of the villagers.
Labour activist Zaw Htay was sentenced to ten years imprisonment in January after helping farmers in Magwe divison file a report to the ILO on land seizures.
His lawyer Pho Phyu, was subsequently sentenced earlier this month to four years imprisonment after defending him at the trial.
“So we are scared we might end up the same way if we complain about what happened in our villages,” the villager added.
Steve Marshall, ILO liaison officer in Rangoon, said that, although the vast majority of complainants received no subsequent action from the government, there were some that had.
“The ILO is of the belief that in those cases it is because they are firstly politically active, but are secondly active within the ILO’s supplementary framework as well,” he said.
The supplementary framework is the mechanism which deals with complaints to the ILO in Burma. It stipulates that the government must not harass or arrest people who report forced labour to the ILO or collect information on such practices.
“If someone who has got affiliations and is active in other political activity takes action then the risk of them having some retaliation taken against them increases,” he added.
The ILO reported last month that there has been no reduction in forced labour over the past year, despite ongoing attempts to tackle the problem.
beacon of hope for seafarers
http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=A+beacon+of+hope+for+seafarers&artid=535dTHLy5ok=&SectionID=lifojHIWDUU=&MainSectionID=lifojHIWDUU=&SEO=National+Maritime+Day.&SectionName=rSY%7C6QYp3kQ=
G Saravanan
First Published :
29 Mar 2009 03:24:00 AM
ISTLast Updated : 29 Mar 2009 09:15:49 AM ISTCHENNAI: The Maritime Labour Convention-2006, which has been designed to become a global legal instrument once it comes into force by 2011, will be the ‘Fourth Pillar’ of the international regulatory regime for quality shipping, Partha Basu, a maritime expert has said.
He was addressing the members of the marine fraternity during a seminar organised in connection with the National Maritime Day.
By consolidating the key Conventions of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) such as the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, 1974, (SOLAS), the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watch-keeping, 1978, (STCW) and the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, 73/78 (MARPOL), the proposed MLC-2006 is expected to become a comprehensive set of global standards based on the already existing 68 maritime labour instruments (Conventions and Recommendations), adopted by the ILO since 1920.
According to Basu, the Convention aims to achieve worldwide protection for all seafarers. It is estimated that there are over 1.2 million people working in this sector across the world. Until now, it was clear that these people, particularly those who worked on board ships (but are not directly involved in navigating or operating the ship such as many personnel that work on passenger ships) would be considered seafarers. The new Convention clearly defines a seafarer as any person who is employed or engaged or works in any capacity on board a ship that is covered by the Convention.
The Maritime Labour Convention, 2006, aims to establish a continuous ‘compliance awareness’ at every stage, from the national systems of protection up to the international system.
It covers the minimum requirements for seafarers to work on a ship, conditions of employment, hours of work and rest, wages, leave, repatriation, accommodation, recreational facilities, food and catering, occupational safety and health protection, medical care, welfare and social security protection.
Though there are several such conventions that are available for seafarers, but most of them are either outdated or very difficult to implement. In such circumstances, seafarers across the globe feel that the new MLC-2006 would be a ‘one stop shop’ for the demands in the maritime industry.
The Convention also establishes a strong compliance and enforcement mechanism based on flag State inspection and certification of seafarers’ working and living conditions.
To become a law acceptable to all countries, the MLC-2006, requires ratification by at least 30 ILO member states with a total share in the world gross tonnage of ships of at least 33 per cent. To date, the Convention has been ratified by Liberia, the Republic of Marshall Islands and The Bahamas, and by Panama and Norway. European Union countries are in the process to ratify the convention by 2010.
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Japan's management approaches offer lessons for U.S. corporations
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2008936833_opinb29jacoby.html
While Japan has been used as a cautionary tale in the U.S. economic downturn, guest columnists Sanford M. Jacoby and Sally Kohn argue that management approaches common in Japan offer lessons for U.S. companies as they recover.
By Sanford M. Jacoby and Sally Kohn
RECENTLY, auditors for General Motors raised substantial doubt about whether the automaker will survive. But while Japanese automaker Toyota is also taking a hit as global auto sales slump, analysts expect Toyota to ultimately prevail. It's not just the Prius. Another type of hybrid built into Japan's economic model blends corporate interest with the common good. Japan's cooperative capitalism is the key to Toyota's future — and ideally America's, too.
Promoting his stimulus package, President Obama said, "If you delay acting on an economy of this severity, [it potentially] becomes much more difficult for us to get out of. We saw this happen in Japan in the 1990s, where they suffered what was called the 'lost decade.' "
Yet while Japan has been used as a cautionary tale, in many ways even at the peak of its recession Japan remained better off than the United States today. Japan did not see its middle class disappear into swelling rates of poverty and unemployment. And Japan was not plagued by growing class resentment. Its inequality remained modest and its large corporations did not have bloated CEO salaries, including at those firms receiving government aid.
Why? Despite some changes in recent years, most large Japanese corporations still practice a form of capitalism in which different groups with a stake in the enterprise — owners, employees, managers, suppliers, creditors — work together to create value. Cooperation is possible because the various stakeholders have made long-term commitments to the firm. The result is a more holistic corporation, balancing short-term opportunities with long-term needs.
A large company in Japan is less likely to lay off thousands of employees simply to help its share price or to gut pension benefits to pay out higher dividends. In other words, Japanese corporations contribute to the common good rather than compete with it.
American corporations (including banks), under pressure from speculative investors, prioritize driving up short-term stock prices and dividends. Executives are "aligned" with shareholder interests through stock-based compensation. But this creates an incentive for executives to boost their own compensation by taking excessive risks and by manipulating share prices. Ultimately this harms the long-term health of companies and thus the long-term health of America's economy.
Toyota, for instance, refused to line investors' pockets and instead reinvested profits in capital improvements and in research and development, which led to the hybrid. By contrast, through the late 1990s, GM funneled billions of its profits to shareholders — as dividends and share buybacks — a fact often overlooked in discussions of what went wrong in Detroit.
In stakeholder capitalism, employees participate in corporate decision-making. While unions in both Japan and the United States have declined in recent years, the level of unionization in the United States today is about half that in Japan. And in nonunion Japanese corporations, human capital still is valued more deeply. Senior human-resource executives are far more influential than in comparable American companies, where it is chief financial officers who rule the roost.
And when corporations function as teams, fairness becomes an instinctive priority. In the United States in 2006, the average CEO earned more than 364 times the average U.S. worker — a huge increase from, say, 1980, when the differential was just 40 times more. Japan, on the other hand, has one of the lowest CEO pay gaps in the world, with chief executives earning on average 10 times more than the average worker.
Measurements of economic inequality find that wealth, too, is less unequally distributed in Japan. The United States ranks among the worst nations in terms of wealth inequality, at the end of the scale with South Africa and Iran.
Of course, Japan is not an economic paradise. About a third of the population works in "atypical" jobs that carry no promise of employment security. These workers, mainly women and young people, don't receive the same benefits the Japanese business model provides others. Just as women and African-American and Latino men face disproportionate discrimination in the U.S. labor market, Japan's inequities, while lower overall, still exist.
Nevertheless, lessons from Japan could strengthen the U.S. economy for generations to come. We can cut the gap between CEO and worker pay by giving shareholders a say in executive compensation, an idea that ideally will be ratified now that the SEC is under new management.
But we need to go further. For example, we need to revamp corporate charter laws to mandate stakeholder governance and corporate accountability, to adopt laws like the Employee Free Choice Act to strengthen employee representation and to tax unearned income at the same rates applied to wages and salaries.
Toyota, like Japan, is not a perfect example. The days of Japan as No. 1 are over. But it's worth noting that the first plank in the Toyota Way is: "Base your management decisions on a long-term philosophy, even at the expense of short-term goals." That's a good place to start as we rethink the American corporation.
Sanford M. Jacoby is professor of management and public policy in the UCLA Anderson School. He is author of "The Embedded Corporation: Corporate Governance & Employment Relations in Japan and the United States." Sally Kohn is senior campaign strategist for the Center for Community Change and a blogger for the Huffington Post.
Copyright © 2009 The Seattle Times Company
Workers’ group calls for employee focus in global crisis management
http://www.itfglobal.org/news-online/index.cfm/newsdetail/3153
27 March 2009
Workers’ representatives are demanding that the social and employment dimension of the world economic crisis be highlighted at the G20 summit next week.
At a meeting of the International Labour Organization (ILO) Economic and Social Policy Committee on 17-18 March in Geneva, Switzerland, Ebrahim Patel, vice-chair of the workers’ group, called for a focus on a number of areas in attempts to deal with the global financial crisis. These, he said, should include fiscal and wage measures to stimulate demand, social protection, observance of core labour standards and social dialogue and tripartism.
In a speech to the committee, Patel also outlined the group’s support for the concept of a “global jobs pact”, developed with the full involvement of trade unions and employer organisations. The pact should contain several key aspects, for example: public investment-based and employment-orientated stimulus packages; active labour market policies to help workers find decent work opportunities; extended and enhanced social protection provisions and stronger workers’ rights and the application of relevant international labour standards. The group wanted to see the establishment of a global jobs fund managed by the ILO to address the imbalance between developing and developed countries’ economic capacities.
Member states of the G20 should, he said, invite the ILO to the summit as a participant along with other multilateral bodies.
The G20 leaders meet in London, UK, next Thursday 2 April. The ITF is backing a demonstration on Saturday 28 March, Put people first, urging the G20 leaders to build policies to create a global economy based on the fair distribution of wealth, decent jobs for all and a low carbon future.
The global union federations, including the ITF, have put together a special publication on the economic crisis, which will be available next week.
More information about the demonstration: www.putpeoplefirst.org.uk
Japan Steps Up Efforts to Save Jobs
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1888083,00.html
By Coco Masters / Tokyo Friday, Mar. 27, 2009Labor union members gather in front of the Japan Federation of Economic Organizations building in Tokyo on Feb. 25, 2009, carrying signs that read "Do not lay off" to protest increasing layoffs of contract workers
Katsumi Kasahara / AP
Facebook Yahoo! BuzzTwitter Linkedin Permalink Reprints Related In a nation where a Japanese salaryman could count on lifetime employment as much as he could a bowl of rice with his evening meal, representatives of government, business and labor are rushing to staunch massive job losses as Japan's export-driven economy reels.
Earlier this week Prime Minister Taro Aso forged an agreement with the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) and the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (RENGO) to promote a range of measures companies could take — including reduced overtime, wage reductions and job transfers — to minimize layoffs. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare announced a subsidy scheme starting March 30 to help companies maintain their rosters of full-time, contract and temporary workers. (Read "Sony's Woes: Japan's Iconic Brands Under Fire.")
The global recession is hitting Japan, which depends heavily upon exports for growth, harder than any other developed economy. Trade figures released March 25 showed Japanese exports fell nearly 50% in February from the same month in 2008, the worst performance since Japan began keeping such statistics in 1980. Imports fell 43%, reflecting waning domestic demand.
Some of Japan's largest companies have been forced to lay off tens of thousands of temporary and contract workers over the last several months. Japan's unemployment rate for January was 4.1%, down from 4.4% in December, but economists warn the number of jobless could resume rising as the potential for layoffs at smaller companies are increasing. About 77% of unemployed Japanese, some 2.1 million people, don't receive unemployment insurance, according to a recent report from the United Nations International Labor Organization. In the U.S., 57% of workers are not covered by unemployment insurance, while in Germany only 13% of the unemployed receive no government assistance.
To quell Japanese workers' growing anxiety over job security, Aso, Nippon Keidanren and RENGO are pushing a program that has been in place since 2002 aimed at stabilizing employment levels. A key element of the plan is the provision of government subsidies to companies that have maintained an employment rate of more than 80% of their average headcount over the last six months. Subsidies for small- and medium-sized firms amount to annual lump-sum payments of about $3,050 for every full-time factory worker and contract employee kept on the payroll, and about $4,050 for every temporary worker. Large companies can receive about $2,000 for full-time and contract workers and $3,050 for temps. The subsidies are limited to 100 contract workers and 100 temp workers per company. When asked what industries will benefit the most under the plan, a RENGO spokesman said "All of them will."
Government, business and labor leaders also agreed to work toward creating more jobs in critical fields such as healthcare. On Thursday, Japan's major political parties proposed a 7% increase in nurses' salaries, which translates to an additional $410 a month for each nurse. If lawmakers approve, the increases would be paid for by the government at a total cost of $4.1 billion in the first year.
Japan's hard-hit automakers are already taking drastic steps to slash expenses while trying to preserve jobs. To reduce labor costs by 20% in its 2009 fiscal year, Nissan rolled out a program of reduced work hours, unpaid leave and provisions that allow factory workers and those in administrative positions to take second jobs outside the company. In April, Toyota plants in the U.S., the U.K. and Poland will impose 10% pay cuts across the board in conjunction with a blanket 10% reduction in work hours, according to Toyota Motors spokesman Paul Nolasco. Toyota temporarily closed some of its Japanese factories for 11 days in February and March.
Japanese lawmakers are expected to approve the nation's fiscal year 2009 budget on March 27, paving the way for the government to create a fresh economic stimulus package worth up to $203 billion — significantly more than the roughly $122 billion in spending authorized in two previous stimulus plans. Kaoru Yosano, Japan's economy minister, finance minister and head of the Financial Services Agency, has said he wants to have the latest stimulus package outlined ahead of next week's G-20 summit in London.
International Labor Organization: 90 million new jobs needed
http://ph.news.yahoo.com/star/20090326/tph-international-labor-organization-90-541dfb4.html
Philstar.com - Friday, March 27MANILA, Philippines - Nearly 90 million jobs are needed to absorb the new entrants in the labor market and cut short the ongoing global financial and job crisis, the International Labor Organization (ILO) reported yesterday.
In a report titled the “Financial and Economic Crisis: A Decent Work Response,” the ILO said close to 90 million new jobs are needed up to 2010 to avoid a prolonged jobs gap.
ILO Director-General Juan Somavia said governments also need to implement a “global jobs pact” to prevent the severe job crisis that could lead to a massive increase in unemployment and poverty.
“If stimulus efforts are delayed, the jobs crisis will be prolonged and employment may only start to recover by 2011,” Somavia said.
In earlier financial crises, Somavia said the labor market recovered only 4 to 5 years after the economic recovery.
At this time, Somavia said, the international coordination to tackle the crisis is weak.
A study by the ILO among 32 member countries showed that stimulus plans stand on average at 1.7 percent.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) earlier called for stimulus plans in the order of 2 percent of GDP (gross domestic product) in response to the crisis.
The ILO survey also found that the stimulus packages lean heavily toward financial bailouts and tax cuts instead of job creation and social protection and noted that on average, fiscal stimulus packages for the real economy are five times smaller than financial bailout packages.
“Only half of the countries examined have announced labor market initiatives and among those, the resources allocated to these measures are relatively limited,” said Raymond Torres, Director of the ILO’s Institute of Labor Studies.
The report also said that infrastructure programs do not adequately take into account the need to reinforce the existing capacity of businesses and skills supply – so that part of the infrastructure spending may result in higher prices, rather than higher production and jobs; some tax cuts will end in higher savings rather than higher demand, output and jobs; and little is done to help youth and other vulnerable groups.
Jobs in Lebanon
Meantime, thousands of jobs await Filipino professionals in Lebanon.
A group of Lebanese nationals yesterday said their country is in need of Filipino workers to fill the vacancies in the hotel, construction and other sectors.
Kader Al Jadid, Filipino-Lebanese Friendship community president, called on the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) to allow the deployment of other types of workers to Lebanon.
“Thousands of waiters, carpenters, technicians and other highly skilled workers are needed in Lebanon with the projected surge of foreign tourists,” Al Jadid said.
Al Jadid said Lebanese companies prefer Filipino workers because of their fluency in English and renowned brand of service and hospitality.
“DOLE should not let this opportunity pass for thousands of OFWs affected by the global economic slump,” he said.
But Labor Secretary Marianito Roque said the Philippine government will not resume the deployment of workers to Lebanon until the Lebanese government complies with the new hiring policy.
Roque said the Philippine government already submitted to the government of Lebanon the proposed policy that would ensure the protection of Filipino workers.
“We already submitted our proposal and if they are willing to comply with our conditions, we will resume deployment, but until then the ban stays,” he said.
Among others, Roque said the DOLE is demanding compliance with the $400 minimum monthly salary for Filipino household workers.
Al Jadid, however, urged DOLE to allow the deployment of professional workers while awaiting the approval on the hiring of household workers.
A majority of the Filipino workers currently employed in Lebanon are household workers.
DOLE imposed the deployment ban to Lebanon in 2006 after war erupted between Israeli and Hezbollah forces. Thousands of OFWs were repatriated but many opted to sneak back to Lebanon despite the ban. - By Mayen Jaymalin (Philstar News Service, www.philstar.com)
Vietnam becomes platform for Japanese companies
http://www.vnbusinessnews.com/2009/03/vietnam-becomes-platform-for-japanese.html
Mar 26, 2009
VNBusinessNews.com - Viet Nam is becoming a platform for Japanese companies’ activities just like Thailand, affirmed Chairman and CEO of the Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO) Yasuo Hayashi.
Speaking to Viet Nam News Agency correspondent to Tokyo during the JETRO’s regular quarterly press conference on March 25, Hayashi said earlier this month, his organisation and the Kansai Economic Federation (Kankeiren) jointly organised a visit to Vietnam for 88 Japanese businessmen to help them explore business opportunities and seek deals with partners in the Southeast Asian country.
“At first, we arranged the visit for only 40 businessmen, but eventually, the number of registered businessmen reached 88. This was the largest business delegation from Japan to Viet Nam so far,” Hayashi said, adding that the delegation, including 39 businessmen from small- and medium-sized enterprises, had visited Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi.
Regarding to the business performance of Japanese investors in Viet Nam, Chairman Hayashi said that Japanese companies have currently experienced hard time in Viet Nam, but he was still optimistic about the country’s business environment.
The JETRO leader said his organisation is considering concrete measures towards helping Viet Nam develop supporting industries, including inviting Vietnamese people to Japan to have capacity-building training courses. (VNA)
သစၥာေဖာက္ By Ye Yint Thet Zwe
ေကြးေနသလား
ေကာက္ေနတာလား
ေျဖာင့္ေနရဲ ့လား ။
သံုးရာသီ ေရစိမ္ခံရဲ ့လား
အနစ္နာခံရဲလား
၀န္ခ်ေတာင္းပန္းႏိုင္ပါ့မလား ။
ဦးေဆာင္ခ်င္တာလား
ေနာက္ကလိုက္ခ်င္တာလား
ေဘးတိုက္သြားေနတာလား ။
သစၥာရွိရဲ ့လား
သစၥာေဖာက္မွာလား
ႏွစ္ဖက္ခၽႊန္ေတာ့မွာလား ။
ေနာက္ေၾကာ ဓါးနဲ ့ထိုးမွာလား
ေရွ ့ကေန မ်က္စိထဲ သဲနဲ ့ပက္မွာလား
သြားပုပ္ ေလလႊင့္ ပလဲပနံသင့္ေနမွာလား ။
အာဏာရူးတို ့ရဲ ့မစင္နံ ့မွာ
ျမဴးတူးေပ်ာ္ပါး
အရွက္မရွိသူမ်ားအတြက္
ေမးခြန္းမ်ားက အဆိပ္ရည္မ်ားသဖြယ္
ေျပးစရာေျမမရွိသလို
ျပည္သူလူထုရဲ ့ တံေတြးခြက္မွာ
မင္းတို ့ရဲ ့သမိုင္း
ရိုင္းစိုင္းအက်ည္းတန္လာလိမ့္မယ္ ။
(၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ၀င္မည့္သူမ်ားအတြက္)
--
Posted By Ye Yint Thet Zwe to Ye Yint Thet Zwe at 3/26/2009 02:49:00 PM
Farm ministry dismisses officials over 'secret union' -JAPAN
http://www.japantoday.com/category/politics/view/farm-ministry-dismisses-officials-over-secret-union
Thursday 26th March, 02:52 PM JST
TOKYO —
The farm ministry said Thursday it has sacked two of its officials for concealing the existence of ministry personnel who received salaries despite being full-time union officials, a practice banned by the National Public Service Act. The ministry said it dismissed Hiromichi Matsushima, head of the ministry’s Personnel Division, and Hiroyuki Nishiura, a senior official of the same division, from their posts.
Farm minister Shigeru Ishiba told reporters earlier in the day that Matsushima has confirmed the allegation against him. The minister quoted the division chief as telling him, ‘‘If everything came to light, public trust in the farm ministry would have been lost. I wanted to protect the ministry.’’ Ishiba said his ministry will study how many of its officials have been involved in the concealment as quickly as possible. ‘‘The ministry can never have a second life unless it thoroughly reveals its various problems,’’ he said.
According to ministry officials, the division conducted a study on the ministry’s labor union in April last year, and confirmed the existence of 142 union members who were secretly working full-time for the union so they could continue receiving salaries as ministry employees.
But the division, in charge of issues related to the union, hid the findings by falsely claiming in documents it prepared for the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper that there were only 48 such union members, the officials added. The documents were to answer questions from the national daily about the union issue.
© 2009 Kyodo News. All rights reserved. No reproduction or republication without written permission.
တေပါင္းသက္ေသ-Ye Yint Thet Zwe
တေပါင္းဟာ
အလွ်ံတၿငီးၿငီး ေတာက္ေလာင္ေနတဲ့
သမိုင္းရဲ ့ မီးလွ်ံမ်ားနဲ ့
ငါတို ့ရဲ ့ရင္ကို
ကၽြမ္းၿမိဳက္ေအာင္ ျပဳစားေနေလရဲ ။့
၂၊
“အနီးကပ္ဆံုး ရန္သူကို
ရွာၿပီးတိုက္ၾက”
ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ရဲ ့
စစ္ထြက္မိန္ ့ခြန္းအသံ
တေပါင္းကိုလွ်ံၿပီး
ငါတို ့ရဲ ့ရင္ထဲကို က်လာတယ္ ၊
ေခတ္ျခင္းေတာ့မတူဘူး
အဖိႏွိပ္ခံရတာျခင္းေတာ့ တူတယ္၊
အသံျခင္းေတာ့ တူတယ္၊
ရင္ခုန္တာျခင္းေတာ့ တူတယ္၊
ေတာ္လွန္ရတာျခင္းေတာ့ တူတယ္၊
ႏွလံုးေသြးရဲရဲနီတာျခင္းေတာ့ တူတယ္၊
အသက္စြန္ ့ရတာျခင္းေတာ့ တူတယ္၊
ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္တို ့ေခတ္က
တိုင္းတပါးနယ္ခ်ဲ့ ဖက္ဆစ္ကို
ေျမလွန္ေမာင္းထုတ္ပစ္ခဲ့တာ
အားရ ေက်နပ္ ဂုဏ္ယူစရာ
တေပါင္းဟာ
စိတ္တက္ႁကြစရာ သမိုင္းစာမ်က္ႏွာေတြနဲ ့ ၊
ငါတို ့ေခတ္ရဲ ့ တေပါင္း
မ်က္ႏွာ မေကာင္းရွာဘူး၊
ကိုယ့္လူမ်ိဳး အာဏာရွင္တို ့ရဲ ့ ဆိုးက်ိဳးက
၁၉၇၆ မတ္လ မိႈင္းရာျပည့္
ေသြးေတြ ေျမမွာျပန္ ့က်ဲ
၁၉၈၈ မတ္လ ၁၃-၁၆
ေသြးေတြေျမမွာ ျပန္ ့က်ဲ နဲ ့
ကမၻာေၾကေသာ္လည္း ဥဒါန္းမေၾကႏိုင္တဲ့
၀မ္းနည္း ေၾကကြဲစရာ သမိုင္းေတြကို
တေပါင္းဟာ
အလိုမတူပဲ လက္ခံခဲ့ရၿပီ ၊
၃၊
ငါတို ့လဲ
ေၾကကြဲ၀မ္းနည္းမႈမ်ားနဲ ့
အလိုမတူပဲ လက္ခံခဲ့ရတဲ့
ေသြးစြန္းသမိုင္းေန ့ရက္မ်ားရဲ ့
ရာဇ၀င္ေႁကြး
အသက္ ေသြး ေခၽြးမ်ားနဲ ့
ေပးဆပ္ႀကိဳးစား
စြန္ ့လႊတ္ စေတးခံ သူရဲေကာင္းမ်ားရဲ ့
“ဒီမိုကေရစီ ရမွ
အမွ်ေ၀ပါ”
ေတာင္းဆိုသံမ်ား
အႀကိမ္ႀကိမ္ အထပ္ထပ္ ျပန္ၾကားေနရင္း
ေကာင္းကင္ဘံုက ေစာင့္ၾကည့္ေနတဲ့
သင္တို ့ရဲ ့ မ်က္၀န္းအစံုမ်ားေအာက္မွာ
ေျမေပၚမွ မေျခာက္ေသးေသာ
သင္တို ့ေသြးမ်ားနဲ ့ တိုင္တည္ၿပီး
တေပါင္းကို သက္ေသထားလို ့
ငါတို ့ သစၥာျပဳလိုက္ပါေပရဲ ့၊
“ ငါတို ့ေခတ္မွာ
ဘယ္လို အာဏာရွင္စနစ္ဆိုး မွန္သမွ်
အျမစ္ျပတ္ က်ဆံုးေစရမယ္ ”။
--
Posted By Ye Yint Thet Zwe to Ye Yint Thet Zwe at 10/21/2008 08:02:00 PM
High court says JNR was unfair to anti-privatization union members
http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewiStockNews/articleid/3145466
TOKYO, Mar. 25, 2009 (Kyodo News International) -- The Tokyo High Court acknowledged Wednesday that the now-defunct Japanese National Railways discriminated against employees belonging to a labor union that had opposed JNR's privatization in recruitment for privatized Japan Railway companies, a similar ruling to that given by a lower court.
Presiding Judge Toshifumi Minami ordered the Japan Railway Construction, Transport and Technology Agency, which has taken over parts of JNR's operations, to pay a total of 1.5 billion yen in damages for the majority of some 300 plaintiffs, who are members of the National Railway Workers Union (Kokuro) or their relatives.
But the court rejected the plaintiffs' request to confirm that they are employed by the agency, saying the plaintiffs ''would not necessarily have been recruited by JR, even if there had been no unfair labor practices (by JNR).''
It is the first time that a high court in Japan has given a ruling in such a lawsuit. Both the plaintiffs and the agency plan to appeal the ruling.
On the unfair labor practices, Minami said that ''whether to leave Kokuro or not served as a crucial factor'' in recruitment and that JNR ''detested Kokuro and had the intention of weakening'' the organization.
The Tokyo District Court ruling in 2005 also recognized the discrimination against the union and ordered a total of 1.41 billion yen in damages, while saying that ''there were reasonable causes for dismissal.''
The plaintiffs were among 1,047 people who were working at JNR, but were not recruited when the company was privatized in 1987.
JNR Settlement Corp. temporarily took them on and gave them three years to look for alternative jobs, but terminated their employment after the transition period expired.
The settlement corporation was dissolved in 1998 and parts of its work were inherited by the Japan Railway Construction, Transport and Technology Agency, which was established in 2003.
(Source: iStockAnalyst )
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