By Robert Tuttle May 22, 2014 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Qatar, which pledged to improve labor safety standards as 2022 World Cup construction projects get under way, was ranked among the worst violators of workers rights in a report by the International Trade Union Confederation. The Persian Gulf country was given the lowest score of five, which places it among “the worst countries in the world to work in,” the ITUC, a group representing trade unions around the world, said in its 2014 Global Rights Index. Authorities said last week that Qatar will amend labor laws after the death of dozens of immigrant workers on construction projects drew a storm of criticism from human rights and labor groups. Qatar, the world’s richest country per capita, is expected to rely mostly on migrant labor from countries such as Nepal and India to build $200 billion of roads, stadiums, a subway system and other projects before it hosts the most-watched sporting event. Story: The 2022 FIFA World Cup Could Be Deadly for Qatar's Migrant Workers In a category five country, “while the legislation may spell out certain rights, workers have effectively no access to these rights and are therefore exposed to autocratic regimes and unfair labor practices,” the ITUC said. U.K. newspaper The Guardian reported in September that 44 Nepalese workers had died in Qatar between June 4 and Aug. 8 amid “appalling labor abuses.” The Nepali Embassy later said 53 Nepalis had died. Amnesty International said in a November report that workers in Qatar often weren’t paid wages, were subject to “harsh and dangerous” working conditions and “shocking standards of accommodation.” The group documented the cases of dozens of workers who were prevented from leaving the country for many months by their employers. Story: Scenes From the Fast-Food Worker Protests Spreading Overseas The ITUC also gave a score of five to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain received a score of 4, a country with “systematic violations.” It ranked countries including Uruguay, South Africa and France among the best for worker protections. To contact the reporter on this story: Robert Tuttle in Doha at rtuttle@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lars Paulsson at lpaulsson@bloomberg.net Amy Teibel, Dana El Baltaji
ILO ဦးေဆာင္ေသာ ျမန္မာ့ အလုပ္သမား အဖြဲ႕အစည္းမ်ား အလုပ္ရုံ ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲ
21-Jul-12 http://www.phophtaw.org/burmese/index.php/news/local-news/1904-ilo-.html ILO ဦးေဆာင္ၿပီး၊ အလုပ္ရွင္၊ အလုပ္သမားႏွင့္ အစိုးရ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္မ်ား ပါေသာ Freedom of Association in Myanmar အလုပ္ရံု ေဆြးေႏြးပဲြ တခုကို ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕၊ ဒဂုံၿမိဳ႕နယ္၊ ဇီ၀ကလမ္း၌ ရွိသည့္ Summit Parkview ေဟာ္တယ္ Ballroom တြင္ ဇူလိုင္လ ၁၉ ရက္ေန႕ မနက္ ၉ နာရီခြဲမွ ညေန ၄ နာရီ အထိ က်င္းပခဲ့ပါသည္။ ယင္းအလုပ္ရုံ ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲသို႔ လူေပါင္း(၂၈၀) ခန္႔ တက္ေရာက္ခဲ့ပါသည္။ (ရန္ကုန္) အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာ အလုပ္သမား ေရးရာ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ စက္မွဳ လက္မွဳ အႀကံေပး အႀကီးအကဲ Ross Wilson အပါ၀င္ အလုပ္ရွင္ ကုိယ္စားလွယ္မ်ား ၊ အလုပ္သမား ကိုယ္စားလွယ္မ်ား၊ အလုပ္သမား ၀န္ႀကီးဌာနမွ အရာရွိမ်ား၊ စက္ရုံပိုင္ရွင္မ်ား၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရး လွဳပ္ရွားသူမ်ား၊ အလုပ္ သမား အဖြဲ႕အစည္းမ်ားမွ အက်ဳိးေဆာင္ ေရွ႕ ေနမ်ား၊ Yangon Crown Organisation၊ ေဆာက္လုပ္ေရးလုပ္သား မ်ား အဖြဲ႕၊ Good Family အထည္ခ်ဳပ္ စက္ရုံ အလုပ္သမားအဖြဲ႔၊ ေတာ္၀င္ျမန္မာ အထည္ခ်ဳပ္ အလုပ္သမား အဖြဲ႔ အျပင္ တျခား အလုပ္သမား အဖြဲ႕အစည္းမ်ားမွ အလုပ္ရုံ ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲကို တက္ေရာက္ ခဲ့ၾကပါသည္။ ေဆြးေႏြးပဲြတြင္ (DDG-Ministery of Labour) မွ ဦးသက္ႏိုင္ဦးက အစိုးရမွ ထုတ္ျပန္ထားေသာ အလုပ္သမား အဖြဲ႔အစည္း နည္းဥပေဒအား ရွင္းလင္း ေျပာၾကားၿပီး၊ အလုပ္သမား အဖြဲ႔မ်ားအား တႏိုင္ငံလံုး အတိုင္းအတာျဖင္႔ ၁၁၇ ဖြဲ႔ မွတ္ပံု တင္ရန္ တင္ျပထားေၾကာင္း ေျပာပါသည္။ ဤအလုပ္သမားမ်ား အဖြဲ႔ထဲမွ April 25/26 တြင္ ၁၄ ဖြဲ႔၊ ဇြန္လ 12 တြင္ 15 ဖြဲ႔၊ ဇြန္လ 23 ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ၁၀ ဖြဲ႔ကို မွတ္ပံုတင္မ်ား ထုတ္ေပးခဲ့ျပီးျဖစ္သည္၊ ထို႔အျပင္ ITUC အစည္းအေ၀း ေနာက္ပိုင္းတြင္လည္း အလုပ္သမားအဖြဲ႔ ၅၈ ဖြဲ႔ကိုပါ မွတ္ပံုတင္ ထုတ္ေပးခဲ႔ျပီး အလုပ္ရွင္ အဖြဲ႔ကိုလည္း ဖြဲ႔စည္းခဲ့ျပီးျဖစ္သည္ဟု ဆိုပါ သည္။ အလားတူ (UMFCCI-အလုပ္ရွင္မ်ား ကိုယ္စားလွယ္) ေဒၚခိုင္ခိုင္ႏြယ္သည္လည္း ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအေပၚ ႏိုင္ငံျခားမွ စီးပြား ေရး ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈမ်ားေၾကာင့္၊ လာမည္႔ August လတြင္ အလုပ္သမားမ်ားႏွင္႔ ေတြ႔ဆံုရန္ရွိေၾကာင္း ဆိုပါသည္။ ထို႔အျပင္ ယခုေဆြးေႏြးပဲြမွ ေဆြးေႏြးခ်က္မ်ားကိုလည္း လုပ္ငန္းရွင္မ်ားအား မိမိ ျပန္လည္ တင္ျပေပးမည္ဟု ဆိုပါသည္။ ATK စက္႐ံု အလုပ္သမားအဖြဲ႔မွ အက်ိဳးေဆာင္ေရွ႔ေန ဦးသူရိန္က ခုံသမာဓိအဖြဲ႔သည္ အလုပ္ရွင္ဘက္မွ လႊမ္းမိုးမႈအား ခံေနရျပီး အလုပ္သမားမ်ားမွာမူ အမႈ မရင္ဆိုင္မီကပင္ ႐ံႈးနိမ္႔ေနျပီးျဖစ္ပါသည္။ တတ္ေရာက္ ၾကားနာရမည္႔ ခံုသမာဓိ အဖြဲ႔ဦးေရသည္ ၁၁ ဦး ျဖစ္ေသာ္လည္း အမွန္တကယ္တြင္ ၃ ဦးသာ တတ္ေရာက္ ခဲ႔သျဖင့္ အလုပ္သမားမ်ား ဘက္မွ ထြက္ဆိုခ်က္ မ်ားအား မွတ္တမ္းတင္ျခင္းမရွိခဲ့ဟု ေျပာၾကားပါသည္။ အဆိုပါ ခံုသမာဓိ အဖြဲ႔၀င္မ်ားသည္ ဥပေဒပါ အတိုင္း က်မ္းက်ိန္ျခင္း မရွိသည္ကိုလည္း ေတြ႔ခဲ့ရသည္ဟု ေျပာၾကားသြားခဲ႔ပါသည္။ ထို႔အျပင္ ေတာ္၀င္ျမန္မာ အထည္ခ်ဳပ္ အလုပ္သမားအဖြဲ႔ အမႈေဆာင္က မိမိတို႔အလုပ္သမားမ်ား ညအိပ္ဆႏၵျပမႈျပဳ လုပ္ရာ ၁၀ ရက္သာ ခံမည္ဟု ေ၀ဖန္ခံရျပီး အဖြဲ႔၀င္မ်ား အလုပ္ခ်ိန္အတြင္း စကားေျပာေနသည္ကို ေတြ႔ပါက O.T အျဖဳတ္ခံရေၾကာင္း တင္သြင္းခဲ့ပါသည္။ စာခ်ဳပ္ထဲတြင္ Bonus မျဖတ္ပါဟု ပါရွိပါေသာ္လည္း လက္ေတြ႔တြင္ ညွိႏႈိင္း ေရးအဖြဲ႔အား သြားေရာက္ေျပာဆိုရာ စက္႐ံုသို႔သာ ျပန္လည္ေစလႊတ္ျပီး မည္သည္႔ညွိႏႈိင္းမႈမွ် မျပဳလုပ္ေပးေသးခဲ့ ေၾကာင္း၊ ဤသို႔တင္ျပေသာ အလုပ္သမားကိုယ္စားလွယ္ ၇ ဦးကိုလည္း အလုပ္ရွင္ဘက္မွ ဖိႏွိပ္မႈမ်ားရွိခဲ့ေၾကာင္း အလုပ္ရံုေဆြးေႏြးပဲြတြင္ တင္ျပခဲ့ပါသည္။ အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာ အလုပ္သမား ေရးရာအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ စက္မွဳလက္မွဳ အႀကံေပး အဖြဲ႔ အႀကီးအကဲ Mr. Ross Wilson သည္ တတ္ေရာက္လာၾကသည့္ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္မ်ားအား ေက်းဇူးတင္ရွိပါေၾကာင္းႏွင္႔ ေဆြးေႏြးေျပာဆိုမႈမ်ားအား မိမိအေန ျဖင္႔ အလုပ္သမား ၀န္ၾကီးဌာနႏွင္႔ ILO အစည္းအေ၀းတြင္ တင္ျပေပးမည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း နိဂုံးခ်ဳပ္ ေျပာဆိုသြားပါသည္။ Freedom of Association in Myanmar အလုပ္ရံု ေဆြးေႏြးပဲြကို ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ အလုပ္သမား သမဂၢမ်ား အဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္ (FTUB) ကလည္း ေထာက္ခံေၾကာင္း အေထြေထြအတြင္းေရးမွဴး ဦးေမာင္ေမာင္က ဆိုပါသည္။ “ က်ေနာ္တို႕အေနနဲ႕ ဒီလိုျဖစ္ဖို႕ကို ၁၉၉၂ ခုႏွစ္က ႀကိဳးစားခဲ့တာပါ။ အခုဒီရလဒ္ကေနၿပီးေတာ့ လြတ္လပ္တဲ့အလုပ္ သမားအဖြဲ႕ ဖြဲ႔စည္းေရးကို စနစ္တက် လုပ္သြားဖုိ႕ကိစၥ၊ ျပီးေတာ့ အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာ စံႏွဳန္းစံထားေတြ မီွဖို႕ကိစၥကို ဆက္လုပ္သြားဖို႔ လိုဦးမယ္။ ဒါမွက်ေနာ္တို႕ႏိုင္ငံရဲ့ အခုလို စီးပြားေရး ရင္းႏွီးျမွဳပ္ႏွံမွဳ ေတြ ဖြင့္ထားတဲ့ အခ်ိန္ကာလမွာ အလုပ္သမားေတြရဲ႕ အေျခခံ အခြင့္အေရး လယ္သမားေတြရဲ႕ အေျခခံ အခြင့္အေရး ေနာက္တစ္ခါ ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ ထိမ္းသိန္းေရးဆိုတဲ့ ကိစၥေတြ ေနာက္တာရွည္ခံမယ့္ စီးပြားေရး စနစ္ေတြ ျဖစ္ဖို႕ကို အေျခခံ အလုပ္သမားေတြဖက္က ထိန္း ႏုိင္မယ့္ အေနအထား ျပန္ျဖစ္သြားမယ္လို႕ က်ေနာ္ကေမွ်ာ္လင့္တယ္။ က်ေနာ္တို႕ အားလုံး ၀ိုင္းလုပ္ဖို႕ အမ်ားႀကီးေတာ့ လိုပါေသးတယ္” ဟု ဆိုပါသည္။ FTUB သည္ လြတ္လပ္ေသာ အလုပ္သမား သမဂၢျဖစ္လာေရးႏွင့္ အလုပ္သမား အခြင့္အေရး ရပိုင္ခြင့္မ်ားကို ILO ႏွင့္ အႏွစ္ (၂၀) ေက်ာ္ၾကာ ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္ခဲ့ပါသည္။ ဤကဲ့သို႔ ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္လာရာက ယေန႔ Freedom of Association in Myanmar အလုပ္ရံု ေဆြးေႏြးပဲြ ေပၚေပါက္ လာခဲ့ပါသည္။ ဤေဆြးေႏြးပဲြသည္ အိုင္အယ္လ္အိုႏွင့္ ျမန္မာ အလုပ္သမား အဖြဲ႕အစည္းမ်ား အၾကား ပထမဆုံး အႀကိမ္အႀကိမ္ အလုပ္ရံုေဆြးေႏြးပဲြ ျဖစ္ပါသည္။
ILO Welcomes Burma's Proposed New Labor Laws
Ron Corben | Bangkok 18 January 2011
The International Labor Organization (ILO) says it is encouraged by proposed legislation in Burma to allow greater freedom for labor unions, but remains concerned about the use of forced child labor in the military and private sector.
The ILO representative in Burma, Steve Marshall, speaking to reporters Tuesday, said Burma’s military is preparing legislation that will allow for legal trade unions, with rights to strike. Marshall said this is a further step in signs of economic reform.
The legislation is set to be presented before a new parliament elected last November and due to hold its first session in late January. Marshall said the legislation marks a major step in the country’s labor rights.
"Obviously, the issue of freedom of association, which is effectively the right of workers and people to be represented which includes the issues of, for example, collective bargaining, it would include the issues of the right to strike ... they are critical and if passed into law make a big change in terms of the way in which the society is able to develop," said Marshall.
The military government in Burma, also known as Myanmar, already has ratified the internationally recognized Freedom of Association Convention, which is the standard set by the ILO.
Marshall says, though, that while the introduction of the legislation is a step towards an improved labor market in Burma, the overall reform program remains in its early days.
Human rights groups say while unions and associations have been a feature of Burma’s economic and political life, they have been tightly regulated by the military.
Trade unionists also have been jailed for activities "not sanctioned’ by the military." Thailand-based rights group, Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma), says of the more than 2,100 political prisoners currently detained, 44 are labor activists.
The ILO’s chief goal in Burma has been to assist in ending forced labor and it has an agreement with the military government that enables complaints to be lodged with the organization’s country offices. Last year the ILO received 370 complaints, marking a sharp increase over recent years.
Marshall said the ILO remains concerned over ongoing issues of child labor and recruitment of child soldiers into Burma’s armed forces. He said there have been signs of progress in dealings with the armed forces.
"In the area of child soldiers - yes - there is a general positive move," said Marshall. "In the last year, for example, 73 children - as a result of complaints made to the ILO - were released and discharged from the military."
The military government recently announced a program of national military service for both men and women that may come into effect beginning in 2012.
Burma’s army, faced with problems of recruitment and desertion, has looked to underage recruitment using labor brokers. Marshall said the proposed national service is expected to have a direct impact on child recruits.
Marshall added that many children often are lured into forced labor due to poverty when families are unable to pay for the child’s education.
But forced labor remains a major problem across Burma, with rights groups citing villages forced to construct roads and other work for the military, while jailed prisoners also are recruited for local industries.
A further assessment of Burma’s labor practices is expected to take place in February, when an ILO mission, including labor specialists, will appraise the reforms and new labor legislation. http://www.voanews.com/english/news/asia/southeast/ILO-Welcomes-Burmas-Proposed-New-Labor-Laws-114145209.html
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Trade unions may be allowed back into Burma
RADIO AUSTRALIA NEWS
Girish Sawlani
The Burmese government is set to table new legislation that could allow workers to establish trade unions.
The proposal has been welcomed by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), which says it's working with the Burmese government to improve workers' rights in the impoverished nation.
The ILO's representative in Burma, Steve Marshall, says it's a significant move by the government.
"It is obviously extremely significant, the situation has arisen that the constitution that was adopted in 2008 has a provision that makes allowance for the right of persons, particularly workers to be represented, which would lead them to the situation of collective bargaining."
Since the Burmese military's crackdown on the country's trade union movement, many groups have been driven from the country or reduced to underground associations.
Recently, suspected trade unionists were still being arrested and imprisoned despite the government having already ratified the ILO convention on the Freedom of Association.
But international pressure has seen the government adopt a lighter approach to workers' dissent.
Since November 2009, there have been a series of strikes in Rangoon, with workers protesting and demanding higher wages - with little or no interference from armed forces.
And as far as the new legislation is concerned, Mr Marshall says the initiative is driven by the government.
"It was brought to our attention by senior government representatives that with the adoption of the new constitution, it was the intention to put those principles into practice."
'It is being driven from inside the government at a very senior level, which is excellent."
The latest developments come amid calls from Southeast Asian neighbours for Western nations to either lift or ease their crippling sanctions against Burma.
Moves to permit the establishment of trade unions could vindicate ASEAN's stance that Burma has made significant progress towards democracy, especially since the release of opposition figurehead, Aung San Suu Kyi.
But many, including Dr Myint Cho, an exiled Burmese national who now heads the Burma Office in Sydney, say they are still sceptical about the government's motives.
Dr Cho says he has seen such gestures before.
"I have seen it so many times before, when the previous regime formed a non-independent trade union under the control of the government. So they controlled totally the movement of the trade union in the past."
"Right now, because of international pressure for the workers' rights in Burma, the regime is trying to use this kind of initiative as a public relations move to relax international pressures."
Even if legislation gets passed through parliament, Dr Myint Cho doesn't expect the new trade unions to be genuinely independent.
"Under the current military controlled government, that kind of parliament is just a sham and it cannot operate freely,"
"So of course the pressure from the current military regime, the parliament will adopt some kind of policies in dealing with the trade unions around the world, as well as the International Labour Organisation. So I don't expect the newly formed trade union organisations will be independent and genuine."
Steve Marshall, from the International Labour Organisation, says while there will be scepticism his organisation is adopting a wait and see approach.
"We do need to put into consideration that this is a very major step and we don't know at this stage what structure will be put into place,
Whether it will be a full liberal trade union type structure or whether it will be one of the other models that exist elsewhere in the world which are slightly more constrained."
"That is something that we will be continuing to discuss with the government in terms of the structures concerned."
The bill is set to be tabled before the country's
GLOBAL CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE 2010 MILITARY ELECTIONS IN BURMA
GLOBAL CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE 2010 MILITARY ELECTIONS IN BURMA
APPEAL
To the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hon. Franco Frattini
To the Chairs of the Foreign Affairs Committees of the Italian Chamber of Deputies and Senate
To the EU Special Envoy for Burma, Hon. Piero Fassino
I strongly condemn the Burmese military junta, the sham Constitution and the unacceptable election laws which prevent the Burmese heroine, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the other over 2,100 political prisoners to stand in and cast their ballot at the upcoming elections, while the political parties – in order to continue to exist – must expel Aung San Suu Kyi and the other political prisoners and swear to protect and respect the “sham Constitution”.
These laws are the tragic confirmation of the total non-credibility of the elections and reveal the absolute lack of will, by the junta, to undertake a fast and effective transition to democracy.
These laws follow the imposition of a sham Constitution that will perpetuate the power of the military junta and which prevents freedom of political and trade union organisation, provides for the possibility of continuing to exploit forced labour and the continued violation of the fundamental human rights and guarantees the impunity of the members of the military who are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Alongside the Burmese FTUB trade union and democratic organisations, I denounce these elections as a further attempt by the military junta to keep a firm hold on power, albeit in civilian clothing, in an authoritarian and repressive manner, while the rule of law will remain a fiction used by those governments that are set on continuing to deplete the country of its natural, social and human resources.
I denounce the dramatic increase in repression of the people’s fundamental human rights, in murders, rapes, arbitrary arrest, forced labour, the use of child soldiers, and the tremendous worsening of the living and working conditions of people that has sparked large-scale strikes in the industrial areas of Rangoon, forcing thousands of workers to risk their freedom.
I support the requests of the clandestine trade union movement and all of the Burmese democratic organisations calling on the international community to subject the recognition of the upcoming elections to the following conditions:
1. the immediate and unconditional release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all the other political prisoners, and the protection of their right to take part and stand in the elections;
2. the ceasing of all attacks against the ethnic communities and democratic activists;
3. the immediate launching of a genuine and inclusive dialogue between the junta, the democratic organisations and ethnic nationalities, including a reform of the Constitution.
I call on:
• the Italian Government, Parliament and the EU Special Envoy for Burma to support the three conditions detailed above and to subject the recognition of the elections to their application, launching urgent consultations with the Burmese trade unions and democratic organisations;
• the Italian Government to commit itself to ensuring that the EU decides to further strengthen the targeted economic sanctions by including the financial and insurance sectors as well, with the prohibition to make new investments and implementing certain and effective control procedures. The sanctions should be applied flexibly, according to the positive or negative developments in the political process;
• the EU to promote these legitimate requests in its negotiations with the other Asian countries;
• the EU to actively call on the UN Security Council to approve a total arms embargo on Burma;
• the EU to support the recommendations by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Burma to set up a UN Commission of Inquiry on the war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the junta.
Italy must no longer remain silent.
ITUC Burma Conference 2010 in Tokyo held on 11-12 Feb.
(Tentative)
Statement by the International Trade Union Confederation Conference “Building
Solidarity with Burmese workers, Tokyo”,11-12 February 2010
The 5th international trade union conference on Burma hosted in Tokyo by the
JTUC-RENGO was held in order to prepare for the ITUC’s upcoming Congress in
Vancouver in June 2010, where the future strategy of the international trade union
movement with regards to Burma will be decided.
The Conference was a working session on all the strategic options available to the
international trade union movement ahead of the announced elections in Burma in
2010. The possibility that certain governments may shift their policy towards Burma in
the wake of the elections and the international trade union movement’s policy response
were discussed. In the absence of constitutional change and dialogue, the Conference
affirmed that the elections could not be considered legitimate, It expressed its firm
opposition to the 2008 constitution adopted by the regime, and called for meaningful
dialogue before elections are held.
The Conference reaffirmed the conclusions and the solidarity expressed in 2007 during
the 4th Burma Conference held in Kathmandu and called for a strengthening of the
commitment undertaken in 2007 for the restoration of democracy and to combat the use
of forced labour in Burma. The Conference welcomed the efforts undertaken by
affiliates in the region and globally to raise awareness with their governments about
workers’ rights and democratization in Burma.
Forced labour is still prevalent in Burma despite the ILO Commission of Inquiry in
1998 and people reporting cases of forced labour continue to be persecuted. Even after
the conclusion of the Supplementary Understanding in 2007, giving immunity to
victims and complainants, people have been arrested and too many remain in prison.
The Conference expressed outrage at the continued reprisals against complainants and
against the fact that the present number of detainees were as high as 23.
The Conference welcomed the holding of the first congress of the FTUB in March 2009
and the subsequent affiliation of the Burmese trade union to the ITUC and the
ITUC-AP in 2009. The Conference expressed the urgent need to address more
aggressively the situation with regards to freedom of association in Burma. The
Conference stressed that while it was important to maintain the pressure on the issue
of forced labour it should be considered, how the issue of freedom of association could be
given greater attention, especially within the framework of the ILO. It therefore
proposed tabling a complaint leading to the establishment of an ILO Commission of
Inquiry on freedom of association in Burma.
The discussion happened against the backdrop of an increasing number of strikes in
Burma by discontented workers and growing divisions within the military. In the course
of the Conference, the FTUB received information about a strike by 12000 workers
inside Burma.
The overall strategy within the ILO was discussed in depth, both with regards to forced
labour and freedom of association. The Conference reaffirmed its strong support for the
decisions of the ILO Governing Body and the Conclusions of the 2006 ILC Selection
Committee to pursue a referral to the International Court of Justice.
The strategy with regards to investment in Burma was the subject of serious
discussions. The Conference reaffirmed the commitment towards divestment and to
maintain pressure on all companies operating in Burma as their operations directly or
indirectly serve to prop the illegitimate regime. It was proposed that the different
database and information sources on pension funds and companies investing and/or
operating in Burma be better coordinated to bring more aggressively targeted pressure
to bear.
The Conference concluded that there was a need to aggressively follow-up on the call by
the ILO to Governments, Workers and Employers to take all “appropriate measures to
ensure that the said member cannot take advantage of such relations to perpetuate or
extend the system of forced or compulsory labour referred to by the Commission of
Inquiry… and report back in due course and at appropriate intervals to the Governing
Body” within the framework of its Resolution adopted in 2000.
The Conference reiterated the resolve of the international trade union movement to
support the struggles of our Sisters and Brothers in Burma and their capacity through
the FTUB to carry out their just fight for democracy and workers’ rights. The
Conference agreed a plan of action to strengthen the capacity of the FTUB by providing
support for a reinforcement of its structures. It finally committed to mobilizing support
amongst ITUC affiliates for the funding of an expansion of FTUB’s activities and
training programs.
Lesson Learnt from ABTUC-TUCB"ဖဆပလအတြင္း အတူရွိခဲ့ၾကစဥ္က ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ႏွင့္ ဆိုရွယ္လစ္တို႔၏ အလံလုပြဲတခု"
"ဖဆပလအတြင္း အတူရွိခဲ့ၾကစဥ္က ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ႏွင့္ ဆိုရွယ္လစ္တို႔၏ အလံလုပြဲတခု"
ကိုသန္း (ၾကည့္ျမင္တိုင္)
လြန္ခဲ့ေသာ ႏွစ္ေပါင္း ၆ဝ ေက်ာ္ ၁၉၄၆ ခုႏွစ္၊ ႏွစ္ကုန္ပိုင္းေလာက္အထိ ဖဆပလ နယ္ခ်ဲ႕ဆန္႔က်င္ေရး အမ်ိဳးသားလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရး တပ္ေပါင္းစုႀကီးထဲတြင္ ဗမာျပည္ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ပါတီႏွင့္ ဗမာျပည္ဆိုရွယ္လစ္ပါတီတို႔ အတူရွိခဲ့ၾကသည္။ နယ္ခ်ဲ႕ဘုရင္ခံ ဆာေဒၚမန္စမစ္ႏွင့္ နယ္ခ်ဲ႕ေသြးစုပ္ေရး စီမံကိန္းျဖစ္ေသာ စကၠဴျဖဴစီမံကိန္းကို ဦးတည္ တိုက္ေနၾကသည့္ အခ်ိန္ကာလျဖစ္သည္။ ဖဆပလ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ အလံေတာ္ေအာက္ရွိ လူထုလူတန္းစား အင္အားစုအသီးသီးတို႔သည္ လူထုဆႏၵျပပြဲမ်ားျဖင့္ အင္အားျပ တိုက္ခိုက္လ်က္ ရွိၾကသည္။ နယ္ခ်ဲ႕ဘုရင္ခံ ကြဲသည့္ပြဲ ျဖစ္သည္။
ဖဆပလ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ႏွင့္ ဆက္သြယ္ထားေသာ ဗမာျပည္ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ပါတီ၏ ဦးေဆာင္မႈျဖင့္ ဖြဲ႕စည္းထားသည့္ ဗမာျပည္လံုးဆိုင္ရာ အလုပ္သမားသမဂၢ - ABTUC (All Burma Trade Union Congress)၊ ဗမာျပည္ဆိုရွယ္လစ္ပါတီ၏ ဦးေဆာင္မႈျဖင့္ ဖြဲ႕စည္းထားသည့္ အလုပ္သမားမ်ား အစည္းအ႐ံုးအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ (ဗမာႏိုင္ငံ) - TUCB (Trade Union Congress – Burma) တို႔က ဖဆပလ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ အလံေတာ္ေအာက္ရွိ အလုပ္သမားအင္အားစုမ်ားအျဖစ္ အင္အားျပရန္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္က ေဆာ္ၾသလ်က္ ရွိသည္။
တေန႔တြင္ သခင္လွေကၽြက က်ေနာ့္ကို ABTUC တြင္ အစည္းအေဝး သြားတတ္ရန္ ႀကိဳေျပာထားသည္။ တတ္ေရာက္မည့္ အစည္းအေဝးက ဗမာျပည္လံုးဆိုင္ရာ အလုပ္သမားသမဂၢ ဌာနခ်ဳပ္တြင္ က်င္းပမည့္ 'ဖဆပလ အလုပ္သမား အင္အားစုမ်ား အင္အားျပေရး အစည္းအေဝး' ျဖစ္သည္။ ထိုစဥ္ ဗမာျပည္လံုးဆိုင္ရာ အလုပ္သမားသမဂၢတြင္ ဥကၠ႒ သခင္ဗဟိန္း၊ ကိုေအာင္သိန္း (စာေရးဆရာ ျမေဒါင္းညိဳ)၊ ဒုတိယ ဥကၠ႒ သခင္ဗတင္ (လက္သီးပုန္း)၊ အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမွဴး ေက်ာ္ၿငိမ္း (မင္းဘူးကိုခ်မ္းသာ) တြဲဖက္အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမွဴး၊ အလုပ္အမႈေဆာင္မ်ားျဖစ္သည့္ မစၥတာရာဂ်န္ (ဆရာေအာင္ႏိုင္)၊ သခင္လွၿမိဳင္ (ဗိုလ္မွဴးရန္ေအာင္ - ရဲေဘာ္သံုးက်ိပ္)၊ သခင္ခ်စ္ (ဇင္ခ်စ္)၊ မစၥတာမူကာဂ်ီ၊ ေဒါက္တာနက္(သ္)၊ သခင္စိုး၊ ဦးကိုကိုႀကီး (ေနာင္ဗမာျပည္ ဆိုရွယ္လစ္ပါတီ ဥကၠ႒)တို႔ ျဖစ္သည္။
က်ေနာ္တို႔ အလုပ္သမားအစည္းအ႐ံုးမ်ားအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ (ဗမာႏိုင္ငံ)တြင္ သခင္လြင္ ဥကၠ႒၊ သခင္လွေကၽြ၊ သခင္လူေအး ဒုတိယ ဥကၠ႒မ်ား၊ ကိုတင္ၫြန္႔ အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမွဴး၊ ကိုဟုတ္ၾကည္ (ေငြထိန္း)၊ ဗဟိုအလုပ္အမႈေဆာင္မ်ားျဖစ္သည့္ ရဲေဘာ္ေသာင္းစိန္ (ေမာ္လၿမိဳင္) [ခ်စ္တီယား သတ္မႈျဖင့္ ႀကိဳးမိန္႔မွ လႊတ္လာသူ]တို႔သာ မွတ္မိသည္။ ကိုမ်ိဳးျမင့္ႏွင့္ ကိုသန္းေငြ (ဘီေအအိုဒီ) တို႔က ေနာက္မွ အလုပ္အမႈေဆာင္ ျဖစ္လာၾကသည္။
အစည္းအေဝး တတ္ရန္ ဒုတိယဥကၠ႒ သခင္လွေကၽြက က်ေနာ့္ကို ေခၚျခင္းမွာ က်ေနာ္သည္ ရန္ကုန္ခ႐ိုင္ ဆိုရွယ္လစ္ပါတီ အလုပ္အမႈေဆာင္ ျဖစ္ေနျခင္းေၾကာင့္ ျဖစ္သည္။ သခင္လွေကၽြသည္ ဝါရင့္ႏိုင္ငံေရးသမားႀကီး ျဖစ္သည္။ က်ေနာ္ကေတာ့ ေက်ာင္းသားသမဂၢ၊ အာရွလူငယ္၊ ျပည္သူ႔အေရးေတာ္ပံုပါတီဝင္မွ ဆိုရွယ္လစ္ပါတီဝင္ ျဖစ္လာသူ၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အေတြ႕အၾကံဳ နည္းေသာသူ ျဖစ္သည္။ ဆိုရွယ္လစ္ပါတီထဲတြင္ အမည္ထြက္စ ျပဳေနသည့္ သေဘာတရား သင္တန္းဆရာ ေပါက္စ၊ အသက္ ၂ဝ ပင္ မရွိေသး၊ ဂုိဏ္းဂဏစိတ္ မကင္းေသး။
ABTUC ဘက္မွ သခင္ဗတင္ႏွင့္ မစၥတာမူကာဂ်ီတို႔ ျဖစ္သည္။ ရန္ကုန္ခ႐ိုင္ ကြန္ျမဴနစ္တီပါတီမွ ရဲေဘာ္ေအာင္ဝင္းလား၊ မမွတ္မိေတာ့။ TUCB ဘက္မွ သခင္လွေကၽြ၊ ရဲေဘာ္ေသာင္းၾကည္တို႔ ျဖစ္ၾကသည္။ ရန္ကုန္ခ႐ိုင္ ဆိုရွယ္လစ္ပါတီမွ က်ေနာ္။
အစည္းအေဝး စေတာ့ အလုပ္သမားသမဂၢႀကီး ႏွစ္ခုတို႔မွ အလုပ္သမားအင္အားကို အမ်ားဆံုး ထုတ္ျပဖို႔လည္း သေဘာတူၾကသည္။ အလုပ္သမားထု အစည္းအေဝး အခမ္းအနားတြင္ ဘယ္အလံထားမလဲ ေဆြးေႏြးၾကသည္။ အသီးသီးေသာ အစည္းအ႐ံုးမ်ားႏွင့္ သမဂၢမ်ား မိမိတို႔ဆိုင္ရာ အလံမ်ားကို လႊင့္ထူလာႏိုင္ရန္လည္း သေဘာတူသည္။ သို႔ေသာ္ ဖဆပလ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ အလံတခုတည္းကို စင္ျမင့္ေနာက္ခံ လုပ္မွာလား။ ဖဆပလ အလံကို အလုပ္သမား အစည္းအ႐ံုးႏွင့္ အလုပ္သမားသမဂၢ အလံမ်ားက ဝိုင္းရံမလား၊ ေဆြးေႏြးရာတြင္ သေဘာတူညီခ်က္ မရၾက။ ေဆြးေႏြးရင္း အလံကို ထိပါးသည့္ စကားမ်ား တစြန္းတစ ထြက္လာသည္။ ABTUC အလံက တူႏွင့္တံစဥ္အလံ ျဖစ္သည္။ လက္ဝဲေထာင့္တြင္ ၾကယ္ျဖဴက လမ္းၫႊန္ၾကယ္၊ တူႏွင့္တံစဥ္က အလုပ္သမား၊ ေတာင္သူလယ္သမားကို ကိုယ္စားျပဳသည္။ ဟုတ္လို႔၊ ဘာမွ ေျပာစရာမရွိ။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ TUCB အလံက်ေတာ့ေရာ၊ လက္ဝဲေထာင့္ လမ္းၫႊန္ၾကယ္ျဖဴႏွင့္ ဗမာ့ကာကြယ္ေရးတပ္မေတာ္ ဦးထုပ္တံဆိပ္ ေဒါင္းကို ေဖာက္ထည့္ထားၿပီး တံစဥ္ မပါဘဲ တူႏွစ္ေခ်ာင္းသာ ပါသည္။ ေတာင္သူလယ္သမားအစည္းအ႐ံုး အလံက်ေတာ့ ဗမာ့ကာကြယ္ေရးတပ္မေတာ္ ေဒါင္းတံဆိပ္ အလယ္မွ ေဖာက္ထားသည့္ လမ္းၫႊန္ၾကယ္ႏွင့္တံစဥ္ တေခ်ာင္းတည္း။ တူ မပါ။ က်ေနာ္ အၾကည့္ရကပ္သည္။ အလံမ်ား သတ္မွတ္စဥ္က က်ေနာ္ ပါတီ အေရးပါသည့္ အေနအထားသို႔ မေရာက္ေသး။ ၿမိဳ႕နယ္အဆင့္မွာသာ ရွိအုန္းမည္။ ထို႔အျပင္ တူတံစဥ္ အမွတ္အသားသည္ ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ ကိုယ္စားျပဳေလ့ရွိ၍ အလံ စတင္ေ႐ြးခ်ယ္စဥ္က ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ႏွင့္ မတူေအာင္ တူတံစဥ္ကို မေ႐ြးတာ ပါခ်င္ ပါပါလိမ့္မည္။ က်ေနာ့္အေတြး ျဖစ္ပါသည္။ သို႔ေသာ္ ၾကယ္ႏွင့္တူ၊ ၾကယ္ႏွင့္တံစဥ္ သက္သက္က မ်က္စိထဲမွာ ၾကည့္မေကာင္းတာကေတာ့ အမွန္ျဖစ္သည္။ ဒါက က်ေနာ့္အေတြးႏွင့္ က်ေနာ့္အျမင္။
အစည္းအေဝးမွာ ေျပာၾကဆိုၾကေတာ့ တူတံစဥ္က အလုပ္သမားကို အမွတ္အသားျပဳသည့္ အလံဟု ABTUC မွ သခင္ဗတင္ ေျပာတာက မွန္ေနသည္။ သို႔ေသာ္ က်ေနာ္တို႔အလံကို ထိပါးရိကပါး ေျပာေတာ့လည္း မခံခ်င္၊ သည္ေတာ့ က်ေနာ္ဆိုသည့္ ေထာင့္မက်ိဳးသည့္ လူက "ခင္ဗ်ားတို႔ အလံက တံစဥ္ႀကီး ပါေနေတာ့ အလုပ္သမားအလံ စစ္စစ္မဟုတ္ဘူး။ အလုပ္သမား လယ္သမားအလံ ျဖစ္ေနတယ္။ အခု ဖဆပလ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္က ျပဳလုပ္မယ့္ အင္အားျပပြဲဟာ အလုပ္သမားအင္အားျပပြဲ႔၊ ေတာင္သူလယ္သမား မပါဘူး" ဟု ကပ္ေျပာသည္။ က်ေနာ္ ကပ္ေျပာသည့္ စကားသည္လည္း ဟုတ္ေနေတာ့ သခင္ဗတင္ ေဒါပြသြားသည္။
"ခင္ဗ်ားေျပာတဲ့ မူသေဘာအရဆိုလွ်င္ ခင္ဗ်ားတို႔ ဖြဲ႕မယ့္ ေဗဒင္ဆရာမ်ား အစည္းအ႐ံုးမွာ ၾကယ္တလံုးနဲ႔ ေက်ာက္သင္ပုန္း တခ်ပ္၊ ျမဴနီစီပါယ္ အလုပ္သမား အစည္းအ႐ံုးမွာ ၾကယ္တလံုးႏွင့္ တံျမက္စည္း တေခ်ာင္းထည့္" စသည္ျဖင့္ ေျပာပါေလေတာ့သည္။ က်ေနာ္ကလည္း ကပ္ေျပာမည့္သာ ေျပာသည္။ ကိုယ္ဟာက အဟုတ္ မဟုတ္သည္ကို သိသည္။ က်ေနာ္ကိုယ္တိုင္ သခင္ဗတင္ အေျပာကို သေဘာက်ၿပီး တဟားဟား ရယ္သည္။ သည္ေတာ့ သခင္ဗတင္ စိတ္ေျပသြားဟန္ တူသည္။ သခင္လွေကၽြကေတာ့ က်ေနာ့္ သက္သက္႐ြဲ႕ေျပာေနတာကို သိၿပီး "ေတာ္ပါေတာ့ဗ်ာ" ဟု ေျပာသည္။ မစၥတာမူကာဂ်ီကေတာ့ နားေထာင္ေနသည္။ ဘာမွ ဝင္မေျပာ။
က်ေနာ္လည္း ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ပါတီက ရဲေဘာ္မ်ားႏွင့္ ယခု တႀကိမ္သာ အျငင္းခံု ျဖစ္ဖူးသည္။ အမ်ားအားျဖင့္ က်ေနာ္ႏွင့္ ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ပါတီက ရဲေဘာ္မ်ားႏွင့္ သင့္ျမတ္သည္က မ်ားသည္။ ရန္ကုန္ခ႐ိုင္ ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ပါတီမွ ရဲေဘာ္သာၫြန္႔၊ ရဲေဘာ္တင္ေစာတို႔ႏွင့္ သိကၽြမ္းသည္။ ေနာင္တြင္ ပထမ အေရွ႕ေျမာက္စစ္ေဒသမွဴး ျဖစ္လာသူ ကိုစိုးသိမ္းႏွင့္လည္း စစ္ၿပီးခါစတုန္းက ၾကည့္ျမင္တိုင္တြင္ သိခဲ့ဖူးသည္။
သခင္ဗတင္ ဆိုလွ်င္ က်ေနာ့္ထက္ ဝါရင့္သမာၻရင့္ ပုဂိၢဳလ္ ျဖစ္သည္။ သခင္ဘဝတြင္ေရာ ဗမာ့ လြတ္လပ္ေရး တပ္မေတာ္ - ဘီအိုင္ေအ ဘဝတြင္ပါ အဆင့္ျမင့္တာဝန္မ်ား ထမ္းေဆာင္ခဲ့ရသူ ျဖစ္သည္။ က်ေနာ္ကလည္း အရွင္ေမြး ေန႔ခ်င္းႀကီးသူ ျဖစ္သည္။ သခင္ဗတင္ မ်က္စိထဲတြင္ က်ေနာ့္ကို မေလာက္ေလး မေလာက္စားဟု ထင္ျမင္မည္။ ေနာက္ေတာ့မွ သူတို႔ကို မခန္႔ေလးစား ေျပာသည့္ ဆိုရွယ္လစ္ေပါက္စ က်ေနာ့္အေၾကာင္း ေမးယူရလိမ့္မည္။ လက္ေဝွ႔ စကားျဖင့္ ေျပာရလွ်င္ က်ေနာ္က ဘင္တန္ဝိတ္တန္းမွ ဟဲဗီးဝိတ္တန္းသို႔ တတ္ထိုးသူဟု ျမင္ေကာင္း ျမင္ပါလိမ့္မည္။ ဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးမႈ မညီညာေသာ အေျခအေနတြင္ ဒါမ်ိဳးေတြ ျဖစ္ႏိုင္သည္။
သခင္ဗတင္ႏွင့္ ဗမာျပည္ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ပါတီတို႔ႏွင့္ ဆက္ႏြယ္မႈကိုေတာ့ က်ေနာ္ သိပ္ထဲထဲဝင္ဝင္ မသိ။ ရင္းရင္းႏွီးႏွီးလည္း မဆက္ဆံဘူး။ ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ပါတီ လက္နက္ကိုင္ေတာ့ ပါသြား မသြားပင္ က်ေနာ္မသိ။ သခင္ဗတင္ႏွင္ ဗိုလ္မွဴးႀကီးလက်္ာတို႔ အလြန္ရင္းႏွီးေၾကာင္းေတာ့ က်ေနာ္ သိသည္။ ဗိုလ္လက်္ာပိုင္ မုတၲမ ကုမၸဏီတြင္လည္း သခင္ဗတင္ အဆင့္ျမင့္တာဝန္ ထမ္းေဆာင္ခဲ့သည္ကို ဦးသိန္းေဖျမင့္က က်ေနာ့္ကို ေျပာျပခဲ့ဖူးသည္။ ဦးသိန္ေဖျမင့္သည္ "ေခတ္မီသူတိုင္း ပင္လယ္ငါး စားသည္" ဆိုေသာ ေက်ာ္ၾကားသည့္ မုတၲမ ပင္လယ္ငါးဖမ္း ကုမၸဏီ၏ ေၾကာ္ျငာေဆာင္ပုဒ္ကို ေရးသားခဲ့သူ ျဖစ္သည္။
က်ေနာ္ အထက္တြင္ ေဖာ္ျပခဲ့သည့္ အလံလု၊ အလံၿပိဳင္ပြဲ ျဖစ္ခဲ့ေသာ ဖဆပလ အလံေတာ္ေအာက္ အလုပ္သမားအားျပပြဲအၿပီးတြင္ ဘာရလဒ္မွ မရရွိခဲ့။ ေနာက္ထပ္ အစည္းအေဝး ေခၚျဖစ္သလား က်ေနာ္ မမွတ္မိေတာ့။
တခု ေသခ်ာတာကေတာ့ ဖဆပလ အလံေတာ္ေအာက္ အလုပ္သမား အားျပပြဲကို ABTUC ႏွင့္ TUCB တို႔ ပူးတြဲ မလုပ္ျဖစ္ေတာ့ဘဲ သီးျခားစီခြဲ၍ လုပ္ခဲ့ၾကသည္။
က်ေနာ္ ဤေဆာင္းပါကို ေရးသည္မွာ အဓိပၸာယ္မရွိ ေညာင္ျမစ္တူး ပုတ္သင္ဥ ေဖာ္ျခင္းမဟုတ္။ သမိုင္းသင္ခန္းစာ ယူေစလို၍ ျဖစ္သည္။ က်ေနာ့္လို အထအန ေကာက္ၿပီး ျငင္းခံုမည့္အစား ညီၫြတ္စြာ ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္႐ြက္ႏိုင္မည့္ အေျခအေနမ်ိဳး ဖန္တီးယူႏိုင္ပါသည္။
ဥပမာအားျဖင့္၊ ဖဆပလ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္၏ ဦးေဆာင္မႈျဖင့္ က်င္းပမည့္ အစည္းအေဝးျဖစ္၍ ဖဆပလ အလံေတာ္ကို အလယ္ဗဟို ခပ္ျမင့္ျမင့္ထားၿပီး ABTUC ႏွင့္ TUCB အလံမ်ားကို ေဘးမွ ခပ္ေစာင္းေစာင္းရံၿပီး ထားရွိႏိုင္သည္။ ယင္းေနာက္ အလုပ္သမားအင္အားျပ အစည္းအေဝး တတ္ေရာက္လာၾကသည့္ အလုပ္သမားသမဂၢမ်ားႏွင့္ အလုပ္သမားအစည္းအ႐ံုးမ်ားက မိမိတို႔ အလံမ်ားကို ကိုင္ေဆာင္လာႏိုင္ၾကသည္ဟု ေဆြးေႏြးၾကမည္ဆိုလွ်င္ ၿပီးသည္။ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေအာင္ဆန္း အလိုဆႏၵအတိုင္းလည္း ျဖစ္သည္။ ခုေတာ့ အလံၿပိဳင္ပြဲကို ဂိုဏ္းဂဏ အစြဲအလမ္းျဖင့္ ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၾကသျဖင့္ နယ္ခ်ဲ႕ဘုရင္ခံႏွင့္ စကၠဴျဖဴအစိုးရကို အလုပ္သမားမ်ားက ညီၫြတ္စည္း႐ံုးၿပီး တခဲနက္ အင္အားျပ ထိုးႏွက္ျခင္း မျပဳႏိုင္ၾက။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ အလံလု အစည္းအေဝးအေၾကာင္းကို ၾကားသိရလွ်င္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေအာ္ခ် ဆလံတုိက္သြားခ်င္ သြားပါလိမ့္မည္။
အမွတ္တိုင္း ဝန္ခံရလွ်င္ ယင္းအစည္းအေဝး မေအာင္ျမင္ျဖစ္ရျခင္းမွာ မိမိတို႔အားနည္းခ်က္ကို သိလ်က္ျဖင့္ ရန္စကား ေျပာမိခဲ့သည့္ က်ေနာ္ တာဝန္မကင္းပါ။
ဤသည္ကေတာ့ လြန္ခဲ့ေသာ ႏွစ္ေပါင္း ေျခာက္ဆယ္ေက်ာ္က အမွားျပဳလုပ္မိခဲ့သည့္ ေနာင္မွရခဲ့ေသာ ႏိုင္ငံေရးေနာင္တ ျဖစ္ပါသည္။
ဤေဆာင္းပါး ေရးခ်ိန္တြင္ သခင္ဗတင္၊ သခင္လွေကၽြ၊ ရဲေဘာ္ေသာင္းစိန္၊ မစၥတာမူကာဂ်ီတို႔ မရွိၾကေတာ့။ ။
(ရနံ႔သစ္ မဂၢဇင္း၊ အမွတ္ ၉၊ စက္တဘၤာ ၂ဝဝ၉ ထုတ္မွေန ျပန္လည္ကူးယူ ေဖာ္ျပလိုက္တာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္)
World Leaders Fiddle While the World Burns: Time for a New Climate Strategy
New post at "Global Labor Strategies"
World Leaders Fiddle While the World Burns: Time for a New Climate Strategy
Obama’s climate czar Carol Browner said last week there will be no U.S. climate protection legislation before the Copenhagen conference and that she doesn’t know if a global agreement on binding cuts in greenhouse gas emissions can be made in Copenhagen. She added that she had hope for progress because the world's top leaders recognize global warming is a problem.
As the torturous Copenhagen negotiations and the already-inadequate U.S. climate protection legislation falter, the earth is being imperiled by a failure of its political systems. We know what needs to be done to halt global warming; we have the technology and resources to halt it; we know the consequences of not doing what we know must be done. If the “world’s top leaders” recognize that “global warming is a problem” and do nothing about it, they are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
While the earth burns, the “world’s top leaders” are standing around pointing the finger at each other like a bunch of arsonists trying to distract the world’s attention from their handiwork. The U.S. attacks China for its growing carbon emissions. China, backed by 130 other third world countries, justly attacks the developed countries for their failure to take responsibility for their damage to the planet’s atmosphere – but then continue their plans to build new climate-destroying coal-fired power plants week by week. The EU piously condemns the U.S. position, but doesn’t care enough to take the Americans on.
The failure of current climate protection strategies tells us that the current strategy of lobbying governments to fix global warming will not work.
In the past, the failure of establishments to solve problems that they and their people recognize has often led to the emergence of radical movements demanding real change. Remember, for example, how betrayed government promises for racial equality and nuclear disarmament helped spawn the civil rights, ban-the-bomb, and new left movements of the 1960s.
The complicity of governments and the corporations and investors for whom they are so often speaking to halt the destruction of our biosphere may similarly help spawn a new climate protection movement: a convergence of those in the environmental, labor, food, globalization, anti-poverty, peace, student, and other movements who grasp urgency and believe radical action as the only way forward.
We have learned a great deal more about the science of climate change and what must be done to halt it. But we have barely begun to discuss what kind of political change is necessary to do what must be done. Here are some principles to discuss for an alternative climate protection strategy:
1. Existing institutions, specifically states and markets, have decisively proven themselves unable to halt the plunge toward destruction of the biosphere.
2. National and world political systems are as dysfunctional for survival today as feudal principalities were for protecting their people in the face of capitalism and the modern nation state.
3. States are not legitimate if they allow their terrain or their institutions to be used to destroy the global environment. They have no right to govern. They are climate outlaws whose authority it is not only our right but our obligation to challenge.
4. Property rights are not legitimate if property is used to destroy the global environment. Corporations that emit greenhouse gasses have no right to their property. They too are climate outlaws whose possessions it is not only our right but our obligation to challenge.
5. A climate protection movement must be conceived, not as governments agreeing to climate protection measures, but as people imposing rules on states, markets, and other institutions. We can begin to apply these rules locally by direct action wherever we are; we can support each others’ action around the globe; and we can support the right of all the world’s people to monitor and halt climate destroying emissions.
6. The legitimation for policy and action must be global necessity, not just national or other limited interest.
7. The blockades of coal facilities by direct action that have recently emerged in countries around the world form a brilliant beginning to this process. A new climate movement must expand that effort to impose climate protection rules by direct action.
8. Governments, corporations, and other institutions that threaten the survival of the planet should be subject to global popular boycotts and sanctions.
9. National and international economic policies must be redesigned to maximize global resources going to climate protection, rather than competing over the location of "green" production.
We need to make true for climate protection what President Dwight D. Eisenhower said about peace: "I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it." Popular demand forced competing governments to agree to a nuclear test ban treaty. Today global popular demand for climate protection should utilize the same dynamic to tell governments and corporations that they will be regarded as nothing but outlaws if the continue to destroy the earth’s environment.
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မန္မာနိုင္ငံအလုပ္သမားသမဂၢမ်ားအဖြဲ ့ခ်ဳပ္ မွ လူထုေခါင္းေဆာင္အားေထာင္ဒဏ္ခ်မွတ္ျခင္းအေပၚ
မန္မာနိုင္ငံအလုပ္သမားသမဂၢမ်ားအဖြဲ ့ခ်ဳပ္ မွ လူထုေခါင္းေဆာင္အားေထာင္ဒဏ္ခ်မွတ္ျခင္းအေပၚ
ျပင္းထန္စြာကန္ ့ကြက္ ျပီး ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုႀကည္ လႊတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအားနိုင္ငံတစ္ကာသမဂၢမ်ားနွင့္
ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္သြားမည္ျဖစ္ေႀကာင္းေႀကညာခ်က္
Global Unions: G-8 Didn’t Do Enough to Address Economic Crises
- AFL-CIO NOW BLOG - http://blog.aflcio.org -
Global Unions: G-8 Didn’t Do Enough to Address Economic Crises
Posted By James Parks On July 13, 2009 @ 5:15 pm In Legislation & Politics | No Comments
The leaders of the world’s top economies failed to adequately address the three major economic crises facing the world—unemployment, climate change and development, according to leaders of unions around the globe who had [1] called on the G-8 summit last week in Italy to take strong action to stimulate the global economy.
Said John Evans, general secretary of the Trade Union Advisory Committee ([2] TUAC) to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [3] OECD) :
There are no explicit commitments to making the necessary resources available for achieving employment and social protection goals, although the focus on the need to protect the tax base represents a welcome step in this direction.
Evans represented TUAC, the International Trade Union Confederation ([4] ITUC) and the [5] Global Union Federations at the summit.
On climate change, the G-8 countries for the first time committed to the objective of limiting the rise of the global temperature. But they failed to offer steps toward moving to a low-carbon economy in a manner that is fair to workers and communities dependent on producing carbon-based fuels.
With only five months to go before the United Nations climate change negotiations in Copenhagen, G-8 countries still have not stepped up and provided the necessary support to convince developing countries to reach an agreement. Read more about the role of global unions in climate change negotiations [6] here, [7] here, [8] here and [9] here.
Reaching a climate change agreement is crucial, global union leaders say, because developing nations say developed nations have all the “historic responsibility” for acting on climate change and they have none. Yet many of the developing countries, especially China, are some of the world’s top contributors to global warming.
In a speech June 23 to the OECD’s annual forum in Paris, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said failure by the world’s leaders to take strong action on the global economy could prolong the recession worldwide.
The truth is that we are still in uncharted water, and no one knows when the bottom of this recession will be found nor how vigorous the recovery will be. The depth and duration of the recession will be determined by how urgently governments can act together to promote recovery and build the foundation for a more sustainable, more fair and more environmentally responsible basis for global growth.
You can read Sweeney’s speech [10] here.
The world’s workers are looking now to the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh in September to push their proposals for global economic recovery and to ensure that workers’ views are represented in any final decisions. Sweeney adds:
Trade unions and the workers we represent have no confidence that this time governments and bankers alone will get it right. We are asking for a seat at the table.
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http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/07/13/global-unions-g-8-didnt-do-enough-to-address-economic-crises/
Workers Around the World Back Employee Free Choice
http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/05/08/workers-around-the-world-back-employee-free-choice/
by James Parks, May 8, 2009
Workers around the world understand the freedom to freely join a union is a human right and one of the key marks of a free society. That’s why the global union movement is solidly behind the Employee Free Choice Act.
The most recent examples of that strong support come from Thailand and Indonesia. In a letter to United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard, Saman Pronprachathum, general secretary of the Petroleum & Chemical Worker’s Federation of Thailand, says “a strong economy depends on workers [being] given the opportunity to join a trade union and to bargain collectively so that fair wages and social benefits are lifted for all in a society.”
In a separate letter to Gerard, Irzan Zulpakar and Etin Rodiana, president and general secretary, respectively, of the Indonesian paper workers union, say:
Our trade union stands firmly behind the American trade unions in your efforts to get the United States Congress to pass this legislation into law, with the support of President Barack Obama….[W]e consider it an essential element in a free society that workers be allowed to join a trade union in an unobstructed way.
The outcome of the fight for the Employee Free Choice Act will have an impact beyond our borders. In December 2007, participants in the historic global summit on organizing told members of Congress the anti-worker atmosphere created in the United States by unscrupulous employers and advanced by the Bush administration systematically denies workers their rights, especially the freedom to form unions and bargain collectively.
A report released at the summit showed the United States has the lowest rate of union membership among developed nations and that anti-union tactics are being exported to other countries.
This export of anti-worker sentiment by U.S. employers has spurred the global union movement to support passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. On the Global Unions website, Anita Normark, general secretary of the Geneva-based Building and Woodworkers International, says:
We know from experience that, without explicit provisions, the dominant American anti-union corporate culture will prevail. It is the job of governments to protect human rights. And, the United States government is not doing its job.
Will Workers Be Left Behind in a Green Transition?
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090518/uehlein/single?rel=nofollow
By Joe Uehlein
May 5, 2009
As Congress prepares legislation to slow global warming, what kind of jobs will it create?
Unfortunately, "transition assistance" in the past has often meant little more than a funeral for workers and communities threatened by the side effects of globalization, environmental protection and other public policies. Without a clear program to protect workers from the effects of climate protection, the struggle against global warming can all too easily come to be perceived as a struggle against American workers. Workers have often felt threatened by measures to protect the environment. Today such fears are likely to be augmented, especially in a time of soaring unemployment, by the large changes necessary to protect the planet from global warming.
Environmentalists have often addressed this challenge by pointing out that a transition to clean energy would create far more jobs than it would eliminate. While that may be true, it entirely misses the point. The fact that some people get new jobs provides little solace for the people and communities who have lost theirs.
As Carl Wood of the Utility Workers Union of America put it at this year's Good Jobs, Green Jobs national conference, "Workers are used to being ground up and spat out by any change in society. In the United States there is no safety net for the victims." He cited mechanics in a southeastern Ohio coal-fired power plant represented by his union whose jobs would be eliminated by the phasing out of coal as a very real example of how climate protection could threaten specific workers even if it produced more jobs in general.
Coal miners and their communities are particularly at risk. In a September 2008 op-ed, United Mine Workers of America president Cecil Roberts cited a study showing that the Climate Stewardship Act of 2003 would have reduced coal production by 78 percent by 2025, which would have "just about wiped out the coal industry in southern West Virginia and elsewhere in Appalachia." He added that the more recent Lieberman-McCain bill would have cut Appalachian coal production by 30 percent or more.
The current campaign to reduce the use of coal could easily become a poster child for the threat posed to workers by climate protection. But for that very reason it also provides an opportunity for climate protection advocates to paint a picture of themselves as the advocates and protectors of miners, railroad workers, utility workers and others whose jobs and communities may be threatened by climate protection measures.
Replacing "to be supplied"
Perhaps surprisingly, some of the best ideas for protecting workers and communities hit by the side effects of public policy decisions were embodied in legislation championed a few years ago by Republican Senator John McCain to protect tobacco workers from the effort to reduce tobacco consumption.
McCain's 1997 Universal Tobacco Settlement Act passed out of committee nineteen-to-one but was defeated on the Senate floor. Workers and farmers would have received transition assistance from the fund if "the implementation of the national tobacco settlement contributed importantly to such workers' separation" from their jobs. Looking ahead to the next generation, the bill also provided education benefits to members of a "tobacco farm family."
A similar program should be developed for workers who lose their jobs because of climate protection policies.
Rick Wagoner got a cool $23 million for running GM into the ground. Coal miners, railroad workers, coal-fired generator workers and others displaced by climate protection policies don't expect anything like that. But they should be able to count on a program like the one McCain championed for tobacco workers. And those for whom the program doesn't work should at least be guaranteed decent pensions with healthcare.
Perhaps even more important, the McCain bill provided not just for individuals but for hard-hit communities. It included a $28 billion industry-funded Tobacco Community Revitalization Trust Fund to provide economic development grants over a twenty-five year period to create jobs and business opportunities for former tobacco workers.
The same thing could be done now to jump-start the transition from coal and other carbon-intensive industries. The stimulus package includes an estimated $80 billion for programs that could create green jobs. A portion of these funds can be used to make eastern Kentucky, West Virginia and the rest of the Appalachian coalfield a model of job-positive transition from coal to renewable energy and conservation. Green jobs can be targeted at the communities that will be affected by coal production to create local jobs that will provide an alternative source of employment. The statewide network Kentuckians For The Commonwealth has spelled out some of the clean energy solutions; read the details here.
A green TVA for the green New Deal
But climate protection legislation should go further. During the Great Depression a regional economic development program, the Tennessee Valley Authority, transformed one of America's poorest regions by means of massive energy development. Seventy-five years later, the TVA has lost much of its original vision and become a target of environmental protests. But the principle of regional economic development through investment in a new energy source can be applied to the Appalachian coalfields today.
A small-scale version of such a post-coal economic development program is poised to begin in the Southwest. The closing of a highly polluting generating station has provided the owner, Southern California Edison, with an estimated $30 million annually in pollution allowances, which can be sold under the US Acid Rain Program. The Just Transition Coalition, composed primarily of Hopi, Navajo and environmentalist allies, developed a plan to use the funds for a transition to renewable energy.
The Just Transition plan would direct 30 percent of the pollution credits to local villages to invest in solar, wind and ecotourism; 10 percent to job retraining; 40 percent to alternative energy development and production; and 20 percent to tribal government programs previously supported by coal royalties.
Southern California Edison is regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission, which has taken the groundbreaking step of ordering that proceeds from pollution allowance sales be put into a special account. It then requested proposals from the Just Transition Coalition for how the funds should be spent.
The Hunter Region in Australia is also being proposed as a model for a transition from coal to renewable energy. The Greenpeace-funded study, "A Just Transition to a Renewable Energy Economy in the Hunter Region, Australia," details two scenarios for a renewable energy future.
Greenpeace and other environmental organizations have made "just transition" a central part of their program for transforming the region. According to a Greenpeace publication on Hunter:
A just transition from coal to renewables requires that the federal government support and protect coal industry workers as coal-fired power stations are phased out. Government support should include providing investment in new industries and infrastructure, guaranteeing jobs and retraining workers so that they can find employment in new green industries. With the right government action, an energy revolution can provide a way forward for coal communities.
An imaginative program for a transition from coal to green energy might win surprisingly wide support. In September three-quarters of Kentuckians said they would support a five-year moratorium on coal-fired power plants, and 43 percent backed expanding investment in clean renewable energy.
It is a basic principle of fairness that the burden of policies that are necessary for society--like protecting the earth's climate--shouldn't be borne by a small minority who happen to be victimized by their side effects. Unless workers and communities are protected against the unintended effects of climate protection, there is likely to be a backlash that threatens the whole effort to save the planet.
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