Youth Unemployment is a Social “Time Bomb,” ILO Warns
More than 80 million young people are out of work and many millions more are trapped in short-term, low-paid jobs or in the informal economy. An entire generation of young people is being left behind, and the consequences of this for society will be severe, according to new figures released August 13 by the ILO on United Nations Youth Day. Governments have to act urgently to get job-creating moving by maintaining economic stimulus where it is needed rather than by cutting public expenditures, said Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Confederation of Trade Unions (ITUC).

Even if the global employment situation begins to improve, youth unemployment is expected to reduce more slowly than for older workers. Between 2007 and 2009, an additional 8 million young people were without jobs.  The increase in youth unemployment is compounded by the fact that about 152 million young “working poor” are living in extreme poverty, the ILO reported.

Trade unions across the world are pressing their governments to adopt economic policies that focus on jobs, with specific measures to improve the access of young people to decent jobs, as well as quality education and training, If sufficient jobs are not available to young people, social and economic unrest is bound to grow with potentially dangerous consequences to society.

Kazakh Subway Workers Start Hunger Strike over Unpaid Wages
Dozens of construction workers building a subway in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city,  vowed to begin a hunger strike on Aug. 11 to demand three months of unpaid wages, according to news reports. The workers, who have been on a general strike for three days, gathered at a metro station construction site on Aug. 10 and forced their way past security guards to meet with Kwon Ken Gyn, the local director of their employer, the Uranus CNI Construction Company.

The company’s two partners have accused each other of lacking the money to meet their payroll obligations, causing the workers to begin their hunger strike. Striker Daniya Belsenbek told reporters: “Tomorrow  Ramadan starts; we do not have money for food anyway, since we have not received our wages since June. Therefore we  decided to start the hunger strike on the first day of the Muslim holy month of fasting.”

Construction of the subway in Almaty began in 1988. Official sources said about $8 billion has been spent on the project and an additional $200 million is needed to complete it. President Nursultan Nazarbaev inspected the work on the subway in April and assured Almaty residents the subway system will start functioning by the 20th anniversary of Kazakhstan’s independence on December 16, 2011.

Germany’s Unions Switch to Aggressive Strategies
After years of agreeing to moderate wage demands to safeguard jobs, Germany’s powerful unions are gearing up for a dramatic change in strategy, bidding for wage gains that employers say could derail the economic recovery. Heavily dependent on exporting quality-made products, the German economy, Europe’s biggest, was hit harder than most countries by the global crisis, but now appears to be recovering faster, as demand across the globe picks up.

“In  this first wage round after the crisis, we want to ensure that employees get their fair share of the upswing,” said Berthold Huber, head of IG Metall, one of  Europe’s biggest unions, which repesent  more than two million workers in the steel and metalworking industry. A recent poll  for ARD television showed that 7 in 10 Germans thought union demands for a three-percent pay  raise was “appropriate”.

Last February, IG Metall, fearing  mass layoffs  in the economic downturn,   agreed to a two-year deal with a pay freeze and  a one-off payment in 2010, followed by a 2.7 percent raise next year, Employer representatives warn it is “premature” to talk of wage increases as the German economy is not yet completely out of the woods.

Dockers Demand Worldwide Lobby on Health and Safety
Calls by dockers’ unions for a global labor response to growing health and safety concerns in ports, following several fatalities over the past year, were renewed at a dockers’ section conference on August 13. Paddy Crumlin, national secretary of the  Maritime Union of Australia, reported that there had been three deaths in the past six months in his country and that there had been a 24-hour stoppage of port activities as a protest.

Ryosuke Kitahata from the National Federation of Dockworkers of Japan explained how his union works with the ministry of land, transport and infrastructure for the introduction of a bill on container safety. It contains a number of provisions, such as control over the contents and weight of containers and guidelines on packing.

Several dockworkers’ union leaders suggested that more resources be allocated  toward promoting health and safety standards, and that links between the flag of convenience and ports of convenience campaigns be strengthened to ensure that  the issue of cargo handling by seafarers would be resolved.
   
ILO Calls for Trade Union Revival in Burma
Nearly 50 years after a Burmese military regime crushed what was once a vibrant trade union movement in the Southeast Asian country, hints of a revival are beginning to emerge. The International Labor Organization (ILO)  is exploiting a provision in Burma’s 2008 Constitution  to pave the way for trade union activity that has been banned by successive juntas to keep a tight lid on any dissent.

The new constitution says that workers have a ‘right to organize and have workers’ representatives,” said Steve Marshall, the ILO’s liaison officer in Burma. “We are pushing to use this provision to secure the rights for trade unions.” But in doing so, the ILO  has to grapple with less promising features in the controversial constitution. This charter, approved by a referendum, contains language that  supports the use of repressive measures if the government detects threats to the country’s national security and stability.

There have been a spate of  wildcat strikes in Burma,  but  the strikers have been able to get away without an iron-fisted response from the ruling junta, who have pressured the strike-hit companies to solve the disputes with the strikers. “We had been expecting those protests  because of the rising cost of living and the inability to pay for basic items with small wages,” said Maung Maung, general secretary of the Federation of Trade Unions-Burma.

Charges Filed Against Sodexo by Top U.S. and French Unions
A major U.S. union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and one of France’s largest unions, the Confederation du Travail (CGT), filed an official complaint Aug. 14  with the Organization for Economic Cooperation  and Development, asking the organization to intervene and encourage immediate reinstatement of workers who lost their jobs for seeking to form a union. Sodexo, a food services and facilities management multinational, employs about 9,000 workers in Columbia and pays them as little as $300 a month.

The U.S. National Labor Relations Board  (NLRB) is investigating at least 10 unfair labor practice charges against Sodexo for interrogating, threatening and demanding that workers sign anti-union petitions. Additionally, the complaints charge  that Sodexo, in certain locations, paid insufficient attention to worker safety, and that its employees have suffered serious and sometimes near-fatal accidents.

Investigators from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Department have cited Sodexo for failing to provide service workers with even the basic protection  of an eyewash station near sites where workers must handle industrial-strength acids. Sodexo employs 380,000 workers worldwide, with 30,000 company cites in about 100 countries.