LabourStart: Where trade unionists start their day on the net.

The International Labour Organisation estimate that 70% of the world's workforce is now vulnerable to extreme heat.  How is this affecting workers?  What can unions do?   We interviewed Stirling Smith, a trade union educator who has worked in many countries, and especially south Asia. He lived in India for four years where he worked for the ILO. He is active now in the Greater Manchester Haza...

In the last three weeks, two high-level delegations of trade union leaders from around the world were blocked by Israeli authorities from entering the Occupied Palestinian Territories (West Bank).  The general secretaries of two global union federations -- Ambet Yuson from Building and Wood Workers' International (BWI) and David Edwards from the Education International (EI) -- were there, lea...

Tomorrow (23 January) will see trade unionists and other citizens of Minneapolis shutting the city down in protest at the actions of Donald Trump's ICE thugs.  People won't go to work, they won't shop, their kids won't go to school.  Chelsie will be in the thick of it and in this short interview we talked about what's happening in Minneapolis, the role of the unions and he...

In this short interview, we talked with Pamela, who is the IFJ's head of communications, about the IFJ's recent report on the number of journalists killed around the world in 2025 (128 that we know about).  We discussed why this number keeps going up, the role of ongoing wars, the problem of impunity, what the IFJ and its affiliated unions are doing and what ordinary people around the wo...

With the run-up to Christmas, retail workers are preparing to face a tsunami of abuse and even violence.  Unions representing shop workers in dozens of countries where Christmas is celebrated are campaigning to protect workers from over-stressed shoppers. Here's our take on Christmas shopping - and a very merry and kind Christmas from all of us at LabourStart! Support the show

"60 seconds on ..." is a new podcast series hosted by LabourStart and aims to provide the international trade union movement with bite-size nuggets of information about important campaigns and news.  In today's episode, we focus on Lee Cheuk-yan, the jailed leader of the Hong Kong Trade Union Confederation, whose trial starts next month.  To learn more about the International Trade...

Professor Yiran Zhang is a prominent emerging voice in the field of labor and employment law, focusing on how care work is governed at the complicated intersection of informal labor markets, the welfare state, and the household. At Cornell’s ILR School, where she is also an Associate Faculty Member at Cornell Law School, she examines the rapidly shifting terrain of U.S. care-subsidy programs and w...

Pawel Rudzki has not worked for the Albert Heijn supermarket chain for some two months now. An exemplary worker, never late, with a spotless record, he was bullied and lied about, given warnings he could not reply to -- and then summarily sacked. His union, the FNV, together with UNI Global Union, has been campaigning for his reinstatement.  It's the subject of a major campaign on LabourStart...

Today we spoke with Amalie Hilde Tofte from the trade union Styrke in Norway.  They're the sponsors of the annual Arthur Svensson International Prize for Trade Union Rights.  (LabourStart was a recipient a few years back.). Amalie told us about the background to the prize, some of the winners in recent years, and how one applies. We even learned who Arthur Svensson was.  Details about the pri...

This week, we talked with two leaders of the Sindikat kontrole letenja (SKL), the union representing Serbian air traffic controllers, who have been dismissed after their security clearances were revoked based on a vague "negative opinion from the security services." Both played key roles in this year’s lawful and successful strike.  In this interview we discussed how the Serbian governme...

Solong is the general secretary of the United Textile Employees Union in Lesotho -- a union currently involved in a major struggle for workers' rights and dignity at Quantum Apparel.  In this interview, he tells us about a whole series of abusive (and illegal) practices at the company, including forced over-time, short-term contracts and union-busting.  To learn more, and to show your support...

Chris, who's based in Washington, D.C., is the founder of the Labor Radio and Podcasting Network.  With around 200 members, the network shows the very widespread adoption of podcasting by activists in the trade union movement.   We asked Chris about audience size, impact, and how unions and activists can start their own shows.   Listeners are encouraged to visit the network's website and...

This week we talked with Paul Finch at a particularly interesting moment.  His union, the largest in the Canadian province of British Columbia, is on strike.  The employer in this case, the provincial government, is a social democratic party -- the NDP.  Paul explains why the union is on strike and their strategy to win.  He even broke the news to us that just a few minutes before the interview be...

Shawna Bader-Blau heads up the Solidarity Center in Washington DC which has for many years been one of the great sources of support for workers around the world trying create and sustain independent, democratic trade unions.  But with the inauguration of Donald Trump earlier this year, all that has come under threat.  In our interview, Shawna discusses what the Solidarity Center does, the new thre...

The Alberta Federation of Labour and some 25 Alberta unions, representing more than 300,000 workers, recently unveiled the Solidarity Pact, a commitment to collective defence against any attack on workers by public- or private-sector employers. The Solidarity Pact is intended to remain in force indefinitely. "The purpose of the Solidarity Pact is to let employers know that an attack on one un...

Dr Debbie Goldman worked for 28 years at the Communication Workers of America (CWA) and is an expert on the subject of call centre workers.  In this short interview we discussed her new book, Disconnected: Call Center Workers Fight for Good Jobs in the Digital Age .  We talked about issues like surveillance in the workplace, how the CWA won impressive victories in defence of call centre workers&ap...

Luc Triangle, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), was LabourStart's guest this week on our podcast.   The ITUC represents around 200 million workers in 169 countries and territories and has 340 national affiliates. LabourStart's Eric Lee interviewed Luc about the vicious attacks by the Lukashenko dictatorship in Belarus against trade unionists -- and...

Nilufar Mammadrzayeva is an activist in İşçi Masası (Labor Desk), an alternative Confederation of Trade Unions operating in Azerbaijan.  As she explained to us, "Right now, four of our comrades are facing dire conditions in prison due to their labor rights activism. One of them has already been sentenced to eight years, and the situation is only getting worse." In this interview, we disc...

This week, LabourStart's Pat Bulmer interviews Mark Hancock, national president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees -- the largest union in the country.  Mark was asked to speak about the union's recently-adopted "Montreal Declaration" which was drafted in response to US President Donald Trump's threats against Canada. “The declaration acknowledges the formidable con...

LabourStart's podcast this week is - unfortunately - about Belarus, which is probably the worst place in Europe to be a trade unionist.  We are now coming up on the 3rd anniversary of the mass arrests of Belarusian trade union leaders and the crushing of the country's independent and democratic unions.  Liza tells us why this happened, the role of the Ukraine war and Putin, and what we c...

This week's LabourStart interview is with Kıvanç Eliaçık from DISK, one of Turkey's national trade union centres.  We talked about workers' rights in Turkey, the role played by LabourStart and global unions, what individuals can do to help -- and about the central role that workers in struggle are playing in all this.  We also discussed a new LabourStart campaign being launched this...

This week's LabourStart podcast is a short interview with Daniel Blackburn, who runs the International Centre for Trade Union Rights (ICTUR), based in London.  Daniel spoke with us about ICTUR's history, the journal it produces (International Union Rights), the incredible reference book they publish on trade unions of the world, and even their wall map of workers' rights around the...

The LabourStart Podcast this week -- our first in 2025 -- is an interview with two Canadian writers who've written an important new book about one of the country's largest trade unions. Stephanie Ross is an associate professor in the School of Labour Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., and founding president of the Canadian Association for Work and Labour Studies. Larry Sav...

This week we interviewed Tamar Ansiani, who in addition to being a striker (one of over 4,000) at the Swedish-owned Evolution Gaming in Georgia, is also a vice president of LABOR, a Georgian trade union.  Tamar spoke about the reasons for the strike, the importance of international solidarity and much more in this short interview.  To learn more about the struggle at Evolution Gaming -- and to sho...

"We were dying," says Sultana Hossain, describing the conditions that led thousands of Amazon employees in New York City to begin organising into a trade union.  Initially, their union was independent and had no backing from anyone else -- and yet the workers were able to force an election in the workplace, win a majority and inspire millions of workers with their story.  Click here to l...