Where trade unionists start their day on the net.
In this week's mailing:
* Iran: Mansour Osanloo arrested - again
* Victory in Sydney: Low paid hotel staff win following global online campaign
* Australia: Hearing implant company needs to listen
* New Zealand: First-ever national lockout of public hospital workers
* The most important part of this letter
IRAN: MANSOUR OSANLOO ARRESTED - AGAIN
Mansour Osanloo, leader of the Tehran bus workers union, was last week arrested and is now once again in prison. The International Transport Workers Federation has launched an urgent appeal demanding his release:
http://www.itfglobal.org/solidarity/osanloo2.cfm
***
VICTORY IN SYDNEY: LOW-PAID HOTEL STAFF WIN FOLLOWING GLOBAL ONLINE CAMPAIGN
According to the LHMU, low-paid workers at a Sydney hotel have won more than $50,000 following a global online campaign. A union press release reported that "the global union website LabourStart triggered a campaign which saw several hundred emails from Europe, North America, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Pacific sent to the owners of the hotel. Potential tourists to Australia told the hotel owners that while they wanted to visit Sydney they could not stay at a major hotel which mistreats its hard-working staff." Full details are here:
http://www.lhmu.org.au/lhmu/news/2007/1184102176_28919.html
Online campaigns work -- and we need your support today for two campaigns that LabourStart has just launched at the request of unions in New Zealand and Australia. Please keep reading -- and take a minute to send off your messages.
***
AUSTRALIA: HEARING IMPLANT COMPANY NEEDS TO LISTEN
Cochlear, the hearing implant manufacturer, continues to ignore the wishes of its workforce to be represented by their union, locking the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union (AMWU) out of wage negotiations and denying workers a pay rise as punishment for their stubborn insistence on their right to have a union. Please support their campaign:
http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=272
***
NEW ZEALAND: FIRST EVER NATIONAL LOCKOUT OF PUBLIC HOSPITAL WORKERS
About 800 members of the Service and Food Workers Union (SFWU) have been locked out from their jobs as cleaners, kitchen staff and orderlies in ten major hospitals. Spotless, the local arm of an Australian-based transnational, is attempting to force them to agree to bargain outside the framework of a national pay settlement for other public hospital workers. The union wants us all to send messages to the district health boards demanding an end to the lockout now:
http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=273
***
THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THIS LETTER
I want to take this opportunity to thank you all for your continuing support of our online campaigns. I know that it can sometimes seem like we are repeating ourselves, endlessly telling you about a lockout here, a union being ignored there, workers' leaders being jailed. And yet week after week, unions come to us and ask for our help to let LabourStart's email subscribers know about these campaigns and appeal for your help.
They ask us because they know that these campaigns work. But we also know that the vast majority of you will not actually be responding, at least not every week. We know that out of the 54,000 people receiving this message, only a small minority will take the two minutes needed to send off those messages to Iran, Australia and New Zealand.
This is why we need you to do one more thing. It's the most important thing, really.
Please forward this message on to as many members of your union as you can. If this message reaches many more people, the trickle of emails reaching repressive regimes and intransigent employers will become a flood. If more people learn about these campaigns, and participate in them, this list will grow from 54,000 to 100,000, and then to 500,000, and then on to a million.
Spread the word -- and let's build a grassroots, global campaign for workers rights that will be heard!
Eric Lee
Texts appearing here are often press releases sent to us by unions and other organizations which do not appear elsewhere on the web. LabourStart takes no responsibility for their content.