SOUTH AFRICA
An explosion at Rheinmetall-Denel Munitions’ ammunition plant late on Monday has killed eight people. According to an RDM statement, the entire building, housing propellant for its ammunition products, was obliterated and the surrounding blast walls damaged. dailymaverick.co.za/
Former employees of Proexec Security Network say the company did not pay salaries owed to them and did not pay over deductions made for their provident fund contributions. The Private Security Sector Provident Fund is taking the owners of the Cape Town-based security company to court over the dispute. groundup.org.za/
The Yzermyn Colliery in the Mabola Protected Environment, near Wakkerstroom in Mpumalanga, was due to commence underground mining more than a year ago, until the Centre for Environmental Rights applied to the Pretoria High Court for an interdict to freeze activity until the mining group had complied with various laws. moneyweb.co.za/
The mining company has commenced operations in Braamfischerville before the mining license has been granted, and despite assurances to the contrary they are blasting. Braamfischerville locals are already complaining that none of them got jobs and that that their houses are being covered in dust and are cracking. petitions24.com/
In recent months we’ve had a spate of labour disputes that ended up in the Constitutional Court where employers found themselves on the losing side. In our Workers on Wednesday slot on SAfm, we took a closer look at employers’ behaviour to assess whether indeed there is a trend of them defying labour law. wwmp.org.za/
On 23 August 2018 the Constitutional Court handed down judgment in an application instituted by Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (POPCRU), wherein it, a majority trade union of employees in the Department of Correctional Services sought leave to appeal against the granting of organisational rights to a minority union, the South African Correctional Services Workers’ Union, by the Labour Appeal Court.
Popcru-CC-judgment-summary.pdf
Popcru-v-Correctional-Services-CC-Judgment.pdf
Mondli Hlatshwayo in this article critically discusses the contribution of labour support organisations and their use of workers’ education to build and strengthen trade unions, which became one of the critical forces in the struggles against racial capitalism in the 1980s. upjournals.co.za/
If alternatives to capital control exist, why not suggest them? The immediate alternative that came to mind was Argentina and Fabrique Sin Patron (FaSinPat), which started out as Zanon Ceramics in 1980, and was backed by government loans and the World Bank. The name of the company in English is Factory Without a Boss. fin24.com/
The issue of student hunger on university campuses has gained prominence in light of the #feesmustfall movement that shook South African tertiary institutions since 2015. While there are no tangible statistics that reflect the scope of the problem, the issue of students lacking basic needs, both food and shelter, has gained significant traction among university administrators. dullahomarinstitute.org.za/
The SABC has been trading recklessly over the past year or so, its reserves have plummeted to disastrous levels and it is only getting worse. While some of this must be attributed to populist meddling by former head honcho Hlaudi Motsoeneng, any serious analysis points to the crisis of the part-public/ part-private nature of the corporation’s funding model. dailymaverick.co.za/
The public broadcaster is in the process of reducing its humungous wage bill and one of the proposals on the table was slashing its 4000 workforce. At least 3000 of the employees are full-time while the other thousand is made up of freelancers. sowetanlive.co.za/
Proposed amendments to the Electronic Communications Act aim to create a national wholesale open access network, the trading and sharing of radio frequency spectrum and introduce a “use it or lose it” clause. mybroadband.co.za/
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The Global Labour University
International Masters Programmes for Trade Unionists
 ENGAGE is part of the Global Labour University network that has successfully established academic study opportunities for labour activists from all over the world at sites in Africa, Asia, South and North America and Europe with the aim of strengthening the intellectual and strategic capacity of workers’ organisations and foster stronger working relationships between trade unions.
There are a limited number of scholarships for participants from Africa, Asia and South America that will cover accommodation and tuition fees to study at the University of the Witwatersrand. global-labour-university.org/ |
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A conference to mark the centenary of the first International Labor Conference, held in Washington, D.C., under the nascent ILO, is to be held in the U.S. capital in October, 2019. The convenors of the conference are inviting participants who can contribute to the exploration of a range of themes related to the ILO’s work through scholarship or organizational work. These themes include:
- Global Workers, Global Supply Chains, Global Lives
- Gender, Sexuality and Labor Rights
- Building Workplace Power and Global Workers’ Rights
- On Shifting Ground: Labor Standards, Policy and the Future of Work
For more information, visit the Labor and Working Class History Association |
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INTERNATIONAL
There are currently roughly 7,500 US military personnel, including 1,000 contractors, deployed in Africa. For comparison, that figure was only 6,000 just a year ago. mintpressnews.com/
Turkey was thrust into a full-blown currency crisis when United States President Donald Trump hoisted tariffs on Turkey’s steel and aluminium exports to the US — the country’s most serious crisis since President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party came to power 16 years ago. links.org.au/
Appalachia is suffering from the most severe black lung epidemic in 25 years, and the Trump Administration is only making it worse. facebook.com/
Does fiscal austerity worsen income inequality? If so, how and by how much? Does the size and composition of fiscal adjustment matter? Second, what are the effects on income distribution of specific fiscal policies, such as tax structure, direct and indirect taxes, social benefits spending, and wage bills? Economists from the European Commission, the IMF and Bank of America here argue that fiscal adjustments increase inequality and unemployment. voxeu.org/
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A short video from UK’s Labour Party showing how and why austerity can harm an economy when it’s practiced too heavily and without solid expansionist policies accompanying it (e.g. debt-driven public investment to cancel out the negative effects of cuts). |
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ISRAELI / PALESTINE
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine offers educational, health and social services across the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon to more than 5-million registered Palestinian refugees. It educates about 500,000 children in nearly 700 schools and its doctors see more than 9 million patients in nearly 150 primary health clinics every year. cnn.com/
Parroting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s accusation of “fictitious” Palestinian refugees who threaten the state of Israel by perpetuating the right of return, Trump is currently claiming that only the people born and who had actually lived in Mandatory Palestine before the 1948 war – people who are now more than 70-years old – can be considered refugees. Their descendants cannot. aljazeera.com/
The elimination of UNRWA aims at the consolidation of an apartheid, single state, and the defeat of the Palestinian struggle by unilaterally redefining who constitutes a refugee so as to slash their numbers to just half a million. middleeasteye.net/
Since its founding 70 years ago, Israel has imprisoned an estimated one million Palestinians. Today, 5,800 Palestinians languish in its prisons. Here’s what they go through. facebook.com/
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FILM
To achieve the American dream of boundless wealth, you need to stand on many other people’s backs. That’s capitalism. But how do you entice them to let you stand on their backs so you can make more money than them, and what do you owe them for that privilege? These questions are at the core of Sorry to Bother You. theguardian.com/
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[petition] 
