General strike hits South Korea

Police push striking South Korean unionized workers during a protest in Seoul on July 5, 2001.

Seoul, South Korea, July 5— South Korean unions are holding a new general strike to protest proposed restructuring and government orders to arrest union leaders.

Dan Byong-ho, president of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, demanded that the government cancel arrest orders against himself and some 70 other union leaders. Dan and another unionist have taken refuge in a Catholic Church in the capital Seoul.

There are disputes about the number of people taking part in the strike, with the government saying about 20,000 are participating, but unions saying the figure is 100,000.

The strike follows industrial action last month that shut down the country’s two national airlines and disrupted major hospitals. The June strikers were demanding higher wages and an end to a government restructuring program that would have eliminated jobs. The government said that the stoppage was illegal and ordered the arrest of union leaders, prompting the strike on Thursday.

“Unless arrest warrants against union leaders are lifted, no dialogue with the government will start,” Dan said. He accuses the government of “unprecedented” labor repression. Dan said nearly 600 union leaders have been arrested since Kim became president in 1998, as compared to only 507 in the five years before Kim took office.

“We see clear signs of the government’s crackdown aimed at destroying the KCTU and democratic labor movements,” the union leader said. He estimated that 100,000 unionists would take part in the strike on Thursday. The KCTU is planning another strike for July 22.

Source: BBC

AFL-CIO to protest Navy bombing in Vieques

By Ivan Roman

San Juan, Puerto Rico, July 6— AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, several congressmen and the Rev. Jesse Jackson announced a march and prayer vigil to the White House on July 19.

“This isn’t just a struggle for people in Puerto Rico and in Vieques,” said Sweeney, who presides over the labor federation’s 13.2 million members.

“It’s a struggle for all working families in America.”

Sweeney, Jackson and the others were in San Juan to monitor the trial of Robert Kennedy Jr. and several other defendants.

Kennedy (an environmental lawyer), New York labor leader Dennis Rivera and four others were sentenced to 30 days in prison Friday night for breaking into the controversial Navy target range on Vieques in April.

US District Judge Hector Laffitte gave Puerto Rican senator Norma Burgos the stiffest sentence — 40 days — saying he was making an example of her. After a heated exchange between the two, he increased the sentence to 60 days.

The latest sentences are expected to spark even more activism on Vieques and the US mainland as pressure builds to immediately stop Naval exercises on the island.

The Rev. Al Sharpton is serving a 90-day sentence in Brooklyn for trespassing on Vieques, and three Puerto Rican politicians from New York City recently completed 40 days behind bars. Activists say their cases, along with those sentenced Friday, will increase awareness about Vieques in more communities throughout the US.

“You’re going to see a lot more Democratic leaders involved now besides the black and Hispanic ones,” said Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-NY. “We know the White House is feeling the pressure from Hispanic communities in the US and the labor unions are now paying attention to the issue.”

At the trial on Friday, lawyers presented evidence that the defendants were forced to break the law to right a greater wrong — to stop the bombing because the Navy’s exercises harm the environment and the health of Vieques’ 9,300 residents.

Some 711 people from Vieques, mainland Puerto Rico and the US mainland have been arrested since May 2000 for trespassing on the Navy grounds.

Laffitte spared jail time only for Mirta Sanes Rodriguez, the sister of David Sanes, the civilian security guard killed by two wayward bombs during target practice two years ago. His death served as the catalyst for the movement. His mother died of a heart attack on the second anniversary of his death.

But the judge was not as generous with the others. He rejected a lawyer’s plea for leniency for Armando Torres Ortiz, who cried as he repeated medical reports that the moles on his 3-year-old daughter could turn cancerous.

Kennedy currently has a case before Laffitte alleging the Navy should stop exercises because it hurts the environment and wildlife. He took action when he ran out of patience over delays in his lawsuit.

The congressional observers from New York, Illinois, Texas and Michigan who traveled to San Juan for the trial indicated that they did not like what they saw.

“The courts can be used for two reasons — to dispense justice or to teach the defendants a lesson,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, who, along with another visiting congressman, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., serves on the House Judiciary Committee. “What I’ve seen here is not just justice, it’s not due process and it needs to be remedied.”

Conyers and Jackson said they are pushing Congress to hold hearings in Puerto Rico and possibly in Vieques into whether lengthy sentences and bail for misdemeanors and body cavity searches in jail violate protesters’ civil rights. One of those put in solitary confinement for refusing to submit to such a search was Jackson’s wife, Jacqueline Jackson, who served 10 days behind bars on a trespassing charge.

Source: Orlando Sentinel

Workers paralyze Italy’s city streets and skies

By Luke Baker

Rome, Italy, July 6— Metalworkers marched through the streets while pilots, flight attendants and air traffic controllers caused chaos in the skies as massive labor unrest swept Italy on Friday. The biggest protests were in Milan and Turin.

In Milan, an estimated 60,000 members of the metalworkers’ union FIOM paraded through the streets carrying banners demanding larger pay increases in negotiations now under way with their employers.

Metalworkers are Italy’s most powerful labor group. More than 1.5 million belong to several unions and organizers said 250,000 had participated in Friday’s protests.

“The goal of the contract re-negotiations has not been reached and that’s why (the unions) are on strike,” Sergio Cofferati, the head of CGIL, Italy’s largest union confederation with around 5.3 million members, told Italian radio.

In Turin, the headquarters of many of Italy’s largest manufacturers, more than 30,000 workers disrupted production at several major plants including the Fiat automobile group.

Similar marches were held in Rome, Bologna, Florence, Genoa and several southern cities including Palermo in Sicily.

As city centers ground to a halt to make way for marchers, Italy was also suffering air traffic paralysis as a series of overlapping pay strikes by air traffic controllers, pilots and flight attendants hit the country.

Foreign airlines, including British Airways and Air France — which had just struck a deal to form a global commercial alliance with Alitalia — were forced to cancel some flights into and out of Italy.

Air traffic controllers from CILA-AV and other unions stopped work for 10 hours, and some Alitalia flight attendants and pilots stopped for eight hours, causing the cancellation of more than 200 flights and the re-scheduling of many others.

The metalworkers’ stoppages follow strikes in May when some 50,000 held a half-day protest over employers’ failure to offer further concessions in the current round of wage negotiations.

Economists say this year’s wage deals are likely to push up inflation moderately. They are also likely to produce an early headache for the new center-right government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who during the election campaign promised to create 1.5 million jobs over five years. He also pledged to increase minimum pensions.

Business-friendly Berlusconi is keen to avoid the kind of worker unrest that disrupted his first stint in office in 1994, when more than three million people took to the streets to protest against planned pension reform.

His government fell after just seven months.

Source: Reuters