An appalling total 0f 144 trade unionists were murdered for defending workers’ rights in 2006, while more than 800 suffered beatings or torture, according to the Annual Survey of Trade Union Rights Violations by the 168 million-member International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). The 379-page report details nearly 5,000 arrests and more than 8,000 dismissals of workers due to their trade union activity; 484 new cases of trade unionists held in detention by governments are also documented in the report.

“Workers seeking to better their lives through trade union activities are facing rising levels of repression and intimidation in an increasing number of countries. Most shocking of all is the increase of some 25 percent in the number killed compared to the preceding year,” said ITUC General Secretary Guy Ryder. “In many of the countries highlighted in the report, repression continued during 2007,” he added.

Colombia remained the most perilous place in the world for union activity, with 78 killings, almost all of which were carried out with impunity by paramilitary death squads linked to government officials or acting on behalf of employers. Of 1,165 murders documented between 1994 and 2006, only 56 perpetrators have been brought to trial and a total of 14 have been sentenced.

French President Announces Huge Job Cuts

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced more than 22,000 job cuts in the civil service in order to reform the country’s bulging public sector. He said thousands of employees retiring next year would not be replaced. The move comes a day after Sarkozy outlined plans to overhaul the pension benefits of 500,000 mainly public sector workers.

Speaking at a public management institute in Nantes, Sarkozy said it was time to make France’s 5.2 million-strong public sector more efficient. “What I am proposing is a cultural revolution, a revolution for changing the way we think, for changing behavior,” Sarkozy said.

France’s transport unions reacted angrily, describing the plans as "unacceptable,” calling for a strike next month. The last time the government tried to interfere with pension benefits (in 1995), France was crippled by three weeks of mass strikes and street protests — and the government had to back down.

Strike at Australia’s Largest Printing Company

More than 100 Brisbane workers initiated a 48-hour work stoppage at PMP Print, Australia’s largest printing and distributing company. Union organizers say there will be a series of national strikes over what it calls the company’s “unfair working conditions.” Specifically, the company is trying to force workers into shifts that would significantly reduce their take-home pay.

Danny Dougherty, a representative of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU), says: “The strike is over the failure of the company to pay the employees the wages they deserve.” It is also about taking away some of the benefits the workers have had for 20 years, he added.

PMP is the country’s largest commercial printer, producing three billion catalogues, 32 million books and 79 million magazine titles annually.

Seafarers Stranded in Spain Win Back Wages

Twenty-five seafarers on board an abandoned vessel in the port of Santander have won their fight for back pay. The crewmembers of Panama-flagged cargo vessel, Meugang 1, received outstanding back wages pre-dated to October last year, after intervention by the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) and two of its Spanish affiliates.

Last week, the new owner paid the seafarers’ claim in full — ($264,000) — to cover wages up to Sept. 11, 2007. “We are glad that we have been able to help the seafarers to achieve a satisfactory outcome,”said ITF Inspector Mohamed Arrachedi. ”We hope that this will go someway to alleviate the harsh conditions they have had to suffer on board this vessel.”

Twenty-four of the seafarers were repatriated to their homelands, Cameroon and Ghana. Last week. Meanwhile, the ship’s captain remains in the seafarer’s center in Santander, where he is receiving medical assistance before being repatriated.

Russians Won’t Renew Visa of U.S. Labor Organizer

Russian authorities have refused to renew the visa of an American labor activist working with a dockworkers union in Kaliningrad, the latest in a series of visa denials targeting Western trade unionists, business people, journalists and lawyers, whose activities attracted the suspicions of state officials.

Elizabeth Vladeck, 30, who is married to a Russian citizen and local trade unionist, was forced to leave Russia late last month after working in the port city of Kaliningrad for a year to build an independent union of dockworkers. This union, formed in 1995, was competing with the official affiliate of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FITUR), which claims 29 million union members, including the approximately 500 dockworkers in the port city.

Vladeck is a 2006 Columbia Law School graduate with long experience in Russia. During her work in Kaliningrad, she was sponsored by the Center for Social and Labor Rights, a Russian grass-roots organization that is funded in part by the Ford Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Amsterdam Buying Up Brothels to Curb Sex Trade

Looking to draw the shades on part of its infamous red-light district, Amsterdam will pay $35 million to the city’s “Emperor of Sex” for 16 of his brothels and convert them to housing and shops. That deal will eliminate 51 storefront windows where women conduct business arrangements with customers. Prostitution is legal in the Netherlands, and serves as a magnet for Amsterdam’s tourists.

Mayor Job Cohen says: “Our aim is to combat criminality. To make the district more manageable. To improve the quality of life by reducing the excessive concentration of prostitution, bad-quality cafés and restaurants and marijuana coffee stops.”

The Dutch sex union sees it differently. “We believe that less windows means more exploitation of women,” spokeswoman Metje Blaak said. “If the windows close down, women who are being exploited will be hidden somewhere else where union representatives and health workers can’t make contact with them.” A window costs about 100 euros ($140) for part of a day, and several prostitutes usually share one through the day and night.

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