IUF general secretary Ron Oswald, a representative group of IUF affiliates from the IUF regions, staff of the general and regional secretariats and a representative of ICEM met with corporate and regional level management (including CEO Paul Polman) of Unilever in London November 15-16 to continue their dialogue on key issues including employment policy and trade union rights.

Disposable jobs are on the march – and the global temp agencies are targeting Russia as the new battleground in their global offensive.

Forty workers have been dismissed in retaliation for a week-long strike at at Fresh Del Monte’s fruit processing factory in Kenya. Some 1,700 workers walked out on October 12 to protest unpaid allowances, increasing insecurity due to the rampant use of temporary work contracts and a deteriorating working environment which resulted recently in what the union contends was a work-related death.

The IUF welcomes the release of Aung San Suu Kyi on 13 November after seven years of house arrest and calls for sanctions on Burma to remain as long as the repression of basic trade union, worker and human rights continues.

In a move which gives new meaning to “troubled asset recovery”, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has gifted private equity giant Blackstone with USD 178 million. In early October, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York announced it had sold back to Blackstone USD 320 million in debt from the heavily leveraged 2007 Hilton buyout for just 142 million, booking a 56% loss.

A vigorous union mobilization against the abolition of paid meal breaks at Café de Coral has forced the company to retreat within days after the new pay policy was imposed.

The union of workers at the Heineken brewery in St-Petersburg, Russia held a picket at the plant’s gates on October 18 to highlight their call for negotiations to reverse the creeping expansion of agency labour at the plant. Members of the city’s other unions in the food and beverage sectors took part in the action.

Revenue and earnings are up at the upscale Hyatt Hotels chain, and the company is sitting on a pile of cash on the prowl for acquisitions. Hyatt workers, however, say the company is seeking to lock them into recession through outsourcing, speedup, bargaining concessions and fierce resistance to recruitment and organizing by the IUF-affiliated Unite Here!