When Baskin Robbins opened its ice cream plant in Eumsung in 1993 workers were employed on permanent contracts but in 2001 they were outsourced, forcibly transferred to an in-house contractor SeoHee Industrial doing the same jobs.

The ILO’s hotel, catering and tourism expert Wolfgang Weinz stressed this point after the publishing of the report titled “Migrant workers in the international hotel industry” (available on line in English here)

On July 21, the Asahi Shimbun revealed that workers employed by a contractor at the Tokyo Electric Power Company's stricken Fukishima nuclear plant were ordered to wrap with lead the dosimeters which register their radiation exposure in order to allow them to continue working beyond the danger threshold.

Dairy workers with YoCream, a division of French food group Danone, voted overwhelmingly to join IUF-affiliated Teamsters Local 305 in Portland, Ore., seeking better conditions and a voice at work.

Leaders of the IUF-affiliated independent Haft Tapeh sugarworkers union in Iran have come under renewed police pressure as part of the regime's escalating crackdown on trade union activists.

The IUF-affiliated Korean Women's Trade Union (KWTU) has joined with two other Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) affiliates to create the National Council of Irregular Workers at Schools.

On July 23 in Washington DC the IUF-affilited Unite Here held a press conference to build a worldwide boycott of Hyatt Hotels in response to the company's extensive abuse of housekeepers and payment of low wages.

Lax regulations, loose enforcement and employer resistance to union health and safety committees inflict a ghastly toll of illness, injury and death on the job. The grisly death of a contract worker at a US Nestlé plant provides further evidence that agency workers face even greater risks due to their precarious employment status.