The French Parliament on December 13 voted to ban the use of bisphenol A (BPA) in infant food packaging beginning January 1, 2013 and from all food contact packaging beginning in 2015.

IUF Asia/Pacific Regional Secretary Ma Wei Pin joined a rally by the affiliated United Voice at the Philippines Consulate in Sydney to press for wide ratification of ILO Convention 189 on domestic workers. A message was delivered congratulating the government of the Philippines as the first country in the region to ratify the Convention.

Following a round of strikes and demonstrations by Tunisia's national center UGTT and international condemnations of the violent attacks on trade unionists, the government entered into 2 days of intensive negotiations which produced an agreement meeting the union's key demands. The UGTT therefore revoked the call for a national general strike on December 13.

Tunisia's national trade union center UGGT has called for a general strike December 13 to highlight its demand for firm government action to halt the growing incitement and violence against the union by pro-government militias and their supporters.

Members of the IUF-affiliated Service & Food Workers Union (SFWU) at PepsiCo's Bluebird Foods plant in Auckland, New Zealand, voted against company proposals on reduced overtime pay rates that would threaten unionized jobs in Australia .

The same court which earlier this year sentenced in absentia Kamal Abbas, general coordinator of Egypt's Center for Trade Union and Worker's Services (CTUWS) to six months imprisonment for "insulting a public officer" during the 2011 International Labour Conference in Geneva, dismissed the charges and threw out the sentence on November 25.

The long and bitter dispute at the Pearl Continental Hotel in Lahore, Pakistan, which at one point saw nine union officers and a member of the Pearl Continental Hotel Employees Union Lahore charged with fabricated criminal offenses including "terrorism" following the union's victory in a representation election, has now been resolved.

Neuselters mineral springs is under threat of drastic job cuts: if company plans are carried out, 40 out of the 74 employees currently working there will lose their jobs in the 1st half of 2013.