Asian Labour Leadership Conference: A Proceeding Report

Over the course of three days, panel members and participants of Asian Labour Leadership Conference mapped the landscape of Asian labour with a special focus on experiences of resistance and solidarity building. Through presentations of history, relevant trends, and important case studies, the participants of the conference identified commonalities and peculiarities in the experiences of particular countries, toward a better understanding of the all-encompassing and globalised nature of the challenges that labour movements in the region face. Wide-ranging issues like minimum wage, anti-labour legislation, and human rights violations, were taken side by side with specific concerns, like the question of gender in trade unions, the plight of migrant workers, and collective bargaining in socialist countries such as China and Vietnam, among others. In the end, with a better and consolidated idea of the nature of resistance in Asia, there was a consensus among participants to continue with existing campaigns while seeking out an altogether new paradigm for the labour movement, in terms of alternatives to what exists today.