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Press Statement

In an extraordinary and dramatic turn of events, the Canadian government today announced that it will no longer oppose the listing of chrysotile asbestos as a hazardous substance under the Rotterdam Convention. Canada’s Minister of Industry, Christian Paradis, made the announcement in his constituency of Thetford Mines today. Paradis also promised that Ottawa will provide $50 million to enable workers to retrain in other fields of work.

December 2, 2013.

In a blow to Samsung Electronics, a court ruled yesterday that the deaths of two employees at Samsung’s semiconductor plant should be considered an industrial accident and that Samsung should compensate their families accordingly.

The two workers died of leukemia, and their families filed for industrial accident compensation with Korean Workers’ Compensation and Welfare (KWCW) three years ago, claiming their illness had been caused by exposure to harmful elements at the plant.

Batam is an island close to Singapore but part of Indonesia. Until the late 1970s it had a few thousand inhabitants that lived mostly on the produce of land, forests and sea. Like Shenzhen, it all changed in late 1970s and early 1980s. Batam became an assembly line where cheap labour could assemble parts and products that would feed into the more advanced and capital intensive Singapore industry. Being an island it was an ideal location for a free trade zone and it was developed primarily for the electronics sector.

Ajay Parmar TNN 

This report was carried out by the  Local Initiative for OSH Network (LION) in collaboration with AMRC. An initial mapping was done of the limestone mining area close to Bandung district in Indonesia and looking at the potential of silicosis in the region on workers and the community due to exposure to the dust in the environment due to extensive mining in the area.

The Gems and Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC) has decided to set up a common cutting and polishing facility to combat the deadly silicosis disease afflicting most of the workers in agate industry in Khambhat town of Kheda district.

Agate, which is a silicate quartz, is shaped and polished into beads and other decorative items. This industry has been in operation for generations in Khambhat region of the State.

OSH training with FSP-KEP - The first training was a follow up on the training done with KEP in 2007.

This training manual has been produced by the Institute for Occupational Health and Safety Development (IOHSAD) one of AMRC's partners in its long standing training of trainers (ToT) program in the region. IOHSAD is based in Manila and has been working on OSH issues since the 1980's. This manual has been produced by them for their training activities based on material from AMRC and members of the ANROEV network like LOHP and localised based on their experiences in working with workers and victims on OSH.

AMRC in partnership with Homenet South East Asia carried out a training of trainers for informal workers in Manila early 2010. This was the first collaboration AMRC had with Homenet South East Asia and along with Occupational Safety and Health Center (OHSC . The participants were informal workers and a lot of them were home based workers who were from a very diverse background.

This paper talks about the OSH situation in India based on an analysis done on secondary sources including official statistics avaliable in India.

Numbers of Workplace deaths and injuries in Bangladesh

There exist three sources of figures on the number of workplace deaths and injuries in Bangladesh: Government data which is based on employer reports; reports published in newspapers; and estimates by the ILO. None of these can be relied on to provide accurate data.

This report on the OSH and reproductive health issues of garment workers was carried out by the Local Initiative for OSH Network (LION) in partnership with AMRC. OSH as right of the worker mostly fulfilled by employers only to “outwit” the buyer and to keep the orders coming in. This situation has been understood by all parties involved in, the big companies in Indonesia“survive” by any order and so the worker is never the priority. The situation gets even worse when there is no union in the company.

Survey the trends in Japan’s direct overseas investments, and study how they are interconnected with the employment and business management situation.

Capital Mobility Research Paper Series No 2

By Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research, Inc. (EILER)

Philippines

Capital Mobility Research Paper Series No 3

By Au Loong Yu and Kevin Li (Globalization Monitor)