Women make up more than 40.5% of the workforce worldwide, according to the most recent data by the International Labor Organization. But their labor has not resulted in a similar level in financial well-being.  

Far from it.

“Free trade agreements.” Many union members and other workers might tell you that so-called FTAs (of which NAFTA—the North American Free Trade Agreement—­is the most well-known) haven’t been effective at creating jobs or raising standards of living—and they’d be right. But what are these FTAs, really? 

Well, first of all, “free trade agreements” are only somewhat about trade and have very little to do with making it “free.” At least if we are talking about U.S.-style trade agreements since 1993, when NAFTA went into effect. 

Over the weekend, two prominent Colombian union leaders survived an assassination attempt in Cali, a city of more than 2.2 million in western Colombia.

The targets—Luis Miguel Morantes Alfonso and Adolfo Devia Paz of the Colombian Confederation of Workers (CTC, after its name in Spanish) and Emcali Union (USE)—survived unharmed inside a bullet-proof SUV provided by the Colombian government, according to a communiqué released by the National Labor School (ENS), a Colombian nonprofit organization dedicated to the empowerment of workers in the country. 

In his 2013 State of the Union Address (SOTU), President Obama announced that the U.S. would soon begin talks on a “Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership”—in other words, the U.S. will begin negotiating a “free trade agreement” (FTA) with the European Union (EU).

This Thursday at noon, working families in Washington, D.C., will be rallying at the Mexican Embassy in solidarity with workers in Mexico as part of a global Day of Action. The campaign is based around four basic goals to:

A recent Wall Street Journal editorial, American Unions vs. Bangladesh's Workers (subscription only), dismisses poverty and workers' rights in a country where devastating garment factory fires have killed 119 people in recent months, which the Journal has reported on. The editorial makes several erroneous points about garment workers in Bangladesh, and the threat to remove the country's duty-free status because of workers' rights violations.  

T-Mobile, the telecom company that last year closed seven call centers in the United States and shipped more than 3,300 jobs overseas, is running its remaining U.S. call center operations with abusive and intimidating tactics, T-Mobile workers at the company’s Charleston, S.C., call center told a workers' rights hearing (see video, below) last week.

Workers at a number of T-Mobile (owned by Deutsche Telekom) call centers are mobilizing to win a voice at work with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and have been met with a fierce anti-union campaign.

Women, men and children across the world are taking collective action this Valentine's Day to speak up and demand an end to violence against women. Union leaders and workers in the United States have joined this massive global coalition. Flash mobs (a dance in a public place coordinated by a group of people) are being held in cities from San Francisco to Delhi, India; Manila, Philippines; Khartoum, Sudan; and many more.

Tell PKC to Reinstate Workers in Mexico is a cross-post from IndustriALL Global Union's website. 

PKC [a Finnish auto-parts supplier] sacked more than 100 union supporters, including the entire union committee in December 2012 for campaigning for the election of an independent trade union, the National Union of Mine and Metalworkers (known as “Los Mineros”), at their plants in Ciudad Acuña, Mexico.

Trade unionist Valentin Urusov is proof that in Russia it’s still possible to be imprisoned in the 21st century equivalent of the gulag for standing up for worker rights on the job. An electrical fitter at an ore-processing mill owned by the diamond mining company Alrosa, Urusov has spent more than four years of a six-year term in a penal colony in Yakutia in far northern Russia.