Road, rail and other workers will be raising local and national issues that concern them this week as part of a worldwide ITF (International Transport Workers’ Federation) action week running from 7 to 13 October.
The action week gives workers and their unions the chance to take local issues to national governments and beyond. Its campaign theme is Transport workers fighting back – Organising globally!
Activities will take place in an A to Z of countries ranging from Angola to Zanzibar, along the way taking in: Barbados, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Canada, India, Ivory Coast, Germany, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Liberia, Mali, Mauritius, Morocco, Nepal, Russia, Senegal, Sweden, Thailand, Togo and the USA. They will range from driver training to awareness raising, and holding demonstrations to lobbying for health and safety measures for armoured car drivers.
The action week will also run in tandem with three important international daylong events. The first is the World day for decent work on Monday 7 October. Organised by the International Trade Union Confederation to stand up for union rights and decent work, this annual event is now in its seventh year. For more details see http://2013.wddw.org.
The second event is the action day organised by the European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF, the ITF’s European arm) against the European Commission’s planned Fourth Railway Package, which risks seriously undermining safety in a relentless push for liberalisation of European rail networks. This event will feature activities in countries including Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and Poland.
The third event is an action day on Monday 7 October 2013 involving dockers and their unions that is designed to put pressure on DPW (Dubai Ports World) to listen to its workers and engage with unions.
Mac Urata, ITF inland transport sections secretary, commented: “This action week brings together not just rail and road workers and their unions, but also all those participating in the World day of decent work, the DPW action day and the Railway package day – all in one huge event.”