Experiments with truth: 7/13/09
- More than 130 workers at the Stella D’Oro Biscuit Company in the Bronx have ended an 11-month strike after the National Labor Relations Board ordered the company to reinstate and pay back wages to the striking workers. The company’s owner—the Connecticut-based private equity fund Brynwood Partners—is now threatening to close the factory within 90 days.
- Chile’s civil workers’ union, the Association of Fiscal Employees, plans to strike tomorrow and Wednesday to protest job instability and failed labor reforms.
- Shops, restaurants and schools shut down in the large southern Philippine city of Cotabato on Friday in protest over a deadly bombing blamed on Islamic militants.
- Striking workers from the Radio, Television and Theatre Workers Union (RATTAWU) and their counterparts in the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) picketed the headquarters of the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) in protest of non payment of their monetization benefits by the Federal Government.
- About 500 contract workers at the Crocodile River mine northwest of Johannesburg staged a “sit-in” 30 meters (100 feet) below the surface to demand that they be made full-time employees by the Canadian-based mining company, Eastern Platinum Ltd.
- Staff and their assistant professors at Sana’a University in Yemen staged held a protest in front of the University’s headquarter to push for the implementation of signed agreements with the university presidency that have stalled.
- On Friday, students in India resorted to a sit-in protest on the Jhargram-Binpur road that paralyzed traffic for six hours to demand the immediate reopening of a number of schools that have been occupied by government forces in a recent offensive against the Maoists.
- Israeli soldiers attacked Palestinian villagers along with their international and Israeli peace supporters and kidnapped several demonstrators during the weekly non-violent protest against the wall in Ni’lin and Bil’in.
