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Ethical trade plan wins praise
Companies and trade unions are to investigate ways of monitoring workplaces producing goods for multi-nationals.
At the moment, consumers have no way of knowing whether the goods they are buying are made by children or low-waged adults, whether health and safety conditions come up to scratch or if workers are allowed to form unions.
The UK initiative was developed as a result of discussions between the Government, the TUC, multi-national companies and non-government organisations working in developing countries.
The ethical trading initiative (ETI) will receive support from the Government.
The ICFTU recently issued reports on the cut flower industry, where dangerous amounts of pesticide were used and workers received poverty wages, and the international diamond industry where child labour is common. The ICFTU welcomed the UK initiative.
The organisation representing free trade unions around the world has launched a year-long campaign aimed at getting trade union rights recognised.
Fifty years earlier the International Labour Organisation passed a 'convention' which granted workers the right to organise into trade unions, yet almost one third of the world's countries (61 out of 190) has refused to ratify it.
"It is no accident", said Bill Jordan, general secretary of the International Confederations of Free Trade Unions which is behind the campaign that countries which have not ratified are the ones in which the most serious and consistent violations of trade union rights occur."
The USA is one of the countries that has not put its name to the convention. One in ten people who tries to form a union in the States is illegally fired.
The campaign will pinpoint those countries which have not ratified, putting pressure on them to do so. It will be backed up by posters, websites and a day of action on July 9, the actual anniversary of the convention.
The ICTFU is based in Brussels and has 124m members represented through 197 affiliates, including the TUC.
The International Federation of Journalists looked back on a year in which 47 journalists were killed while hundreds more have been beaten, imprisoned without trial and subjected to harassment.
The country with the worst record in '97 was Russia, where eight journalists were assasinated.
There has been a reduction in armed conflicts which means fewer reporters paid with their lives on the battlefield. But harassment is up, especially for investigative journalists.
The IFJ is drafting an international code of practice for journalists and the media, calling for life insurance, medical assistance, training in risk prevention and social protection.
"We cannot guarantee the lives of journalists faced with determined, brutal, merciless killers, but we can do more to improve journalists' working conditions and limit the risks", Aidan White, the union's general secretary, said in a statement in January.
"It's the least we can do."
The Department of Health is planning to publish regulations covering EU legislation on child workers. New regulations will restrict working to two hours on school days and give working children two weeks off during school holidays.
Chris Pond MP has a Private Members Bill on child labour, with a 2nd reading on February 13.
The Geneva-based ILO is to discuss a convention which will have the status of an international treaty, to counter the exploitation of child labour.
As part of the March Against Child Labour, groups of adults and children are walking from Africa, Asia and America to finish up at the International Labour Organisation building in Geneva this June.
Participants from this end include the GMB and Christian Aid.
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