PRESS RELEASE 1 April 2011 � 100 years of Women’s Resistance: Rights, Empowerment and Liberatio (Chennai, India) Rallying behind the theme “100 years of Women’s Resistance: Rights, Empowerment, Liberation,” around 40 women rural women leaders, representatives and activists from eight Asian countries gathered for a 2-day conference here on March 29 and 30.  In a keynote [...]

Workers on the Nowera Nuddy tea estate in northern West Bengal, India and their Progressive Tea Workers Union (PTWU) are as determined as ever to win justice. A contingent of workers, all PTWU members, travelled the 650 kilometers from their plantation to Kolkata on February 4 to press their demands in a rally outside the [...]

    Over 550 tea workers, two-thirds of them women, rallied on the Nowera Nuddy tea estate in West Bengal, India on January 16 to launch a new stage in their campaign for their rights after management failed to respond to a January 15 deadline to meet their long-standing demands. Nowera Nuddy Tea Estate is owned by [...]

The employment agreement covering 290 Vietnamese berry pickers who worked in Swedish fields last summer, dozens of whom still remain in Europe, should never have been approved, according to a Swedish union. Berry pickers arrested for locking up bosses (11 Aug 10) Hungry berry pickers shoot birds for food (2 Aug 10) Vietnamese workers in [...]

A report commissioned by the IUF and released on 1st October details extensive human rights violations at the Tata-controlled Powai Tea Estate in Assam, India. In Cold Blood: Death By Poison, Death By Bullets examines the death in May this year of 25 year-old Powai worker Gopal Tanti, who collapsed at work while spraying pesticides. Mr Tanti was [...]

Each summer, thousands of berry pickers from Thailand arrive in Finland with the hopes of earning a bundle of cash. Although Finnish berry companies depend heavily on the workers, their wages and conditions are substandard. Around 2,000 berry pickers from Thailand made their way into Finnish forests this summer. The migrant workers carry out backbreaking [...]

Thousands of seasonal workers from Asia come to Sweden each summer to pick wild berries. Around 120 Chinese seasonal berry pickers in northern Sweden went on a 15-kilometre (9.3-mile) march overnight to Friday to protest their salaries, a local social services official said to the Swedish Wire news on 06th August 2010. Thousands of seasonal [...]

An international IUF fact-finding team has been denied access to an Assam plantation to investigate the recent deaths of three workers. The plantation is owned by Amalgamated Plantations in which Tata Global Beverages is the major shareholder. The 930 hectare Powai estate has one of the world’s largest tea-processing factories and employs some 1,800 permanent [...]

Workers from a West Bengal tea plantation who participated in a protest last year against the abusive treatment of a pregnant 22 year-old tea garden worker could face prison sentences of up to 7 years, if India’s powerful Tata Group has its way. Mrs. Arti Oraon, tea plucker who collapsed after being forced to work [...]

Karmojibi Nari, a women’s rights organisation and one of CAW’s member groups in Bangladesh, yesterday demanded that the government formulate a law on agricultural labour immediately to ensure the rights of women workers in this sector. Addressing a rally at Muktangon in the city, the leaders of the organisation also called for declaring Tk 5,000 as [...]