Weekly round-up from across the globe: week beginning 23 August

Millions of workers around the world are fighting to protect or advance their rights at work. Many of the rights we take for granted in Australia are still not available to workers in other countries. And in other cases, even though those rights exist on paper, they are far less able to be exercised in reality.

Every week, R@W News will endeavour to give readers a brief round-up of major stories involving rights at work from around the world. Readers wanting to keep up-to-date on global issues on a more regular basis would be well advised to visit the website of LabourStart.

One of this week’s more intriguing stories will resonate with Australians, who have been witnessing a tabloid-fuelled campaign against traditional Muslim head-dress, which has been whipped up by a few Liberal MPs seeking to use Muslims as easy scapegoats for prejudice to further their own political careers.

A Muslim employee at Disneyland’s Grand Californian Hotel in Anaheim has filed a complaint in the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission after she was sent home from work with no pay for refusing to take off her hijab while working in one of the hotel’s restaurants.

On 15 August, just days after the Islamic holy month of Ramadan began, Imane Boudlal, a 26-year-old student and Anaheim resident, wore her hijab to work greeting customers at the Storyteller's Restaurant in Disneyland. But Disney told Boudlal that if she wanted to work as a hostess she had to remove her hijab because it did not comply with the ‘Disney Look’.

Meanwhile, in Egypt, eight workers are facing a military trial after protesting workplace safety conditions. They took industrial action following two explosions at an engineering factory on military land at Helwan, which resulted in one death.

The last time a worker faced a military trial was in 1952, when two workers from the Delta town of Kafr al-Dawar were sentenced to death for allegedly planning to topple the military regime.

In Mexico, union leaders and members at an American-owned factory have been threatened and bashed with sticks and stones. Two unionists were forced at gunpoint to sign letters of resignation from their union.

The Mexican Miners' Union believes that the assailants were associated with the company-controlled "protection" union (the Confederacion de Organizaciones Sindicales, or COS) the union that was ejected after a three day strike at the plant in Puebla by the workers in May of this year.

Violence against union members is also an unfortunate feature in South Africa. President Jacob Zuma ordered the police to break up national public sector strike on 19 August.

Police fired rubber bullets to disperse crowds blocking roads in one area of Soweto while healthcare workers picketed hospitals, preventing patients from seeking help.

Public-sector unions have launched an indefinite strike demanding an 8.6 per cent pay rise. The Congress of South African Trade Unions has subsequently called on workers to intensify the strike action, threatening a total shutdown of the economy if the government fails to settle the dispute.

Finally this week in Cambodia, construction workers in Phnom Penh began a strike on 16 August after their employer allegedly dismissed 60 workers for attempting to form a trade union.

They are being backed by the Cambodian Labour Federation.

Mark Phillips is ACTU media co-ordinator