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Help Provide Relief to Burmese Workers |
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With more than 22,000 people reported dead and as many as 1 million homeless after a tropical cyclone that struck Burma over the weekend, the Federation of Trade Unions of Burma (FTUB) has issued an urgent plea to the global union movement for aid in launching rescue, relief and rehabilitation work for victims of the storm.
The cyclone was the worst to hit Asia in almost 20 years, according to weather experts.
FTUB, a partner of the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, plans to use relief fund contributions to distribute clothing, medicine, and non-perishable food for displaced workers and their families, build temporary shelters and assist in providing needed counseling and health clinics. Click here to contribute to help Burmese workers.
United Nations officials say that hundreds of thousands of people are without shelter and clean drinking water after the cyclone, with winds reaching 150 miles per hour, knocked out power and phone lines, leveled thousands of homes and left entire communities under water.
To put the scale of the destruction in perspective, Burma has a population of more than 47 million. Had the cyclone hit the United States and killed the same percentage of our population, the death total would be more than 140,000.
FTUB General Secretary U Maung Maung says:
We are very concerned by the havoc caused against the people of Burma. The storm has left much loss of homes, lives and properties in its wake.
Although neighboring countries have responded quickly with food, clothing and medical supplies, flooding and military controls prevent them from reaching those who need them most. In addition, the cyclone has devastated Burma’s rice crop, which was to feed not only its own people, but also those of impoverished Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
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Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report
National Edition
Produced by Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg
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West Coast Dockers Shut Down Ports
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Clarence Thomas, Ex. Board member, Local 10 ILWU
Danny Glover, Actor & Human Rights Activist
Cynthia McKinney, Former Congresswoman and
Presidential Candidate
Cindy Sheehan, Anti-War Activist, Candidate for Congress
Tens of thousands of docks, members of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union shut down the west coast ports in a protest against the war. While an arbitrators decision prevented the ILWU from officially sponsoring the strike, its members turned out en masse. The stand-down at ports including Los Angeles and Long Beach, which handle 40% of the imported goods arriving in the United States each year idled ships and halted movement of about 10,000 containers during the eight-hour stoppage.
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Colombian Workers Brutalized at May Day Protests
with
Edgar Paes, International Dir. SINALTRAINAL
(the union of Coca Cola workers)
The Bush Administration continues to push through a new free trade agreement with Colombia despite its history of assassinations and repression of trade unionists. The Colombian government claims its fighting that violence, which it says is perpetuated by paramilitary organizations. However, when Building Bridges reporters called Colombia on May 1, 2008 to speak with Javier Correa, Pres. of the Sinaltrainal union we learned that more than one hundred workers at
their May Day demonstrations had been arrested, many were beaten and some had been disappeared .
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