25 years after the reactor catastrophe This paper evaluates studies that contain plausible indications ofhealth damage caused by the Chernobyl catastrophe. http://www.chernobylcongress.org/fileadmin/user_upload/pdfs/chernob_report_2011_en_web.pdf

 

Source: Workers World   By Heather CottinPublished Oct 15, 2010 10:17 PM Hungary has arrested Zoltan Bakonyi, managing director of MAL Aluminium, the privately owned company responsible for the country’s worst environmental disaster. Bakonyi is son of the company’s owner, Arlep Bakonyi, “a businessman who played a central role in the privatization of the country’s aluminum industry and is the largest shareholder of the company.” (New York Times, Oct. 11)

Source: Green Jobs, Safe Jobs

Source: Green Jobs, Safe Jobs Green jobs can be indistinguishable from their traditional counterparts, particularly if you are on the receiving end of bad management, as injured workers can attest. Unite member Stanley Gibbons, 66, a fitter working for a metals recycling firm, was left with a damaged left shoulder after being forced to carry out heavy manual work despite warning his employer he suffered from a frozen shoulder, a condition which leaves the shoulder painful and stiff.

Source: Save Vestas Jobs! Save the Planet Vestas claim they are ‘Number 1. in Modern Energy’, and indeed are responsible for developing and installing much of the world’s wind/renewable energy. However, they’ve shown their true colours (not so ‘green’ after all) this summer – through closing their St. Cross Business Park, Dodnor Lane, Newport, Isle of Wight factory, leading to the loss of 600 jobs. Unions were banned & working conditions deteriorating prior to closure, & 11 workers who occupied the factory to save it have been paid no redundancy. There will be a long-term campaign as a result. Will it effect Vestas’ share price? Watch This Space.

Source: Socialist World (UK). Below we publish a slightly edited version of an interview conducted with Sebastian Sikora, a Polish worker involved in the courageous occupation of Vestas wind Turbine factory, on the Isle of Wight in Britain, by Kacper Pluta, from GPR (CWI in Poland). These workers are continuing their fight for jobs and workers’ rights, despite the ending of their occupation.

Source: ITUC Website on Climate Change Addressing global climate change is critical to the economic, social and environmental interest of all peoples of the world. Ambitious mitigation action is fundamental if we want to leave our children a sustainable world and a chance for social and development goals to be achieved. These actions must be fairly shared and distributed between and within countries: responsibility and capacity must be the guiding principles for burden sharing. A just transition towards a low carbon economy is possible, and can make climate action a driver for sustainable economic growth and social progress.

Source: La Via Campesina Speech of Henry Saragih, general coordinator of Via Campesina at the opening session of Klimaforum Tonight is a very special night for us to get together here for the opening of the assembly of the social movements and civil society at the Klimaforum. We, the international peasant movement La Via Campesina, are coming to Copenhagen from all five corners of the world, leaving our farmland, our animals, our forest, and also our families in the hamlets and villages to join you all.

By Martha Grevatt Source: Workers World Online. 3 September 2009. “They’d made an announcement ... that we were going to have our jobs for years to come. So people went out and got mortgages and cars and all that. ... Then they came and said it’s not happening. They turned around and said, ‘Actually, we’re sacking you all.’ It was a big shock.” (savevestas.wordpress.com) These could be the voices of autoworkers in Detroit, St. Louis or even at this writer’s plant in Twinsburg, Ohio. They could have been working in steel or any other “dying industry”—one so-defined by those who are killing the jobs of workers considered expendable.