The UN Human Rights Council passed its first ever resolution on Thursday 4 April over tackling discrimination against intersex people, despite opposition from several countries to the terminology used. The resolution passed in the 47-member council with 24 votes in favour, none against and 23 abstentions.

read more: https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-news/2024/04/04/intersex-people-un-resolution/

Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) and KMHD Jazz Radio on March 22 voluntarily recognized SAG-AFTRA as the bargaining representative of about 65 on-air staff, hosts, reporters, and producers.

OPB is a public, nonprofit broadcasting network that covers most of Oregon and southern Washington. It includes five television stations and 20 radio stations. OPB also operates KMHD Jazz Radio in partnership with Mt. Hood Community College. The content creators at both organizations will be represented under a joint contract negotiated by SAG-AFTRA. (SEIU Local 503 already represented 26 other workers at OPB, including studio coordinators, help desk specialists, videographers, production techs, and maintenance engineers.)

read more: https://nwlaborpress.org/2024/04/opb-reporters-unionize/

After a 16-year-old boy lost both legs last June in a preventable workplace accident in La Center, a follow-up investigation by Washington Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) found that his employer Rotschy LLC has committed dozens of child labor law violations.

Rotschy is a non-union construction excavation company based in Southwest Washington. In December, L&I fined the company more than $156,000 — the maximum penalty — for allowing a minor to operate equipment without appropriate training or experience. The boy was dragged beneath the blade of a walk-behind trencher he was using to dig a channel for fence posts — while participating in a work-based learning program that allows students to earn class credit for jobs outside the classroom. His injuries were so severe that both legs had to be amputated.

Rotschy appealed the fine. The decision on whether to overturn the fine lies with the Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals, which has set a mediation conference for April 8. If the conference does not result in a settlement, the board will forward the case to a hearings judge for a trial.

read more: https://nwlaborpress.org/2024/04/vancouver-firm-fined-in-grisly-accident-is-repeat-child-labor-offender/

For months, Israel has been forcing Palestinians in northern Gaza to starve on a tiny fraction of their regular daily calorie needs, a report finds as experts warn of an unprecedented widespread famine across the region.

A new Oxfam analysis has found that, since January, people in northern Gaza have had access to less than 12 percent of the 2,100 calories they need per day on average. This is equivalent to an average of only 245 calories per day — fewer calories than are in a can of fava beans, or about a single cup of cooked rice.

“Before the war, we were in good health and had strong bodies,” one mother who is trapped in northern Gaza told Oxfam. “Now, looking at my children and myself, we have lost so much weight since we do not eat any proper food, we are trying to eat whatever we find — edible wild plants or herbs daily just to survive.”

The lack of food is being caused by Israel’s blockade of all forms of humanitarian aid into Gaza, which is only expected to get worse in coming weeks. Israel has informed the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) that it will no longer allow any food shipments into northern Gaza. Meanwhile, after Israel bombed a convoy of international food aid workers with World Central Kitchen earlier this week, killing seven of them, a number of other food aid groups have announced that they are stopping their efforts in Gaza because of the high risk of being killed by Israeli forces.

This downturn in food aid shipments comes as international food insecurity researchers have warned that half of the population of Gaza, or about 1.1 million people, are at imminent risk of famine, with the entire population already facing a food crisis. Israel’s famine campaign in Gaza has no precedent in modern times in terms of speed and severity, experts have repeatedly warned, and dozens of children have already starved to death as Israel’s genocide goes on.

read more: https://truthout.org/articles/palestinians-in-northern-gaza-only-have-access-to-245-calories-a-day/

LaborUnionNews.com has quickly become the “Drudge Report of Labor News”; the largest aggregator of news about unions on the web, boasting that it links to over 50 news articles a day and has posted links to more than 34,000 labor news articles since it started in 2023.

Among labor movement activists, LaborUnionNews.com quickly amassed a large following mainly due to its daily posting of NLRB union election petitions and prolific aggregation of labor news.

As a veteran labor reporter, I signed up for a subscription a few months ago to help prepare our labor newsletter. I thought it was a low-budget labor news aggregator; they even solicited crowdfunding from labor readers, as a site like my own Payday Report does.

Now, I have discovered that LaborUnionNews.com is run by a notorious union buster named Peter List, who runs a multi-million dollar union-busting empire.

A decade ago, I exposed that List had previously worked with Senator Bob Corker to help anti-union forces narrowly defeat the UAW in 2014.

Now, the website uses its mass following to spread fake news about anti-the UAW in the run-up to the historic UAW election at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, which could confuse many local reporters and activists.

On the surface, LaborUnionNews.com could appear similar to other popular lower-budget labor news sites and aggregators like Labor Press, Labor Tribune, Northwest Labor Press, On Labor, How Things Work, and maybe even Payday Report.

However, mixed among links to mainstream labor news about real labor struggles and even links to left-wing websites about the UAW election in Chattanooga (including links to Payday Report), List has begun subtly mixing in anti-UAW articles that could confuse and trick many readers.

read more: https://paydayreport.com/anti-uaw-union-buster-secretly-behind-hit-labor-news-site/

Swiss federal ministers are giving up their free annual ski passes worth around $4,000.

Switzerland recently voted in favor of a referendum for greater social welfare that was opposed by the majority right-wing coalition government, which warned against the roughly $5 billion cost.

Social media posts noted that government officials received perks like $200,000 pensions and, notably, free ski lift passes for Swiss slopes every year.

read more: https://www.semafor.com/article/04/03/2024/swiss-federal-ministers-are-giving-up-their-free-ski-passes

HO CHI MINH CITY, Apr 3 2024 (IPS) - In recent months, several European representatives embarked on trade missions to Vietnam. German President Steinmeier visited Hanoi in January. The Netherlands sent Prime Minister Mark Rutte, with the Dutch royal couple, King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima, soon to follow suit. Notably, the Netherlands stands as the most significant European investor in Vietnam.

Additionally, official delegations from the US and China have engaged in discussions with Vietnam regarding economic cooperation.

According to the Vietnamese Ministry of Planning and Investment, the country attracted nearly US$36.61 billion of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in 2023, marking a notable increase of over 32 percent compared to the previous year.

What factors contribute to this success? Vietnam, having emerged from a tumultuous history that included a war with the United States until the 1970s and continuing under communist leadership, has made significant strides. European entrepreneurs share their experiences in this thriving Southeast Asian nation.

read more: https://www.ipsnews.net/2024/04/tensions-china-drive-investors-towards-vietnam/

Potbelly Sandwich Shop in downtown Portland paid almost $100,000 for about a month of union-busting. That’s according to mandatory disclosures the anti-union consulting firm filed March 23 with the U.S. Department of Labor.

According to the disclosures, Potbelly hired Optimal Employee Relations of Henderson, Nevada, on May 10, 2023, about a month before workers voted 9-6 on June 15 to join the independent union Restaurant Workers of Portland. Optimal’s contract with Potbelly ended in June 2023. Potbelly paid Optimal $97,722 on June 15 — the same day as the union election.

At Potbelly, workers still don’t have a first contract. Mark Medina, a Portland Jobs with Justice staff person who helped with the campaign, said shortly after the election the company fired three workers who led the union campaign. An unfair labor practice charge is still pending review by the National Labor Relations Board.

link: https://nwlaborpress.org/2024/04/potbelly-sandwich-spent-100k-to-fight-union/

The Israeli army is making heavy use of an artificial intelligence (AI) system that mass-generates assassination targets in Gaza in order to reach certain thresholds of killing of Palestinians every day, a new explosive report finds. This AI generated information is used by the military to kill targets as soon as they step into their homes, all but ensuring “collateral” deaths of non-targets and families.

According to a sprawling investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call, the AI system, called “Lavender,” has created as many as 37,000 Palestinian targets since October 7, using information like visual characteristics, cellular phone activity, social networks, and more, in order to mark Palestinians as supposed Hamas operatives.

Sources said that the goal of the technology isn’t accuracy, but to automatically generate as many targets as possible for the military to kill, with little to no oversight by humans to determine the legitimacy of the targets. Officers were under pressure by military higher-ups to approve as many targets as possible; if there were days where there were fewer targets, sources said higher-ups would press officers to produce more.

“In a day without targets [whose feature rating was sufficient to authorize a strike], we attacked at a lower threshold. We were constantly being pressured: ‘Bring us more targets.’ They really shouted at us. We finished [killing] our targets very quickly,” one source, identified only as B., told +972 and Local Call.

“One day, totally of my own accord, I added something like 1,200 new targets to the [tracking] system, because the number of attacks [we were conducting] decreased,” said another anonymized source. “That made sense to me. In retrospect, it seems like a serious decision I made. And such decisions were not made at high levels.”

read more: https://truthout.org/articles/report-israeli-army-uses-ai-to-produce-palestinian-targets-for-assassination/

Major League Soccer (MLS) and union referees have finalized a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA), ending a month-long labor lockout that saw union referees on the sidelines.

The new CBA, which the union voted to ratify on March 25, expires in early 2031 and includes adjustments to salaries and travel accommodations. After the union, the Professional Soccer Referees Association (PSRA), rejected a tentative agreement with the league’s Professional Referee Organization (PRO) in February, PRO locked out officials from league matches, impacting about 100 union referees during grueling months of negotiations.

PRO General Manager Mark Geiger said in a press release that PSRA referees would be back on the pitch right on time for that weekend’s slate of games after negotiators from both parties reached a tentative agreement the week of March 18.

“This seven-year term provides enhanced pay and benefits for all officials and the stability that will support the growth of the professional game in the U.S. and Canada,” he said.

Negotiations between both parties reached an impasse last month after PSRA referees overwhelmingly voted down a PRO proposal. Before that, negotiations necessitated the presence of a federal mediator, and both sides have since filed unfair labor practice claims with the National Labor Relations Board.

Now, both parties are moving forward.

“On behalf of PRO, I would like to thank the PSRA negotiating team and the federal mediator for their commitment to finding a mutually agreeable conclusion to these negotiations and their hard work in finalizing the terms,” Geiger added.

In a press statement, PSRA President and lead negotiator Peter Manikowski thanked the union’s negotiating team. He said the union hopes to build on the agreement in years to come as soccer continues to grow in North America.

“Standing strong with each other, we have been buoyed by the support of players, fans, supporters clubs, and other unionized workgroups during our employer-imposed lockout,” he said. “Together, we have won much-needed improvements demonstrating the value of having the best referees in MLS on the pitch.”

read more: https://prismreports.org/2024/04/03/major-league-soccer-referees-end-labor-lockout/

According to Haaretz, the “underreported announcement” came after “pressure from members of the far-left France Unbowed party,” as well as the release of “various unverified videos” on social media platforms which show Israeli soldiers “engaged in illegal acts against prisoners of war.”

France’s Foreign Ministry announced “its intention to pursue legal action” against French nationals serving in the Israeli army who may be complicit in war crimes being committed in the Gaza Strip, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

The paper said that the “underreported announcement” last month came after “pressure from members of the far-left France Unbowed party,” as well as the release of “various unverified videos” on social media platforms which show Israeli soldiers “engaged in illegal acts against prisoners of war.”

In one video, soldiers are seen surrounding blindfolded detainees, all wearing white overalls, and whose hands are tied behind their backs.

The person filming is heard insulting the detainees in French, saying: “Did you see those motherf*****s, my nephew, those sons of removed?”

He then laughs and continues, “Look, he’s pissed himself. I’ll show you his back. You’ll laugh – they tortured him to make him talk. Did you see his back?”

The detainees are seen being taken off the back of a truck, and the footage also shows the detainee’s scarred back.

read more: https://www.palestinechronicle.com/france-intends-legal-action-against-french-israeli-soldiers-complicit-in-gaza-war-crimes-report/

Workers at America’s largest chain of bookstores are gearing up for a nationwide union drive after six Barnes & Noble outlets voted to organize over the past year.

“Many more” stores will unionize, according to booksellers demanding better pay and conditions.

At locations that already have, employees accuse the chain’s management of dragging their heels during contract negotiations. James Daunt, the CEO, is said to have embarked upon a months-long campaign to dissuade employees from voting in favor.

read more: https://portside.org/2024-04-02/barnes-noble-workers-plan-union-drive-largest-us-bookstore-chain