Mass killings of strikers warrant international investigation

Abstract

tive than in the case of Poland in 1982. An analysis of the parties involved and the processes engaged in these post-2000 cases reveals similarities and differences that go some way to explaining how and why different aspects of the supervisory systems have been used to a greater or lesser extent with regard to the other cases in this period and to the earlier case. In all three post-2000 cases the workers involved in the strike were at something of a distance from the established national trade union centres in their respective countries. At Hacienda Luisita the small local union benefitted from links to an experienced national centre, the KMU, but lacked engagement with the international bodies (as KMU was not, at the time, a member of either ICFTU, WCL or WFTU)3 . The national union centres of the Philippines that did have international connections and influence did little to support the Hacienda Luisita case, even, in the 2007 session of the ILO Conference Committee on the Application of Standards (CCAS), going so far as to to deny a link between trade union activities and a spate of murders of trade unionists in the Philippines4 . In Kazakhstan and Marikana the strikes were organised by ad hoc groups that were not supported by the established national centres the FPRK and COSATU. While the workers did have some links with recently formed and under-resourced unions, these links were not clear membership connections, and these organisations lacked knowledge of or effective links into the international supervisory mechanisms. It appears that in no case did a national centre with an international affiliation to ITUC or its predecessors or to WFTU submit a complaint to any ILO forum. The victims either were unaware of their options to present international complaints or perhaps believed that they were unable to make use of the supervisory systems. The ILO has examined levels of respect for freedom of association in each of the countries concerned since the events complained of occurred yet there has been almost no engagement with these specific cases of mass killings as such. Since the Zhanaozen shootings, the compliance of Kazakhstan with core trade union rights under Convention 87 has been examined twice in the CEACR, in 2012 and in 2015. In the 2012 CEACR report there was discussion of Kazakhstan, but this referred only to legal barriers to union organising , with no mention of the killing of strikers at Zhanaozen5 . Although the report was published in 2012, after the events at Zhanaozen, it may have been prepared too early for the case to be included. However, the next time Kazakhstan was discussed, in the 2015 CEACR report there appears extensive discussion of union organising laws but no mention of the mass shooting of The ILO has a number of supervisory and complaints mechanisms that ought to be engaged when the worst labour rights outrages occur, such as the mass killing of strikers INTERNATIONAL union rights Page 12 Volume 22 Issue 3 2015 W hen martial law was declared in Poland 1981, and the government suspended the activities of the Solidarność trade union, a group of miners at the Wujek mine called a strike that was fiercely repressed. Miners fought back against police who tried to evict them before armed paramilitary units entered the grounds of the mine, shooting dozens of miners, and killing nine of them. Even from the closed-off world of 1980s Poland under martial law the news emerged rapidly. And the international trade union movement responded rapidly. A complaint (Case No. 1097 (Poland), 14 December 1981) was lodged with the Committee on Freedom of Association (CFA) the day after martial law was declared. A further 17 letters of complaint were received by the CFA over the following two months, and these were added to the case1 . The ILO Director-General wrote to the Polish authorities , who responded, and a dialogue was opened at the highest levels within just a matter of weeks. Within six months, at the next session of the International Labour Conference, an Article 26 Complaint was presented, and accepted, and a Commission of Inquiry was launched2 . The Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions...