Armies of Liberation

This strike has been going on for years. I have a copy of the employment contract for the port workers. It allows punitive transfers and termination without cause, among a number of other illegal provisions.

HOOD: About the suffering of the workers port of Aden container from abuse

Revealed by local authorities in the governorate of Aden and the ugly face biased to manage the company operating the port of Aden Container “DP World” in farsightedness, in violation of the Constitution and the law to prevent dock workers from exercising their constitutional and legal in the peaceful sit-in to claim their rights project, but proceeded to launch phase new use of cruelty and violence when dispersing the peaceful sit on Saturday 5/6/2010, which resulted in injuries to workers and the arrest of (9) after the port workers had gathered in the round of Caltex for going on strike, which started on 05/24/2010 after reversed (down) the company’s implementation of the commitments made in the minutes earlier with representatives of the workers of the equality of reward paid workers, the nearest port run by “DP”, a port of Djibouti, and following this record has been suspended a strike a year and a half, as well as the right of workers in health care and the demands of related, including the employer must provide the rights of the worker in accordance with the Labour Code. (Read on …)

Yemen Observer – The General Labor Union in Yemen (GLU) called all workers in Yemen to initiate a general strike starting on Saturday, May 15. (Read on …)

In a joint statement today “The Educators syndicate” and “The Education Profession syndicate” in the governorate of Taiz condemned the illegal deductions the government imposed on their salaries, which was deducted to the benefit of fake syndicate called ” The education & discipline profession syndicate”. (Read on …)

Yemen Times

Jamal Al-Sanabani, Deputy President of the Yemeni Laborers Union spoke to Ali Saeed from the Yemen Times about the nature of union work and the challenges that unions face. (Read on …)

Raufa ran for the head of the YJS and faced a lot of pressure from many quarters, including the VP of Yemen and Yahya Saleh.

Yemen Post

FK: Were you subject to pressures from higher ranking officials to force you to withdraw your candidacy?
RH: I was actually asked to withdraw from the elections and this was published in newspapers. In the beginning, Nasr Taha Mustafa, the former YJS chairman, was delegated by the General People Congress (GPC) to convince me to withdraw. This clearly means this party will not wait until the results come out to see who wins, but rather it works on making other candidates withdraw their candidacy to facilitate the task of its candidate, something that contradicts the core of democracy. I apologized to Mustafa and told him over phone, because I was then abroad, that I will never withdraw.

FK: Have your received similar calls or have you been subject to other sorts of pressure?
RH: Yes, I got a telephone call from Yahya Al-Shauibi, but he did not mention withdrawing the candidacy and offered to meet when I return; however, I avoided him because I knew the message he had wished to convey. I received another call from Yahya Mohammed Abdullah Saleh who later came to my house and told me that GPC Secretary General and Vice-President Abdu Rabu Mansour had requested him to convince me to withdraw.

Update: Yemen Times

In the last minutes of the nomination process, three candidates for the chairperson position withdrew, decreasing the total number of candidates to five. All five of these nominees work with government media establishments as every opposition newspaper and independent candidate withdrew. Two of the five candidates standout: Dr. Raufa Hassan, university professor and director of an NGO, and Yaseen Al-Masoudi from Al-Thawra state run newspaper.

If elected, Dr. Raufa Hassan will be the first woman to chair the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate. She emphasized the necessity of meeting the journalists’ demands. “I will take it upon me to achieve the recommendations which the fourth conference for journalists will bring about,” she said.

Original Post: The last head of the YJS was the head of the state news agency SABA and was a total tool. The regime’s choice for this term is the vice at al Thawra, and there is a lot of contention about the regime’s strong arming the union to select and “elect” its candidate. (See Almotamar.net article for regime endorsement.) The non-governmental journalists are concerned with several important issues as the following Yemen Times oped explains:

Political parties are focusing their attention these days on the upcoming Yemen Journalists Syndicate (YJS) general assembly meeting to elect a new board and chairman. Being the most effective and important civil society organization, both tae ruling party and opposition have been conducting intensive meetings, trying to mobilize journalists to vote for their candidates. The ruling party, in particular, has been mustering journalists working for the state-run media to vote for a selected list representing the party. Heads of these media outlets have used their positions to influence their journalists to vote for a specific group of journalists. This demonstrates how these parties are keen to control the YJS and manipulate it to serve their own political agenda.
(Read on …)

So how are they supposed to get their back pay?

Yemen Post: Tens have been arrested when police broke up on Tuesday a strike by the employees of the Aden branch of the Yemen oil company.

Many other employees and people of those whose homes are close to the company complex, including children, were injured when police fired live bullets and used tear gas to disperse the protesting workers who began a full-scale strike last Saturday demanding financial rights. (Read on …)

Yemen Post
Security forces in Aden released on Saturday members of the Labor Union Committee who were arrested at the Aden Container Terminal over the strike that was held by Aden port workers.

They were freed after a week in custody by the governors order.

However, the workers at the Aden Container Terminal have been striking for eight straight days in protest on feared injustice that they may have after the station was handed over to DP World.

They claim they know nothing about the agreement under which the terminal was taken over by the DP world and can’t decide over issues that concern them.

The workers have launched stages since the agreement was signed early this month, describing the deal as unfair and harms the interests of the whole country.

YO

Workers at the port of Aden have gone on strike in protest over new contracts issued by Dubai Ports World’s (DPW), the port’s new administration, said sources at the workers syndicate on Monday.

More than 90 per cent of the 600 workers at the ports of Caltex and Al Mualla have been on the strike since last Saturday, said workers representative Abdu Rabu Majda.

The strike came about one week after DPW began to operate the port of Aden following an agreement signed last July between the Yemeni government and DPW.

“The main reason behind the strike was the new contracts, which gave DPW the right to sack any worker. It also put all workers on six month probation,” Majda told the Yemen Observer.

Most of the 600 workers did not agree to the new contracts and went on strike, he said.

About seven workers chosen to represent their peers in negotiations with DPW and Yemeni authorities were arrested by security forces in Aden the first day of the strike. However Aref Al Muhairi, Director General of DPW, denied any problem at the port, and denied the implementation of new work conditions, saying the strike did not affect work at the port.

He said work stopped only for three hours at the beginning of the strike. “And within 48 hours everything will be as it was, we are operating 45 ports, and we know what we are doing,” Al Muhairi told the Yemen Observer.

“There is nothing new in the contracts, they were under discussions for four months with the Yemeni government,” he said. “For those who do not like to work with us, it’s up to them, they can go wherever they like,” he added.