Month: October 2019

Robinson, 25, of Craigavon, Northern Ireland, was remanded in custody by magistrates in Chelmsford, Essex and will next appear at London’s Old Bailey court on November 25.

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He was not required to enter a plea and spoke only to confirm his name and address.

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Robinson was arrested shortly after the bodies were found in an industrial park in Grays, Essex on October 23.

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On Saturday he was charged with 39 counts of manslaughter, conspiracy to traffic people, conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration and money laundering.

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Robinson was seated quietly in a light-colored t-shirt on Monday as district court judge Timothy King said he was concerned the defendant might try to interfere with the investigation if released.

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Robinson’s solicitor, Julian Hayes, made no application for bail, the UK’s PA news agency reported.

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Crown prosecutor Oghenerouna Iguyovwe told the court that Robinson was part of a global ring to facilitate illegal immigration into the UK.

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Victims not yet named

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On Saturday, police said they would not speculate on the nationalities of those who had died in the truck, but were aware of reports of missing individuals in the Vietnamese community.

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“We cannot realistically speculate at this time about the nationalities of all of our deceased within that vehicle,” Detective Chief Inspector Martin Pasmore of Essex Police said.

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UK authorities are working with their Vietnamese counterparts to identify the victims, but have not yet officially named any of them or confirmed their nationalities.

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All of the victims’ bodies have been transported from the trailer to Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford for post-mortem examinations, according to Essex Police.

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Pasmore said he had agreed with the Vietnamese Ambassador to the UK to a method of sharing fingerprints in the hope that it would help with the identification of the victims.

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Essex Police have appealed for anyone who may have information about the 39 deceased to come forward.

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Three other people arrested in connection with the investigation have been released on bail, Essex police said on Sunday.

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Centrist parties — including Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU — were bumped into third place after the left-wing Die Linke and far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) surged ahead.

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Incumbent Die Linke took top spot with 31% of the vote, a slight increase on the last state election five years ago.

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But it was the phenomenal rise of the AfD, which came in second place with 23.4% of the vote, that raised serious concerns, particularly among Jewish leaders, in the wake of a shooting outside a synagogue earlier this month.

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The AfD, led locally by controversial party figure Björn Höcke, more than doubled its share of voters since the last state election.

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Anti-immigrant former history teacher Höcke has previously called Berlin’s Holocaust memorial a “monument of shame.” He is considered an extremist by the country’s intelligence service.

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“He’s not a typical party politician,” said Egbert Klautke, a cultural historian at University College London’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies.

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“This character comes from the west (of Germany) and then uses the east German state (of Thuringia) as a stage for fairly radical and extreme right-wing views,” said Klautke.

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He added that Höcke, who is simultaneously awkward with the media and at ease addressing rallies, uses “language that hasn’t been heard in public since the early 1950s, when there were still proper old Nazis around.”

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Even within his own party, Höcke has faced criticism for his radical views, Klautke added.

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Thuringia’s election comes at a delicate time in German politics, just weeks after a far-right attacker went on a shooting rampage outside a synagogue in the eastern town of Halle.

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Höcke condemned the Halle attacks. But his party was nonetheless accused of inciting a culture of hatred by Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Jewish community in Munich.

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Following the AfD’s success in Thuringia, Knobloch warned on Twitter that its voters had “supported a party that has been preparing the ground for marginalization and extreme right-wing violence for years.”

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She added that the party had downplayed the Nazi era and incited hatred against Jewish people and other minorities.

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The anti-West vote

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Meanwhile a beaming Höcke told supporters on Sunday that, “The people of Thuringia have voted for Wende 2.0,” Reuters reported.

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The second “Wende” or “change” that Höcke mentioned is a reference to the fall of Communism three decades ago, and an attempt to appeal to emotions and nostalgia in eastern Germany.

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Indeed, the AfD has repeatedly recycled slogans from the peaceful revolution in 1989. The party also used the famous “Wir sind das Volk!” chant, meaning “We are the people!,” during campaigning in several east German state elections this year.

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Some experts have called the AfD’s tactic an abuse of history. “What the AfD wants — a nationalist, inward-looking Germany — has nothing to do with what the people wanted in 1989,” said Kristina Spohr, a historian and the author of “Post Wall, Post Square: Rebuilding the World after 1989.”

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But the AfD’s nationalist message has struck a chord in the once-Communist east, where support for the party is the strongest in Germany.

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It was unable to bump the left-wing Die Linke from top spot in Sunday’s state election — though without a majority, Die Linke will need to form a coalition to remain in power.

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Die Linke’s state premier, Bodo Ramelow, told German broadcaster ARD: “I see myself clearly strengthened. My party clearly has the mandate to govern, and I will take it up.”

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The left-wing party won the most votes in the over-60 age group, while the AfD was the most popular party in Thuringia among all groups under 60, according to German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel.

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Klautke questioned whether the older group was “still sticking to the old left” that in some ways represents the former German Democratic Republic they grew up in.

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“I think that is part of the success of Die Linke in some respects,” he added.

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In the three decades since reunification, Thuringia has “suffered more than other (eastern states) from economic decline and an imposed political system from the West,” said Klautke.

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He added that this could also explain “anti-Western” voting tendencies in Thuringia, where voters chose more radical political alternatives over more centrist parties.

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Germany, like several countries across Europe, has seen a shift in recent years from centrist groups to more populist parties.

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Thuringia’s results will throw fresh scrutiny on Merkel’s CDU successor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who since taking over a year ago has seen her party plunge in the polls.

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Klautke added, however, that while state elections give the federal government an idea of their standing locally, they don’t usually have an immediate impact on the party.

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The UK Prime Minister suffered yet another bruising defeat on Monday when Parliament rejected his bid to hold an early election in December.

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A total of 299 MPs voted in favor of the election; 70 voted against it, and large numbers of MPs abstained, meaning it failed to secure the necessary two-thirds majority.

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Speaking immediately after the result was announced, Johnson said his Government would introduce a short bill calling for an election on December 12.

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Such a bill would require a simple majority, rather than the two-thirds required by the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, and could effectively override the current election law.

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However, there are two issues with that approach: Johnson doesn’t have a majority in the House of Commons, because he fired 21 MPs after they voted against him in early September. Others have resigned.

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Another problem: Just like any legislation in Parliament, a one-line bill will be open to amendments. Johnson runs the risk that the opposition could team up with Conservative rebels to change the bill in ways that could potentially hurt him. The Liberal Democrats and the SNP have already suggested lowering the voting age to 16, which they could try to force through an amendment.

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The Liberal Democrats also announced their own plan to introduce another bill calling for an election on Tuesday. They want the early election to happen on Monday, December 9.

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The move is likely motivated at least in part by the party’s desire to target student voters, who would be heading home for vacation at the end of the week, making a December 12 vote tricky. Students and younger voters are an important source of support for the party, and many are registered to vote at their term-time addresses.

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Johnson had said a vote on December 12 was part of his new Brexit timetable. He wanted to dissolve Parliament after November 6 for the election campaign.

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Johnson said that the new Parliament would meet before Christmas, giving it some extra time to deal with Brexit before the new year — and the new January 31 departure deadline.

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A Downing Street source told CNN the Brexit deal that Johnson agreed with Brussels will not be brought back to Parliament while lawmakers debate the early election. Lawmakers have rejected the deal earlier this month.

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Labour had said ahead of the vote that it would not agree to an election until a no-deal Brexit is “off the table.” Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn did not clarify exactly what would have to be done to satisfy that requirement.

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European leaders announced Monday they would grant the UK a three-month Brexit extension, averting a no-deal split on Halloween but extending the political saga into next year.

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The bloc’s 27 remaining leaders agreed to a “flextension” until January 2020, Donald Tusk, president of the EU Council, tweeted on Monday.

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The delay — the third granted by the EU this year — will be cut short if Johnson passes his exit deal before then. However, it does not remove the risk of a no-deal Brexit in case he fails to pass the deal.

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Pyrenees-Atlantique Police said a man tried to set fire to the door of a mosque in the city of Bayonne, and shot at two men, aged 74 and 78, who startled him. Both were seriously injured.

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The attacker had been a member of Marine Le Pen’s far-right party National Front until 2015, according to the party’s official. (The party is now known as National Rally.)

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“This man was effectively a part of the 8,000 candidates we had for the [2015] regional elections,” National Rally vice president and European Parliament MP Jordan Bardella told CNN affiliate BFM TV on Monday.

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“I can assure you that nothing throughout his path would’ve suggested that he was crazy,” Bardella said on BFM TV.

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“He was dismissed in 2015 after the regional elections for which he was a candidate,” Bardella said, adding the man was “obviously not a part of the movement anymore.”

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The injured men were being treated in hospital, according to a police statement.

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Police said the suspect set fire to a car before fleeing the scene. He was later arrested at his home in Les Landes, north of Bayonne.

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President Emmanuel Macron has condemned “the heinous attack.”

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“My thoughts are with the victims,” he said.

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“The Republic will never tolerate hatred. Everything will be done to punish the perpetrators and protect our compatriots of the Muslim faith,” Macron added.

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Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn confirmed his party would support Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s attempt in Parliament on Tuesday to force an early poll, all but ensuring it will take place.

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Corbyn had opposed Johnson’s earlier attempts to force a vote, but said in a statement on Tuesday that his party will back it now that the European Union has extended the Brexit process until January 31.

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“We will now launch the most ambitious and radical campaign for real change our country has ever seen,” Corbyn said.

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The exact date is still unclear; Johnson will table a bill calling for a December 12 polling day, but could see it amended by opposition parties which are leaning towards a vote earlier in the same week. A senior government adviser told CNN on Tuesday that the government would accept an amendment for a December 11 vote, should it be tabled.

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But the major theme of the election is obvious: campaigns will be dominated by Brexit, with the Prime Minister asking for a majority in Parliament that could support his plan to take the UK out of the EU.

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He’ll face opposition from the Labour Party, which is calling for a confirmatory second referendum, and the resurgent Liberal Democrats, which want to revoke Article 50 and cancel Brexit altogether. And after failing to deliver his “do or die” promise to take Britain out of the EU by October 31, Johnson could also be squeezed from the other side by Nigel Farage’s hardline Brexit Party.

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Labour had been the major holdout in the push towards an election, after the Liberal Democrats and the SNP dropped their opposition to a poll over the weekend.

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“I have consistently said that we are ready for an election and our support is subject to a No Deal Brexit being off the table,” Corbyn said on Tuesday. “We have now heard from the EU that the extension of Article 50 to 31st January has been confirmed, so for the next three months, our condition of taking No Deal off the table has now been met.”

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Johnson is enjoying a comfortable lead in opinion polls, but the same was true of Theresa May in 2017 when the former Prime Minister called her own snap vote.

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In that election, a strong campaign resulted in Corbyn stunning pundits by picking up enough seats to deny May a majority in Parliament — setting the scene for two years of political chaos which Johnson inherited when he became Prime Minister during the summer.

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The vote will be Britain’s first December election since 1923, when the first ever Labour government was elected.

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Precarious workers need Asia’s unions

In the Global North, changes in the organisation of work and employer strategy have rendered existing unions less powerful and put unionism out of reach for large groups of workers. In Asia, the situation is even more complex. Many Asian countries have large informal sectors, unregulated by labour law and unrepresented in the formal industrial relations system. In addition, large numbers of workers are employed on an informal basis within formal sector industries.

In many cases, Asia’s unions have ignored these precarious workers. This is perhaps not surprising since many of the region’s labour movements are weak from decades of repression and sometimes struggle to represent the interests even of their ‘core’ membership. Informal associations, many of them supported by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and even the international labour movement have tried to fill the gap. Yet – despite their evident weaknesses – unions remain an important part of the puzzle by virtue of their role in national industrial relations systems and the international bodies that set labour standards.

The informal sector and beyond

A large proportion of Asia’s workforce are employed in informal occupations, with rates of informal work ranging from a low of 20% in Japan to above 90% in Cambodia, Laos and Nepal. Classic informal occupations include street vending, parking assistance or rubbish picking. But informal workers are also found in formal sector industries, as in the case of homeworkers employed by large garment manufacturers. These longstanding categories of informal workers have been augmented in recent years with the emergence of the gig economy, where workers are formally categorised as independent contractors despite their employment-like relationship with platforms like Uber.

In addition to informal sector workers, Asia’s economies are home to a growing group of precarious workers in mainstream workplaces like factories. According to one study, non-standard work accounts for about one in three rank-and-file workers in the Philippines, and close to one in four of all employed persons in Malaysia. Employed through labour outsourcing companies, casually or on short contracts, these precarious workers often do exactly the same work as permanent employees. This increase in precarious work is not limited to developing Asia. It is also widespread in the advanced economies in the region, including Singapore, Japan and South Korea. In South Korea, for example, it is estimated that over a third of the workforce is employed in some form of precarious work.

The benefits and limits of non-union organising

There are many kinds of organising initiatives that involve precarious workers, from tiny community collectives, to associations of app-based transport workers, to India’s famous Self Employed Women’s Association, which brings together home-based workers, small-scale vendors, daily labourers and service providers. A more recent example of non-union organising has emerged alongside the growth of the gig economy. In India, for example, app-based transport providers have organised mass protests, including a strike for thirteen days in February 2017 of Uber and Ola drivers. In Indonesia, too, app-based transport providers have formed local collectives that come together in regional driver associations. Through these collectives and associations, drivers have mobilised to demand that the app companies improve wages and conditions and that the government recognise them under labour law.

Non-union worker associations often focus on practical measures like improving the economic position of their members by establishing cooperatives or providing support when their members get into some kind of trouble. Their strength lies in their responsiveness to the needs of workers that sit outside the constituencies of mainstream unions. For example, migrant domestic worker organisations in Hong Kong focus on the needs of women who come to the city-state to live and work in their employers’ homes, dealing with issues ranging from sexual violence and unwanted pregnancy to unpaid wages and immigration matters.

These kinds of organisations do have some weaknesses, however. If they are purely self-supporting it is difficult for them to scale up, or sometimes even sustain, their activities. Where they are more formalised, they tend to rely on external support from NGOs or the international labour movement. For example, the IUF – one of the global union federations – sponsored the formation of the International Domestic Workers Federation and provides a home for SEWA. These relationships mean that such organising initiatives are vulnerable to changes in the focus of supporting organisations or in the funding priorities of these allies or their donors.

Perhaps even more important in terms of the bigger picture, non-union worker organisations operate outside the formal industrial relations system. Registered unions (at least in theory) have the right to bargain collectively on behalf of their members through formal industrial relations mechanisms and participate in tripartite structures at the local, national and international levels – including the International Labour Organization, the world’s primary labour standard-setting body. Other kinds of organisations do not have these rights. As a consequence, they have to rely primarily on campaigning or mass mobilisation to promote structural change in the world of work.

Why unions matter

One way to overcome this limitation is to find ways to incorporate grassroots organising initiatives into the union movement. Take, for example, the case of temporary labour migrants. In South Korea and Hong Kong, migrant-only unions sit under the umbrella of a progressive union confederation. In these and some other Asian countries, unions also reach out to migrant workers directly with a view to recruiting them as regular members. For example, the Timber Employees Union Peninsular Malaysia began organising foreign workers in 2006 with the help of a Nepalese organiser funded by BWI, another of the global union federations. By 2008, migrants accounted for over 10% of the union’s total membership.

Encouraged by the international labour movement, several Asian unions have also made attempts to grow their membership by recruiting other kinds of precarious workers. For example, the General Federation of Nepalese Trade Unions has grown its membership through a focus on organising precarious workers in agriculture. As part of this strategy, they have campaigned for the government to increase the minimum wage and to apply it to all workers. Asian unions have also experimented with reaching out to gig economy workers. In Indonesia, for example, the powerful metalworkers’ union has attempted to reach out to app-based transport workers through their local communities.

Union engagement is not always enough, especially as many Asian labour movements struggle with the legacies of authoritarianism and/or ongoing persecution by their own governments. In addition, most of the region’s unions remain firmly focused on large, formal-sector workplaces in traditionally unionised industries. In these circumstances, it makes absolute sense for sectoral unions to organise precarious workers in those industries. The argument for targeting other groups of precarious workers is, however, much less compelling. Some activists may argue that unions’ narrow sectoral focus constitutes a damaging form of labour aristocracy, but there is a very real risk that they could spread themselves too thin. In such cases, then, union involvement in advocacy or political campaigns – alongside NGOs and grassroots worker associations – may be the best way to help workers pursue their labour rights.

These papers have been produced as part of the Open Society Foundations’ Just Future for Workers initiative, which advances strategies to build strong and inclusive labor movements.

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However, the manager insisted the two spot-kicks his side missed at Norwich on Sunday should have been re-taken.

Both Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial had efforts saved by Canaries keeper Tim Krul in the first half.

United’s first was awarded controversially with Ben Godfrey adjudged to have fouled Daniel James and the penalty was confirmed following a VAR review.

The second one was given when Todd Cantwell handled the ball in the box.

Fortunately for United, their misses didn’t prevent them from getting the three points as goals from Scott McTominay, Rashford and Martial helped them run out 3-1 winners.

The Red Devils have now missed four out of the six penalties they’ve been awarded in the Premier League this season.

But Solskjaer believes both of their spot-kicks should have been taken again as Krul was off his line when denying Rashford and Martial.

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The Norwegian also admitted that United’s first penalty probably shouldn’t have been given in the first place.

Speaking to talkSPORT’s Joe Shennan, Solskaer said: “I don’t think the first one is a penalty. I think the second one is because his hands are up.

“But I think both should have been re-taken because the keeper’s off his line.

“Tim Krul is absolutely brilliant on penalties. That’s why Holland took Cillessen off and put him on [in the 2014 World Cup quarter-finals].

“It’s like the six-second rule back in the day. That was used for a couple of months and then it’s gone and now stepping off the line is gone.

“With the first one it takes more than two minutes to make a decision so it’s not a clear and obvious error. It should be ten seconds and you see the error. I don’t think it’s a penalty.