Tens of thousands are still missing. Rescue teams keep digging through collapsed buildings in Caracas and in the coastal state of La Guaira, the areas hit hardest, where entire neighbourhoods lie in ruins along with workplaces, hospitals and basic infrastructure. A state of emergency is in force. The disaster is falling hardest on families and communities already made vulnerable, especially women and children, older people and workers in precarious and informal jobs.
The affected region is home to major energy, petrochemical and manufacturing activities, industries in which IndustriALL, through its affiliates, represents workers in over 130 countries.
IndustriALL has no affiliated unions in Venezuela. Our solidarity nevertheless goes out to all workers in these industries and to the Venezuelan trade union movement. Their members have lost family, homes and livelihoods and many workplaces are damaged or have stopped operating altogether.
The earthquakes hit a people who had already endured a great deal. Millions were struggling to meet basic needs long before the disaster and at the start of the year IndustriALL condemned the violation of the rule-based international order and its consequences for Venezuela’s sovereignty and its people. Crisis has now been compounded by disaster.
IndustriALL reaffirms its solidarity with workers and communities affected and expresses its deepest condolences to the families who have lost loved ones.
Gold is booming, miners are not benefiting
Co-chair Cathy Drummond, of the United Steelworkers (USW), set the tone early. Miners around the world, she said, are facing many of the same pressures: changing business models, growing subcontracting, persistent health and safety risks, barriers to organizing and the creeping impact of new technology.
That sense of shared struggle ran through the whole meeting.
A boom that bypasses the workforce
Emmanuel Adjei-Danso, IndustriALL’s Director of Mining and Energy, opened with a stark picture of a sector enjoying record gold prices and rising production, with central banks worldwide leaning on gold reserves to shore up their currencies. Yet that surge in value, he said, is not translating into stronger collective bargaining, safer workplaces or better pay for the people who dig the gold out of the ground.
He pointed to a troubling toll of mining fatalities recorded across the sector so far this year and warned that illicit mining is making the problem worse by undermining safety standards and the sustainability of the industry as a whole.
Kemal Ozkan, IndustriALL’s assistant general secretary, framed the stakes in even starker terms.
“The mine workers are already at the crossroads of the energy transition for a low-carbon economy, decarbonization, but at the end it really puts the mine workers at the front line of the whole debate,”
he told delegates.
Subcontracting: the thread running through every country
If one issue united every speaker, it was subcontracting.
In Ghana, delegate Abdul-Moomin Abdul-Moomin described an industry where the vast majority of the workforce is now on temporary or fixed-term contracts, a shift he linked directly to weak labour law enforcement. The Ghana Mine Workers’ Union has fought back through the courts and the bargaining table, winning protections that make it harder for employers to simply let contracts lapse.
In Quebec, Canada, Sebastien Rail from the USW described subcontractors operating almost like staffing agencies, supplying labour to mines on terms that make it extremely difficult for workers to unionize and linked the practice to a recent rise in workplace accidents among inexperienced, recently hired staff.
In Tanzania, RWECHUNGURA Paternus from Tanzania Mines, Energy, Construction and Allied Workers’ Union (TAMICO) explained how artisanal and small-scale miners, often working without contracts or fixed pay, can wait years to be paid once their gold is finally sold, making them almost impossible to organize effectively.
And in Zimbabwe, Thulani Moyo catalogued a grim list of site-level failures: a change of mine ownership that stripped away accrued worker benefits, inadequate dust control exposing miners to silicosis, compromized ventilation, shared sanitation facilities for men and women and a workplace death linked to poor safety protocols.
Solidarity that crosses borders
Not every story was one of setback. Delegates heard how international solidarity is already delivering results.
USW’s Ben Davis described a global network of Newmont union representatives, spanning Australia, Mexico, Argentina, Canada and Peru, working together to push the company to raise standards. He also detailed two cases brought under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement’s rapid response labour mechanism, including one in which an investigation uncovered links between organized crime and efforts to crush union organizing at a Mexican mine, complete with threats of violence against workers. The union won that case, although enforcement, Davis said, remains an uphill battle.
In Mexico, Los Mineros’ Luis Alberto described how the union has shifted from reacting to labour law changes to getting ahead of them, using legally mandated training committees to make outsourcing harder to justify and pushing health and safety committees to be led by the workers who know the conditions best.
A new tool in the toolbox: IRMA
The meeting also heard from Davidzo Muchawaya of the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA), a multi-stakeholder body where IndustriALL sits on the governing board alongside mining companies, investors, civil society and purchasers.
IRMA’s independent audits, Muchawaya explained, give unions something rare: verified, third-party evidence of conditions on the ground, evidence that companies themselves have already seen and accepted before it is published. She said the audits have surfaced a consistent pattern across many sites: a heavy and growing reliance on contract labour, weaker protection from harassment for contract workers and patchy management of safety hazards, especially for workers outside the direct workforce.
IndustriALL has already put those reports to work, combining IRMA audit findings with affiliate testimony to build a case for action at AngloGold Ashanti sites, holding the company to account for outstanding corrective measures.
Asked whether a Chinese-owned mine recently joining the IRMA system in the Democratic Republic of Congo was a sign of progress, Muchawaya agreed it was a notable step, noting that the vast majority of sites only join IRMA because of external pressure in the first place.
What happens next
Closing the meeting, co-chair Stephen Smyth called it the start of something bigger: a standing network, meeting regularly, with a shared contact list to keep the dialogue going between sessions. Emmanuel Adjei-Danso confirmed IndustriALL will now build dedicated company networks for Barrick Gold and AngloGold Ashanti, adding to existing work with Newmont and Anglo American and invited every affiliate to flag issues, campaigns and opportunities for cross-border collaboration.
The message from the network’s first meeting was clear: gold may be booming, but it is solidarity, not the gold price, that will deliver decent work for the people who mine it.
Garment workers in Indonesia, Cambodia and Bangladesh learn to use human rights law as a union tool
The workshop, convened by the HRDD Competence Centre in partnership with IndustriALL Global Union, is the first in a three-part pilot series targeting unions linked to global manufacturers Coats, Crystal International and Pou Chen.
IndustriALL textiles and garment director Christina Hajagos-Clausen said:
“For too long, due diligence has been a conversation between companies and regulators. This pilot puts workers and their unions at the centre of that process, with the knowledge and tools to hold employers accountable under the law.”
From classroom to factory floor
The three-day session brought together shop stewards, legal and paralegal staff, organizers and union leadership and put a direct question to them: how do you use the German Supply Chain Act, the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive and the OECD Guidelines as practical tools?
By the end of the workshop, all three country delegations could identify which instruments applied to their employers, had mapped supply chains using Open Supply Hub and the SOMO CSDDD Data Hub and had begun developing strategies combining national and transnational action pathways.
“It is a critical time to support workers with building the tools to put new trade and due diligence laws to work for workers. We can already see how countries such as Indonesia are creating and implementing new laws on forced labour and mandatory human rights due diligence. Workers play a critical role in ensuring safe and secure supply chains. As a centre, we support the global labour movement, to assume their seats at key decision-making tables,”
said Competence Centre executive director, Kelly Fay Rodriguez.
What comes next
The pilot continues in Bangladesh in October 2026 and concludes in Cambodia in January 2027, with findings presented in April 2027.
Oil and gas workers demand Just Transition and corporate accountability
Emmanuel Adjei-Danso, IndustriALL director for mining and energy, opened the discussion by framing the structural pressures reshaping the sector: price instability, sanctions regimes, supply chain disruptions and the accelerating energy transition. He drew out the central question that would run through the day: how do workers and their unions ensure that the transition is fair and that no one is left behind?
Regional voices: workers at the frontlines
Prosper Akrai, representing the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) of Nigeria described the cascading consequences of Nigeria’s fuel subsidy removal in May 2023. The retail price of petrol has risen by approximately 643 per cent. Food costs have surged, consuming close to 80 per cent of an average worker’s monthly income. The naira has collapsed. Workers face simultaneous wage erosion, casualization of employment and a worsening security situation.
Prosper Akrai also flagged a direct attack on union rights. NUPENG and its sister union have faced an organized campaign by Dangote Refinery, which deployed media, social media influencers and politicians to undermine the unions’ public standing after they demanded workers be allowed the right to organize.
From the United States, Mike Smith, chair of the national oil bargaining programme for the United Steelworkers (USW), reported that BP has locked out approximately 900 workers at its Whiting, Indiana refinery since March 2026. BP refused to match a pattern agreement reached with Marathon and is demanding the conversion of 100 union jobs to contract positions, multiple wage scales,and a management rights clause that would remove workers’ ability to bargain over the impact of artificial intelligence. Replacement workers, paid two and a half times the union rate, are now running the 400,000 barrel-per-day facility at reduced capacity.
“We will continue to reach out if there are any engagements in any countries. We are going to chase British Petroleum across the world,”
Mike Smith said. He thanked IndustriALL and Unite for solidarity actions, including at BP’s shareholder meeting in London.
Naoki Kashima, executive chair of the JEC-Rengo Petroleum Subcommittee (Japan), described how Japan’s dependence on the Strait of Hormuz for more than 90 per cent of its crude oil imports makes it acutely exposed to regional conflict. Any disruption risks driving up energy, food and logistics costs, potentially wiping out the wage gains Japanese unions have achieved in recent years.
Hassan Juma, president of the Iraqi General Federation of Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Unions (IGFOGPU), delivered the most urgent testimony of the day. Oil production in Iraq has fallen by approximately 70 per cent as a result of regional conflict. Over 2,500 workers employed by multinational companies have been sent home without wages. The multinationals have left; the workers have not been paid.
“The first and last person who is impacted is the worker contracted by these multinational companies, because they still have not been paid their wages since the beginning of the war,” Juma said. “They do not have healthcare, they do not have health insurance.”
He described workers labouring in temperatures reaching 47 degrees Celsius in Basra, with field conditions climbing to 50 and 60 degrees in summer. Iraq’s economy, he said, depends on oil revenues for 85 per cent of its federal budget, leaving wages, pensions and public services entirely exposed to the disruption.
Tina Wilhelm of IGBCE (Germany) closed the regional panel by describing the structural contradiction facing Europe. Fossil energy remains essential for industrial stability, but long-term demand is uncertain. Companies are under-investing in both existing infrastructure and future technologies and workers lack clarity on what their futures will look like. She argued that the energy transition will only succeed if it is industrially viable and socially just, with workers recognized as active shapers of the process, not passive recipients of its consequences.
Holding capital accountable: Global Framework Agreements
Kemal Özkan IndustriALL assistant general secreatry outlined IndustriALL’s strategy of using Global Framework Agreements to hold multinationals to labour standards across their entire supply chains, regardless of what national law requires.
“Global Framework Agreements provide the leverage for our core business: union organizing,” Özkan said. “Through the clauses where the employer commits to respect freedom of association and collective bargaining, we also make an important move around social dialogue.”
He reported that IndustriALL’s agreement with ENI was renewed in January 2026, with new commitments on human rights due diligence and the integration of ILO Convention 190 on violence and harassment. Agreements with TotalEnergies and Engie are also active, the latter including an explicit commitment to Just Transition and sustainable employment. He called for renewed engagement with Petrobras following Brazilian elections in October 2026 and reaffirmed IndustriALL’s full solidarity with the USW workers locked out by BP.
Conclusions: solidarity, heat stress and a multi-year action plan
The conclusions noted that heat stress had emerged as a cross-cutting occupational health issue. IndustriALL and the ILO are in discussion on a programme to address heat stress across the sector, including dedicated training.
Frode Alfheim, co-chair of the IndustriALL Energy Sector and president of Styrke (Norway) closed with a call for global solidarity, reflecting on the testimony from Nigeria and Iraq.
“This is a global industrial issue where we have to work together to make sure they get the support they need,”
he said.
He noted that Norway’s success in managing oil revenues for public benefit had its roots in expertise brought from Iraq in the late 1960s and called on the network to build on that history of cross-border knowledge and solidarity.
Participants agreed to develop a multi-year action plan linking affiliate unions across the global oil and gas supply chain.
Shutterstock: Stock image of oil refinery workers
Graveyard to Green Yard: one year ago, workers won a landmark victory
Released on 26 June 2026, exactly one year since the Hong Kong Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships (HKC) entered into force. That is not a coincidence.
The Convention is already driving dramatic changes: cleaning up the industry’s environmental footprint, making the work safer, and formalizing employment. Ship recycling is going through a Just Transition that is creating decent work in the circular economy. This film tells the story of the workers and unions who made it happen.
Graveyard to Green Yard: the coalition that changed the ship recycling industry
Organizing in shipbreaking in India started in 2003, when officials from the Mumbai Port and Dockworkers’ Union spoke to shipbreaking workers in a neighbouring yard and realized they had no drinking water or first aid as they worked 12-hour shifts in the most dangerous job in the world.
After organizing workers in Mumbai, the focus shifted to the bigger yards in Alang, Gujarat, where the Alang-Sosiya Ship Recycling and General Workers’ Association (ASSRGWA) was formed, an industry-wide union open to anyone working in the yards or the downstream industry.
By organizing the yards and relentlessly fighting for workers’ rights and social protection, ASSRGWA built strength and credibility with employers and government. By working with IndustriALL, they built a network of global solidarity, with unions in the Netherlands, Japan, Germany, Denmark, Australia and elsewhere lobbying their governments to ratify the HKC, and for the shipping industry to take responsibility for the full lifecycle of ships.
This brought together a coalition of governments, employers and shipowners committed to transforming the industry through the Convention and social dialogue.
The interplay between the Convention and mobilization on the ground is central: the HKC is a top-down tool that creates the conditions for a better industry. The union is the force on the ground that ensures change is real, and involves workers.
ASSRGWA now has a density above 70 per cent in the yards and has turned its attention to the downstream steel industry, including rerolling mills and small workshops. On 26 June 2026, representatives of the Indian national government, the port authority, the employers’ federation, ASSRGWA and SEWA, the union organizing downstream scrap recyclers, met in Bhavnagar to discuss the next stage of the transition: extending the benefits of the HKC to the downstream industry.
South African autoworkers strike over wages at BAIC plant
Workers were originally employed at Skill Level 1 of the National Bargaining Forum, the industry’s collective bargaining platform, entitling them to R121 (US$7.30) an hour. In June 2025, BAIC laid off workers, citing a plant refurbishment. When they returned two months later, their hourly rate had been cut to R48 (US$2.90).
Specialized artisans like spray painters now earn R84 (US$5.07) an hour and CO2 welders R48 (US$2.90), against a sectoral entry rate of R163.24 (US$9.85) and a qualified rate of R180.53 (US$10.90).
NUMSA is demanding both rates be restored, alongside back-pay and allowances for workers who have acted as team leaders, in some cases for over six months, without formal appointment.
BAIC must respect industry wage agreements
Underlying the wage dispute are NUMSA’s demands that BAIC align with the conditions observed by every other original equipment manufacturer (OEM) operating in South Africa. The union wants weekly pay moved from Friday to Wednesday, so that workers are not left stranded over long weekends and public holidays, contract workers employed for more than three months be made permanent, and graduates of the government’s Youth Employment Service learnership scheme be absorbed into permanent jobs once their training ends.
“BAIC must fall in line with every other OEM. No exceptions, no shortcuts on benefits,” said Mziyanda Twani, NUMSA’s Eastern Cape regional secretary.
Paule-France Ndessomin, IndustriALL’s regional secretary for Sub-Saharan Africa, added: “Industry bargaining is a pillar of labour relations in South Africa. BAIC must not knock it down through low wages.”
Flagship fails to meet expectations
In 2016, the Beijing-based group struck a joint venture with the state-owned Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), taking a 65 per cent stake against the IDC’s 35 per cent, to build an R12.6 billion (US$764 million) assembly plant in the Coega zone outside Gqeberha.
The plant was meant to produce up to 100,000 vehicles a year, create 10,000 jobs, and anchor BAIC’s ambitions across Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and beyond.
Sales volumes have remained low. BAIC has since pinned its hopes on the X55 SUV and, more recently, the B30, while signalling plans to expand the Coega facility despite American tariff pressures on global trade.
Their advance has been built on competitive pricing and improving specification at a time when high interest rates and weak real-wage growth have squeezed South African consumers’ budgets.
Shutterstock image of Baic,Logo
Trade must work for workers, not against them
By Kemal Özkan, IndustriALL Global Union assistant general secretary.
It is the wrong question. And as long as we keep asking it, workers everywhere, in Detroit and Düsseldorf, in Dakar and Dhaka, will keep paying the price.
Let me be clear about where IndustriALL stands. We represent approximately 50 million workers in the mining, energy and manufacturing sectors across more than 140 countries. Trade touches every one of them. We are in favour of international trade, but it must be fair. Trade is not an end in itself but must benefit workers and societies as a whole. What we are against is a trade system designed to serve capital at the expense of the people who build things, dig things and make things.
The pain is real. The diagnosis is wrong.
Workers in the industrialised world who feel left behind by globalization are not wrong to feel that way. The evidence is clear. Research has shown that import competition from China accounted for up to 25 per cent of the decline in US manufacturing employment in the years following China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). And crucially, when those regions eventually recovered and unemployment fell, it was new, younger workers who got the new jobs. Those who lost their livelihoods tended to remain out of work or leave the labour market altogether. The scarring effect of trade shocks is permanent and personal.
This anger is legitimate. These workers deserve to be heard. But tariffs, particularly unilateral tariffs imposed outside any WTO framework, are not the answer.
Here is why. In a globally integrated economy, unilateral tariffs do not reshore jobs. They reroute goods. When one country raises barriers, supply chains adapt. The deficit may shrink on paper while the underlying imbalance persists. Meanwhile, workers in countries that had nothing to do with the original dispute face higher prices, disrupted supply chains and, in the Global South, the loss of the very export opportunities that were supposed to drive their development.
We saw this clearly at our emergency trade meeting on 23 April 2026, where more than 200 representatives from 65 countries came together to assess the current moment. The evidence presented was stark: The tariffs had not fundamentally changed the global trade picture. What they had done was create uncertainty, drive up costs and prices, squeeze the real wages of workers already under pressure, and deepen divisions at the very moment when solidarity matters most.
Strategic, not reflexive
IndustriALL recognizes the importance of using trade defence instruments. Our position, adopted by our Executive Committee and confirmed by our most recent Congress resolution, is precise: tariffs can be a legitimate tool when used strategically, within ruled-based fair international trading system , as part of a broader industrial policy package that includes labour conditionalities and a clear plan to build manufacturing capacity and decent jobs.
That is a very different thing from a tariff war.
The critical question, as our colleagues at the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC) put it plainly at our April meeting, is what governments and firms do with the extra time and revenue that tariffs buy. Do they invest in workers, in upskilling, in social protection and in genuinely competitive domestic industries? Or do they allow corporations to capture extra profits and cut taxes for the wealthy, while workers wait for a reindustrialization that never comes?
We know from experience which outcome is more common.
A workers’ trade agenda
IndustriALL has been suggesting a worker-centered framework for years. Our ten guiding principles, first adopted in 2018, are rooted in a simple conviction: global problems need global solutions. The answer to a broken multilateral system is not to abandon multilateralism but to fix it, with workers at the table.
That means trade agreements must include enforceable labour rights, not as a side letter but at the core of every deal. It means market access must be linked to compliance with ILO conventions. It means democratic governments must retain the policy space to build industrial capacity without the threat of being sued by multinational corporations through investor-state dispute mechanisms. And it means that public procurement, one of the most powerful tools available to governments, must remain available to support domestic manufacturing and local communities.
The voice of the Global South
One thing troubles me deeply about the current debate. It is almost entirely conducted in the Global North, by and about the Global North. The workers of Africa, Asia and Latin America are mentioned, if at all, as a source of competition to be managed, not as people whose development and dignity matter equally.
International trade is an important vehicle for the development of economies and the scaling-up of social and labour conditions in the Global South. Many developing and least-developed countries play an important role in global supply chains. This is why managing global supply chains through human rights due diligence is a central part of IndustriALL’s work. The direction is clear: moving from voluntary to binding legislation is essential.
If it is possible to establish binding rules for global value chains, why not for trade itself? The world is in an inequality crisis. How do we reverse this trend? The answer is clear: binding rules for trade and production in supply chains so that human and workers’ rights are protected, and a genuine development path becomes possible.
At IndustriALL, we reject that framing entirely. The same rules-based trade system that we demand must work for a steelworker in Pennsylvania must also work for a garment worker in Bangladesh and a miner in Zambia. The African Continental Free Trade Area, if built on strong labour standards, offers the possibility of genuine industrialization across a continent that has too often been treated as a source of raw materials rather than a place where value should be added and shared. Recently signed trade agreements carry the same potential , but only if worker protections are enforceable and real.
We will be seeking the voices of our colleagues from across the Global South in the months ahead, because a trade policy for workers cannot be written only in the capitals of the rich world.
What we need now
The current moment is dangerous not because countries are rethinking trade, but because they are doing so in isolation, reactively, without workers at the table and without a vision of what trade is actually for.
IndustriALL’s position is unchanged and clear. Trade must work for workers, communities and development. That means strategic industrial policy alongside any trade defence instruments. It means enforceable labour rights in every agreement. It means unity and solidarity across borders, not economic nationalism that pits workers against each other.
We cannot build a fair global economy by pulling up the drawbridge. We can only build it together.
IndustriALL Global Union fights for this overarching objective, putting it at the heart of all its actions and campaigns.
The strength of an organized working class is our backbone in realizing our Congress motto: Organizing for a Just Future.
Kemal speaks at the IndustriALL Global Union World Congress, Sydney, November 2025
Deadly workplace accidents expose systemic safety failures in India
Together, these deaths expose deep failures in hazard identification, emergency preparedness and occupational safety across India’s high-risk workplaces.
Pattern of preventable risks
These accidents follow a series of deadly workplace incidents, including the Singhitarai explosion and other workplace disasters that have claimed the lives of workers across various industries. In many cases, workers and unions had previously raised concerns about unsafe conditions.
Evidence from India’s manufacturing sector confirms the pattern. Most power press injuries struck workers on machines stripped of safety sensors. A third of injured workers received no training and learned on the machine itself. When workers flagged faulty machines, supervisors ignored them. Inspections routinely bypass workers entirely, with buyers and government inspectors rarely speaking to those who know the dangers first-hand.
Strengthening labour inspection and prevention
Official data reveal serious gaps in oversight. Directorate General, Factory Advice Service and Labour Institutes figures show inspection coverage stayed below 40 per cent even in hazardous process factories in 2023. The toll shows in the claims. In May 2026 alone, the Employees’ State Insurance Corporation settled 185,634 permanent disablement claims. There is no breakdown showing when these injuries occurred, but such a high number in a single month points to both poor data and an urgent need for stronger inspections.
The government must strengthen inspection capacity urgently, including specialist technical expertise for hazardous industries, and ensure inspectors have effective access to all workplaces, including contractor-controlled worksites and special economic zones.
Workers and their unions are often the first to identify emerging risks. When they raise the alarm, employers and regulators must listen and act.
Sanjay Singh, general secretary of Indian National Electricity Workers Federation and IndustriALL executive committee member, said:
“The presence of contract workers in core production operations reflects a growing reliance on precarious labour in hazardous industries. The Visakhapatnam tragedy highlights both the shortage of skilled manpower and the failure of management to invest adequately in safety measures, issues that must be urgently addressed.”
Ashutosh Bhattacharya, south asia regional secretary at IndustriALL Global Union, added:
“Every worker has the right to return home safely at the end of the working day and that right is empty without strong inspection. ILO Convention 081 shows governments the way. Staff inspectorates properly, open every worksite to scrutiny and put workers and their unions at the heart of prevention. Each failure to act is measured in lives.”
Bangladesh shipbreaking unions step up organizing to win living wages and safer yards
The training, held from 18 to 20 June, brought together organizers from two affiliated federations: the Bangladesh Metal, Chemical, Garments & Tailors Workers Federation (BMCGTWF) and the Bangladesh Metalworkers’ Federation (BMF). Both federations represent workers in the ship recycling yards of Sitakunda, near Chattogram, which handles around one third of the world’s end-of-life ships.
Women from downstream industry join for the first time
For the first time, women workers from the downstream recycling industry attended the workshop. This part of the sector, which processes scrap steel and components into new products, is predominantly female and currently unorganized. Participants developed a concrete plan to begin organizing this workforce.
A participant speaks during the IndustriALL organizing workshop for the Bangladesh ship recycling sector, Chattogram, 18 June 2026
Mapping power in the industry
Organizers spent the three days mapping the industry’s ownership structures, tracing links between industrial conglomerates, shipyards and rerolling mills. The analysis revealed a significant challenge: while union density reaches around 80 per cent in some yards, those yards tend to be smaller and less commercially significant. Overall density across the sector remains low, limiting the unions’ ability to drive meaningful change in conditions.
Participants work together on a mapping exercise during the IndustriALL organizing workshop for the Bangladesh ship recycling sector, Chattogram, 18 June 2026
The unions used this mapping to identify the most strategically important employers and developed targeted organizing campaign plans around issues raised by workers themselves.
On the final morning of the training, participants put their new skills into practice, speaking directly with workers returning from night shift and visiting workers in their homes.
Wages and safety at the centre
Two issues emerged as the clearest mobilizing points. The industry’s tripartite Wage Board agreed a new minimum wage of BDT 22,000 (US$180) per month at a meeting on 17 June 2026, though the agreement has not yet been officially gazetted. Many yard owners are already failing to pay the previous minimum of BDT 16,000 (US$130). Separately, many yards continue to fall short of safety requirements under the Hong Kong Convention, placing workers at serious risk.
IndustriALL campaigns and organizing director Walton Pantland said:
“We’ve been organized in the shipyards for many years, but we have never had the density or the influence to significantly shift the employers. We’re going to change that by taking a more strategic approach: targeting the most influential employers. We want safe working environments, decent work and a living wage for all our members.”
Cambodia: launch of renewed collective bargaining agreement
The template agreement runs from 1 July 2026 to 31 July 2029 and enables standardized, brand-supported CBAs at factory level across the sector. As a template agreement, it becomes legally binding once adopted at factory level.
embedded protection on freedom of association and gender-based violence,
heat stress,
skills development,
a dispute resolution mechanism,
an industrial peace clause.
The renewed agreement increases the monthly base wage by US$6 until December 2027, rising to a further US$9 increase from January 2028. It also extends maternity leave by 15 additional days and introduces five days of paid paternity leave for the first time, alongside the agreement’s existing protections on freedom of association, gender-based violence, heat stress and dispute resolution.
Supporting fair wage growth
The CBA complements national minimum wage increases and builds on the minimum wage process. In line with International Labour Organization (ILO) recommendations, wage increases under the CBA are established through collective bargaining between the social partners, providing predictable and reliable real wage growth supported through the supply chains of global brands.
By engaging global brands and negotiating a CBA template for standardized agreements at factory level, the social partners in Cambodia secure the connection to binding brand commitments. As a result, all factories adopting the template CBA benefit directly from those commitments.
The agreement is part of the ACT programme in Cambodia, which enables brands to engage meaningfully with unions, manufacturers and fellow retailers, setting a new industry standard for stable, predictable and responsible supply chains.
IndustriALL general secretary Atle Høie said:
“We congratulate our affiliates and the employers on this new collective agreement template. It is another constructive step towards sound industrial relations and stable workplaces. Further, the CBAs introduce new industry standards that complement national laws while securing brand support for wage developments that are transparent, accountable and sustainable.”
IndustriALL and its Cambodian affiliates call on all global brands and retailers sourcing in Cambodia to immediately sign the Cambodia Support Agreement.
Aligning with due diligence standards
By signing the agreement, brands commit to an industrial relations model that balances the priorities of workers, manufacturers and retailers. The initiative also aligns with due diligence requirements on stakeholder engagement, wages and freedom of association (FOA), supporting a transparent and responsible approach to sourcing practices.
Under the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, wages, benefits and conditions of work offered across the operations of multinational enterprises should not be less favourable to workers than those offered by comparable employers in the host country. Where comparable employers do not exist, enterprises should provide the best possible wages, benefits and conditions of work, within the framework of government policies and applicable international standards (Chapter V, Paragraph 4b).
The CBA negotiated between the social partners in Cambodia within the ACT Cambodia programme provides the best possible wages, benefits and conditions of work within the framework of applicable international standards, including ILO Conventions No. 87 and 98, and is already implemented by comparable employers in the country.
