melbourne indymedia

As global sports brands crank up their advertising for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, sportswear workers in Asia are struggling to earn a living. A report by Oxfam International examines how sports brands are tackling the problem of sweatshops in their industry with a particular focus on workers’ freedom to form and join trade unions.

With soccer in the news, people gathered in Fitzroy for a novel game between West Papua VS Anarchist Allstars in a 3 sided soccer game, that some have called the World Dumpster Cup.

Oxfam: Offside! Labour Rights and Sportswear Production in Asia

The 2006 G20 meeting (official website) of finance ministers, reserve bank governors and the heads of the World Bank and IMF will take place in Melbourne on November 18-19. This will be the most significant gathering in Melbourne of people responsible for pushing corporate-led globalisation, neoliberalism and capitalism since the World Economic Forum in 2000. The next organising meeting is Saturday Feb 4th, 2-4pm.

The G20 has previously met with raucous protests including Montreal, Canada in 2000 and Ottawa, Canada in 2001.

The growth of commercial child care in Australia has created a public policy crisis, according to Australian child care expert Lynne Wannan. The Howard Government, in its first term in 1996, introduced funding changes allowing corporate child care chains to emerge with substantial Government subsidies. Wannan said that Child care is now managed by real estate developers, dot.com tycoons, professional athletes and stockbrokers. [More]

According to Wannan, a social policy analyst and an advisor to the child care sector presently on a speaking tour of Canada, these changes mean that access has been restricted for immigrants, aboriginal populations, children with special needs, rural and low-income families; community-based child care programs and small owner/operators have been squeezed out; more state funding has gone to monitoring and prosecuting violations and; the working conditions and wages of child care workers have declined. [Audio and video from Vancouver meeting]

Background: Australian child care expert brings warnings to Canada
Ex-Howard Minister joins board of ABC Learning Centres
Raising the Stakes: The Reality of Corporate Childcare
Workers Online: Child Care for a song
LHMU Childcare News

Sydney will see an upsurge in protest in response to the Forbes Global CEO Conference being held at the Sydney Opera House, starting on August 30. The 30A organising committee held a press conference at Surry Hills police station to express their frustration at the police, who have changed their mind several times and are currently refusing the use of the Opera House forecourt for public protest. (Report & pics 1 | Report & pics 2 | See video). The following day a protest was held at the Opera House Forecourt (Report & pics)

A final 30A organising meeting is scheduled, along with Legal Observers Training session. Over the weekend of 27-28 August people will gather at the Sydney Social Forum and Subplot, where final planning for the 30A protest will take place and a broad spectrum of social change activism will be discussed.

[ Sydney Indymedia | 30A Network | Peacebus.com ]

May 14 was World Fair Trade Day, marked in Melbourne by a 'Carnival' in the City Square, with stalls and events arranged by Monash Student Association, Oxfam, Fairwear, Grasslands, Jasper Coffee and others... [Full Story]
"The average annual cocoa revenues in West Africa (which produces 67% of the world’s cocoa) amount to only $30-$108 per household.....Most of the cocoa processing chocolate production doesn’t happen in the countries where cocoa is grown. This means that they only get about 1c for each chocolate bar sold" - Fair trade flyer

[ Make Trade Fair | Fairwear | Hooked ]