Stories about Labor from July, 2008
Russia: Change in Migration Policies
LJ user Kontury comments on (RUS) a government initiative to liberalise labour immigration by increasing quotas from CIS countries.
Russia: Prostitution To Be Legalised?
LJ user mbpolyakov discusses (RUS) proposals and rising support for legalising prostitution in Russia.
Russia: An Expat Exodus?
Copydude follows up on an earlier story, on increasing difficulties for foreigners to stay on in Russia, and partly supports his claim with statistics, and Russia Blog picks up and develops the story.
Russia: Military Service Exchanged for Construction Work?
LJ user dragspapa reports (RUS) about a proposal that young people should be able to do construction work as an alternative to military service.
Bahrain: A Woman in a Workplace
“I pledge, as a woman in a workplace – mostly dominated by men who smell either like cheap cigarettes, cheap cologne, hardcore armpit odour -to maintain my good deeds and acts with everyone, whether with an over-demanding bossy boss or with a chauvinistic, sexist, hateful, jealous colleague,” writes Bahraini blogger...
Philippines: Monthly salary of politicians
A Filipino politician reveals his monthly salary to belie popular perception that politicians are earning big.
Costa Rica: Concerts, riots and concerns.
Journalist Cristian Cambronero from popular Costa Rican blog Fusil de Chispas posts a recount of Sunday's Concert where youth rioted and destroyed the campus of the Universidad Latina in the capital city of San José. It seems that when around 3000 of them were not allowed entrance to the free concert venue where already 5000 spectators were waiting for the concert some of the irate teens destroyed the university buildings, storefronts,dismantled cars, damaged the church in the vicinity, looted, threw chairs, rocks and bricks everywhere.
Japan: Toyota's Just-In-Time System and the Akihabara Killings (Part 1)
When Tomohiro Kato killed 7 people and injured many more in Tokyo's Akihabara district last month, the details of his life became the talk of the Japanese blogging world. Among these conversations, the murders sparked a huge number of conversations on the country's temp worker industry, as Kato himself worked as a temp worker at a factory under Toyota. No single blog entry however attracted as much attention as did a post by blogger boiledema, published two days after the incident and bookmarked on Hatena by a staggering 1366 users. In this first part of a two-part series, we translate the first half of boiledema's original blog post.
Russia: Increasing Difficulties for Expats
Copydude argues that foreigners living in Russia are experiencing increasing difficulties with staying on due to stiffer visa regulations, and even portrays the situation as an exodus for expats from the country.
South Korea: Temporary Worker Protection
Korean women worker association has an article about a symposium on Temporary Employee Protection Act.
Bangladesh: Corporate culture and employees’ privacy
A Bangladeshi writer who works in a bank for her living and also keeps a blog writes a post to shed light to the ever demanding corporate culture in Bangladesh, which is taking toll on the private lives of the employees.
Japan: Communist Party gets boost from Nico Nico Douga
It is a long time since the Japanese Communist Party had any luck in Japanese politics, but with help from no other than Japan's popular video sharing site, Nico Nico Douga, this may be changing. A 51-minute video of a February 8th speech by Chairman Kazuo Shii of the JCP registered over ten thousand comments on the video sharing site, and there are now reports that interest in the party among people in their 20s and 30s is way up.
Malawi: Slow bureaucracy at the road traffic office
Victor Kaonga describes his two-day bureaucratic “adventure” at the road traffic office in Lilongwe, in Malawi.
China: Olympics side-effect on industry
What will be the cost of presenting an unprecedented Olympics? A dialogue between a blogger and workers somewhat revealed the predicament met by heavy industry in China during the Games.
Hungary: Outsourcing
Hudin explains why Ebay Germany is “running the bulk of their customer support operations in Hungary.”
Pakistan: Public sector employment
Five Rupees on the government's ban on public sector employment in Pakistan.
Mali: 21st Century Slavery
Sociolingo's Africa quotes two recent articles that “show that slavery still goes on today” in northern Mali and that it is a very complex issue in the country as many people deny its existence.
Bermuda: Tourism Outsourced
News that the Bermuda Department of Tourism is retrenching workers at its New York office, and outsourcing to an unnamed US sales company, leaves Vexed Bermoothes asking a lot of questions.
Brazil: On the ill-treatment for migrant workers
“We are imperialists and prejudiced, but faced with other nations’ prejudice, we forget our own. We turn our backs to Latin America and Africa, despite sharing with them the same history of colonization.” Sakamoto [pt] reflects on the way Brazilians treats its migrant workers and dreams about it as country...
Ukraine: More Foreign Workers?
Buffalo Expat writes about Ukraine's demographics, migrant labor and xenophobia.
Ukraine: Photos of Crimean Tatars and Crimea
Marusia of My Simferopol Home posts an update on her life in Crimea and links to Alison Cartwright's photographs of Crimean Tatars, their land and their homes – here, here, here, and here.
