Organising packaging workers in Southeast Asia
The Head of UNI Graphical & Packaging Javier Carles visited Southeast Asia between 14th and 27th May. The purpose of his tour was to monitor in the field the project on organising workers in the packaging sector that UNI carries out in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand with the support from Union to Union. Along with this, he visited the UNI APRO Regional Office in Singapore, meeting with the Regional Secretary Chirstopher Ng and with the Regional Director of Organising and Campaigns Satoshi Tamai, to discuss the sector's strategy in the Asia Pacific region.
The full agenda was prepared by the UNI Apro Regional Secretary and executed by comrades Kun Wardana in Jakarta, Mohamed Shafie in Kuala Lumpur and Somboon Subsarn in Bangkok. It allowed Javier Carles to meet with union leaders and organizers of the sector, visit industrial facilities and meet with company managements and unions, assess the implementation and make adjustments to the organising project that UNI and U2U carry forward in the region. In addition, activities for the second half of the year were approved.
In the case of Indonesia we should highlight the agreement between Javier Carles, the President and the Secretary General of ASPEK, Mirah Sumirat and Sabda Pranawa, for conducting a training workshop on collective bargaining for 50 comrades, among whom are the unionized workers of Kimberly-Clark. In Malaysia, the highlights were the visits to the offices of UNI MLC and NUNW, the plant Rengo Packaging Plant Malaysia recently unionized and the plant of the group Star Media, and the agreement to focus organizing efforts in 2017 on AMCOR plants.
Meanwhile, a meeting of the National Network of packaging unions was held in Thailand, with the participation of colleagues from Kimberly-Clark, AMCOR and SIG. Unions have high rates of unionization, but with a low presence of women in decision-making, agreeing on workshops and objectives for this year. Finally, the visit to the Regional Office of UNI APRO allowed Javier Carles and Christopher Ng to agree on the details of a regional security printing conference to be held in Bombay in the second half of the year