Asia Pacific

Civil society organisations, trade unions, public water operators together with International Steering committee members of GWOPA jointly send the open letter to the Executive Director of UN-HABITAT concerning the recent attempt to undermine GWOPA's core purpose, origin and history.

The national federation of nurses in Brazil (Federação Nacional dos Enfermeiros, FNE), has worked for many years to obtain better working conditions, fair working hours and decent pay for nurses across the country, including in São Paulo. Despite the economic crisis, it continues to fight on behalf of thousands of nurses to allow them a better quality of life which would also enable them to provide better care for patients.

Korean health unions are very satisfied with the new spirit of of tripartite social dialogue in the country, which on 12 July led to the signing of a collective agreement at Green hospital in Seoul to: increase staffing levels; create more jobs by fully implementing nursing/caregiving integrated services; create jobs by shortening working hours and regularize the employment of workers on contract jobs in hospitals.

The Philippines is about to become the first Asian country to ratify the so called "Labour Relations Public Service Convention (1978)", which deals with the protection of the right to organise and procedures for determining conditions of employment in the Public Service. This victory comes after 7 years of work led by PSI affiliates and other public sector unions in the country.

As part of the activities of the Peoples' Summit against Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (July 22-26), PSI co-organised a one-day workshop on ‘RCEP and the Corporate Attack on Public Services’, held on 25 July, at the Sudarayya Vignana Kendram (SVK) in Hyderabad, the venue of the 19th Round of RCEP trade negotiations.