048. Protest meetings

Facing an economic crisis and rising debt at home, Romania turned to the IMF, the World Bank, and the EU in 2009 for $20 billion in emergency loans. The government, headed by Prime Minister Emil Boc, with the support of President Traian Băsescu, enacted extensive austerity measures to reign in the budget deficit, passing tax increases, spending cuts in public-sector wages and social benefits, and, in March 2011, a new labor code opposed by unions. By 2011, the economy had begun to grow again after years of austerity and difficult reform.

When Dr. Jerry Lee, the sixth president of Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. announced his plans to step down from the position on August 24, 1987, the Board of Trustees at the University quickly arranged a Presidential Search Committee that would begin looking for candidates to become the new university president. Ultimately, the Search Committee submitted the names of three finalists to the Board of Trustees on February 28, 1988. The Committee had selected: Dr. Harvey Corson (a deaf superintendent of the Louisiana School for the Deaf), Dr. I.

On 29 September 2011 about 1,200 miners at Freeport’s Cerro Verde mining site began a 75-day strike. The participants were scheduled to walk off their jobs at 8:30 am Eastern Time. At midnight on the same day, 8,000 miners at Freeport’s Grasberg mine planned to begin a one month strike. The workers at both of these mines were part of the same miners union, all working towards the same goals. 

The strikes began after wage talk attempts had failed. The union’s general secretary said, “Freeport’s offer was insufficient. There was no chance of reaching an agreement”. 

In February of 2010, Quebec Finance Minister Raymond Bachand called for what he deemed a "cultural revolution" to change the way the Quebecois populace used public services, including a tuition fee hike for post-secondary education.  

By October of 1964, an issue called the “Southern Problem” had formed in Sudan. This Southern Problem was essentially a dispute between the Arabized Muslim North and Christian South of Sudan. The northern “Sudanization” of southern administrative positions and ethnic, cultural, and religious differences began to manifest in discrimination against southern Sudanese, planting the seeds for this problem.

On January 11, 2012, Indiana Representative Cindy Noe introduced HB 1367 in the Indiana General Assembly, a bill that would transfer outreach services for deaf children, currently provided by the Indiana School for the Deaf (ISD), to a newly established center with the state’s budget agency making recommendations on oversight of the center. The Indiana deaf community, led by members of the Indiana Association of the Deaf, quickly formed the Indiana Deaf Education Coalition (IDEC) in opposition to the bill.

In early September 2006, a group of Colombian women, the partners of local gangsters, declared a sex strike.  Their demand was that gang members turn in their weapons to the municipal government and agree to begin a vocational training program.  The strike began during a meeting in which twenty-five women from different neighborhoods came together to oppose the violence of their partners or spouses.  Said Julio Cesar Gomez, the security official in the city of Pereira's local government, “this is about changing the cultural parameters: Some women thought that men wearing fati

Since the Jung Hee Park regime seized power in South Korea through a military coup in 1962, the government’s economic policy had grown more pro-market and anti-union. Because of its large economic success (in terms of large economic measures like GDP) the public sentiment toward his economic policy was supportive enough to sustain it. Many people adhered to Park’s political narrative of a “growth-first ideology” at the cost of sacrificing labor rights.

In November of 2009, a student-organized group at the University of Maryland, College Park, known as STARE (Students Taking Action to Reclaim our Education) formed to act against the cutting of student services at the University. The group, along with other students at the University, feared that the school was “quietly retreating” from its commitment to and stance on racial and cultural diversity at the University.

The Dong Il Textile was one of the leading Korean companies whose products were exported to foreign countries during 1970s. At the time, the Korean economy was heavily dependent on the profits gained from exportation of low-industrial cheap products (mostly apparel and chemical products). Dong Il was deemed by the people to be one of those exemplary firms in this context, because it succeeded in “efficiently” producing cheap and mass textile products. Such “efficiency” was possible only because it exploited an abundant supply of cheap labor.

On 29 July 2012, thousands took to the streets after the Hong Kong government announced that by 2015 they would integrate mandatory national-education classes in Hong Kong’s public schools. The government’s plan would not affect international schools where rich families tend to send their children, but it would affect the education of children from the working and middle classes.

In Durban, South Africa, black African workers constituted one of the largest groups of industrial workers in South Africa with 165,000 workers. However, the minimum wage for black African workers was set considerably lower than the Poverty Datum Line.

In 1941 the pay disparity between black South African mine workers and white South African workers was R70 to R848, respectively. The African Mine Workers’ Union (AMWU) formed in response to address this issue. By 1946 the 12:1 ratio of pay had not changed, as black workers were paid R87 while white workers were paid R1,106.

Doo Hwan Chun filled the power void in South Korea through his military coup right after the assassination of the former President Jung Hee Park in 1979. He became the president after amending the Constitutional Law that turned the presidential election into an indirect election—one that he could easily manipulate.

The U.S. Armed Forces had been stationed in South Korea since the end of Korean War in 1954. More than 26,000 soldiers resided in six camps. Heavily dependent on the U.S. military support, the Korean army had an symmetrical relationship with the U.S. The two countries agreed that the U.S. military would assume the Wartime Operational Control (WOC) until 2015. Moreover, the Status of Force Agreement (SOFA) validated extraterritorial jurisdiction for the U.S. soldiers stationed in Korea.

The garment industry has been a backbone of Bangladesh’s economy. In 2012 Bangladesh had more than 4,000 garment industry factories making clothes for major Western brands such as Walmart and Zara. The garment industry earned the country $12 billion a year – nearly 80% of the country’s total exports. 

In the early twentieth century, Kansas was the third largest coal producing state in the United States, with more than 8,000 unionized miners concentrated in the two southwestern counties of Crawford and Cherokee. In January 1920, the Kansas legislature had established a board of compulsory arbitration, known as the Kansas Industrial Court, which banned strikes against unfair labor practices and working conditions.

After the 2008 home mortgage crisis, and particularly after the 2010-2011 recession, home foreclosure rates skyrocketed.  Very few cases received much media attention.  Dirma Rodgriguez’s situation is almost unique in that it was featured in local and syndicated newspapers.  Due to high-profile actions and support from the Occupy Fights Foreclosure sub-committee within the larger group of Occupy Los Angeles, Dirma’s case reached the level of mainstream consciousness throughout the campaign.

In April of 2006 Chilean high school students had many complaints against the government and the way it ran the public school system.  Chief among their concerns included bus fares and university exam fees.  Over the previous few years, there had been isolated protests throughout the city, but none had gathered very much momentum.  In 2006, however, in the first major social movement since “Chileans overthrow Pinochet regime,” the students took the general public by surprise.  

In 1934 it had been a successful year for strikes in Milwaukee, which emboldened retail clerks at Sears, Roebuck and Company, and the Boston Store to demand higher wages. At the time most clerks earned below $14 a week, which they called “starvation wages.”

In November of 1960, the United States and British governments reached an agreement on the use of the Holy Loch in the Firth of Clyde, Scotland as an overseas base for the US Navy. The governments believed the U.S. military required an overseas nuclear base for refit and crew overturn for its new Polaris missile submarines, built to serve as a deterrent to Soviet military might. 

A 2002 study found that 68% of the 2,100 hourly Tennessee public higher education employees were being paid less than a living wage of $9.50 per hour with benefits.  Earning less than a living wage could force an employee to rely on public subsidies for food, healthcare, or housing.  Inspired by this and similar statistics, United Campus Workers (UCW), which recently merged with the Communication Workers Association, launched its “UT Workers Need a Raise” campaign in October 2004, with the goal of a $1,200 across-the-board pay raise for all University of Tennessee employees.

The Canadian General strike of 1976 was a result of the Bill C-73 passed by Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and the House of Commons in Ottawa on 14 October 1975. This bill limited wage increases to 8% the first year, 6% the second year, and 4% the third year after its enactment. 

The majority of the provinces of Canada accepted the bill by spring of 1976, but within eighteen months they began to withdraw from the program. Despite its introduction in 1975, it was not until 1976 that the Anti-Inflation Board (AIB) began to roll back workers' wages.

Along with many student activists in United States universities in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, the University of Buffalo Students Against Sweatshops (UBSAS) ran a campaign to pressure their university to join the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC). After years of student protests and demonstrations, the University of Buffalo (UB) announced that they would join WRC and the Fair Labor Association (FLA). The group of student activists feared that their university’s decision to also join the corporate-sponsored FLA would compromise the efforts and aims of workers’ rights groups.

Beginning in late 2005, students at the University of Vermont (UVM) were involved in a movement to increase the wages of school employees such that workers could be given a "living wage." Primarily focused on food-service employees contracted by Sodexho, the nonviolent campaign sought out and acquired support from local officials, faculty, and even state legislators. The students believed they needed in intervene in order to secure a wage that was equal to the state standard of a living wage as established by the state legislature.