Labour photo of the year

GLOBAL: A Bangladeshi boy working in a shipbuilding factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh is the subject of the Labour Photo of the Year, announced November 2, 2009.

The photo features the destitute face of a young boy near a furnace in a shipbuilding factory and can be viewed here: 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kmasad/3951175816/

Taken by K M Asad, the photo profiles the plight of many young boys who are employed by shipbuilding and breaking factories as apprentices with no pay for the first few years. "They work in extreme conditions without safety tools like gloves, goggles, and other protective gears. In exchange, they learn the skills of the trade. But this costs them loss of health and education," writes Asad.

The desperate state of the shipbreaking industry in Bangladesh is the subject of a global campaign supported by the IMF calling on world leaders to do more to protect these workers, as reported here on the IMF website.

Nearly twice as many photos were submitted to this year's Labour Photo of the Year competition as compared with last year (189 vs 118) and 3,203 votes were cast to choose a winner from a shortlist of five photos.

The Labour Photo of the Year competition is run by LabourStart, http://www.labourstart.org/ - an online news service maintained by a global network of volunteers which aims to serve the international trade union movement by collecting and disseminating information and by assisting unions in campaigning.

Eric Lee, the founder of LabourStart, is one of the speakers participating in the IMF/EMF Communicators' Forum in Frankfurt on November 17 and 18. He will be speaking in a panel discussion on applications of new media.

At the Forum, participants will also be looking at union communications in the context of organizing, climate change and trade union campaigns. A copy of the draft programme is published on the IMF website.