The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) was founded at its inaugural Congress in Vienna, Austria, on 1-3 November 2006 and is the main international trade union organization, representing the interests of working people worldwide; the International Trade Union Confederation-Asia Pacific (ITUC-AP), founded on 4 September 2007 in Bangalore, India, with a dues-paying membership of 18.6 million, now represents over 20 million members of fifty national trade union centres from thirty countries in the Asian and Pacific region; the ITUC-AP, as an organic part of the ITUC, strives for social justice and decent work, with special consideration for problems affecting the workers in the region, to further the aims and objectives of the ITUC; ensuring conditions for enjoyment of universal human rights and effective representation of working women and men in the region, the ITUC-AP, working closely with the Global Union Federations (GUFs), assumes the task of promoting economic justice, democracy and peace; combating poverty, exploitation, oppression, and inequality are the main themes of trade union action. Oei Tiong Ham Concern (Kian Gwan) - Archives Period: 1946-1996 Size: 0.47 m., 37 photos Finding aid: inventory Kian Gwan Kong Si, parent company of the Oei Tiong Ham Concern (OTHC), was founded in 1863 in Semarang, Dutch East Indies, by the Chinese entrepreneur Oei Tjie Sien; this initiative was the beginning of a vast commercial empire; in 1890, Oei took over the firm Kian Gwan, which diversified and grew into one of the largest firms in Southeast Asia; at the time, it was acquired by Oei, Kian Gwan's main activity was trade, especially trade in rubber, kapok, gambir, tapioca, and coffee; in addition, it dealt with pawnshops, postal services, logging, and the highly lucrative opium trade; between 1890 and 1904, Kian Gwan is estimated to have achieved earnings of some 18 million guilders in the opium trade alone, which provided the foundation for his commercial empire; during the post-war boom of 1918-1920, global demand for Java sugar was high and offered vast opportunities for sugar-mill owners and sugar brokers, although fortunes made were easily lost within a couple of days; Oei operated with caution during these boom years, he did not speculate too heavily and took measures to improve financial administration; unlike many of his Chinese contemporaries, Oei relied heavily on written contracts in his business transactions and recruited skilled accountants to set up a modern accounting system for the sugar factories; thanks to this cautious and independent strategy, the company survived the subsequent sugar crisis, while many other Chinese firms failed; in addition to relying on written agreements and a modern accounting system, Oei deviated from yet another Chinese business practice in those days and, rather than relying solely on family members to run his broadly-based business enterprises, he deliberately chose capable outsiders, such as Dutch directors, managers and engineers, to manage his companies; in 1920, Oei left Semarang and settled in Singapore to escape Dutch colonial succession law and the tax regime; in 1961, the Indonesian OTHC came to an end, when the Indonesian government's Pengadilan Ekonomi (court for economic crimes) seized and nationalized all of OTHC's Indonesian assets, including its strategic sugar plantations and factories; in 1964 the government formed the holding company PT Rajawali Nusantara Indonesia to run them; this holding is still a prominent corporation; however, many of the Kian Gwan offices abroad remained operational and became independent companies, each operated by one of sons of Oei Tiong Ham. Subjects Bangladesh: Thakbast maps - Collection Period: 1848-1850 Size: 91.29 GB, 2,536 files The Revenue Survey of 1846-1878 was preceded by a thakbast or demarcation survey in which the mouza (village) gained legal status and became a basic survey unit; officers were employed to demarcate the actual boundaries of mouzas and estates before the revenue surveyor took to the field; an approximate map was compiled for this purpose, known as the thak muzmilli; the vast majority of thak (boundary pillar) maps drawn before 1852 were visual sketches not intended to provide more than rough guidance to revenue surveyors; these were drawn in pencil, whereas later maps were topographical and coloured; these maps were prepared by an Indian Ameen accompanied by the British Settlement Officer and demarcated the mouza boundaries; these maps indicated the name of the mouza, area, type of soil, cropping pattern, population (relating to the religion), number of houses and cattle, location of roads, ponds, rivers, mosques, temples, hats, bazaar, indigo factories, large trees, etc.; Thakbast Revenue and Cadastral Survey records are the earliest remaining documents of any kind for most mouzas in Bengal; during a pilot project a survey was conducted to investigate the survival of so-called Thakbast maps in twenty Collectorate Records Rooms of selected districts in Bangladesh. Ethiopia: * Bahir Dar textile factory - Archives Period: 1961-2011 Size: 568 GB, 314.782 files The Bahir Dar textile factory in the Gojam region, Ethiopia, was established in 1961 with funds from Italian war reparations; these reparations were symbolically invested by establishing this factory to compensate the people of the Gojam region for resisting Italian occupation; the factory was the first, and for a long time the only, modern industry in this region; in the late 1960s, it employed some 1,900 workers, rising to around 3,000 at the peak of its operations; today it employs some 1,300 people; the workers at this factory (who include a relatively large share of women) were prominent in the workers' opposition to the moderate central trade union leadership in the run-up to the revolution in 1974; there were also regionalist contradictions among the work force, which were, to a certain degree, segmented: foreigners dominated the early management, while workers from the regions Shewa, Eritrea, and Tigray tended to prevail among the skilled workers, triggering clashes with the locally recruited unskilled workforce; working conditions were relatively poor (the ILO reported that child labour was being used), and labour unrest was widespread throughout the late 1960s and early 70s; several strikes were organized, and the warehouse was burnt down by arsonists; the divisions that originated in the factory between local and non-local workers and the struggle over control of the factory union between these categories came to mark relations between these groups in the larger city, and the state was involuntarily drawn into the conflict.
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