Unions and union members are mounting relief efforts, donation drives and recovery and rebuilding missions to help the millions of survivors of the Dec. 26 tsunami that devastated coastal communities in Sri Lanka, Thailand, India, Indonesia and other Indian Ocean nations.

More than 155,000 people were killed by the massive tidal waves and tens of millions of survivors are in desperate need of clean water, food, medical supplies and shelter.

The AFL-CIO American Center for International Labor Solidarity (Solidarity Center) has established a Tsunami Relief Fund to which unions and individuals may donate. The Solidarity Center is a nonprofit organization that assists workers around the world who are struggling to build democratic and independent trade unions.

Those interested in contributing to the relief fund should make out a check marked Tsunami Relief, payable to Solidarity Center Education Fund, and send it to: Tsunami Relief Fund, Solidarity Center, 1925 K Street, N.W., Suite 300, Washington, DC, 20006-1105.

"No words can describe the horror and suffering of the millions of people affected," AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said in a letter to the unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO, urging them to join in the relief efforts.

"Through the Solidarity Center, the AFL-CIO is committed to providing workers and their families with long-term support for housing, reconstruction and other aid. As the rebuilding begins we must be ready to assist our brothers and sisters in Asia who are fighting for their lives and burying their dead."

In addition, many unions around the world -- from AFSCME in the United States to the Swedish Metal Workers Union -- have sent large donations for relief efforts. The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions is working with unions around the globe and in the tsunami-struck regions to bring immediate and long-term help.

'Overwhelming' death and destruction
Solidarity Center staff members in the affected areas are working with local unions, government agencies and other partners to provide help and relief to tsunami victims. In Sri Lanka, Solidarity Center representative Pete Castelli and members of the Public Nurses Union, along with several doctors, delivered medical supplies and food to victims on Jan. 1.

In an e-mail, Castelli says signs of the disaster grew increasingly vivid as the group drove east from Colombo toward the coast.

"Close to Balapitiya, we started to see entire buildings collapsed, destroyed and pushed to the other side of the road from the force of the waves. Walls were crumbled and pieces of people's lives, clothes, furniture and tables were pushed up the side of trees and buildings," he writes. The local hospital lost 21 doctors and nurses to the deadly waves.

Near the coast, the death and destruction was overwhelming, Castelli says. Passenger-filled trains and buses were swept from tracks and roads and buried in mud. Soldiers and other volunteers were collecting decomposing bodies and taking them away for burial.

"For the 16 hours I was in the area, I could smell the scent of death," he writes.

Along with Sri Lanka, the Solidarity Center operates offices in India, Thailand and Indonesia, and staff in those locations also are working with local unions and officials to develop and deliver relief.

In addition, hundreds of private relief agencies are receiving record amounts of contributions. The U.S. Agency for International Development has a list of relief agencies on its website, www.usaid.gov

Reprinted from the national AFL-CIO website, www.aflcio.org

For updates on union aid efforts from around the globe, go to www.labourstart.org