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NEIL KEARNEY:NEIL KEARNEY, who has died of a heart attack aged 59, was an inspirational leader in the international trade union movement.

As general secretary of the Brussels-based International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers’ Federation (ITGLWF), he had just completed a series of union meetings and visits to supplier factories in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He had been to the country more than 50 times since 1988, in particular working with the Spanish multinational fashion retailer Inditex. Recently they had ensured that workers and families whose lives were devastated by the collapse of the Spectrum factory in Savar, northwest of Dhaka, in 2005, in which 64 were killed and many injured, received adequate compensation and medical assistance.