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18 April, 2012
Some 35 trade union leaders, mostly from Indonesian pulp and paper mills of Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), attended a two-day workshop on 28-29 March in Serong, Indonesia, on trade union rights, environmental issues, and the health and safety record of the multinational company that is part of Indonesia’s Sinar Mas Group.
The workshop was intended to kick-start w Global Workers’ Network around APP, a company within the Indonesia-based Sinar Mas Group that also includes palm oil holdings and the European and North American pulp and paper company Paper Excellence. The workshop was generously supported by the Humanity Fund of the Canada’s Communications, Energy, Paperworkers (CEP) Union, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) of Australia, and the Solidarity Center of the US.
The ICEM’s Indonesian Council of Unions, headed by D. Patombong Sjaiful, hosted the event and aptly handled all logistics.
Delegates from multiple Indonesian labour confederations and affiliated trade unions, including the forestry and pulp union Kahutindo, that represent workers at APP owned and partially held Indonesian mills attended, and received valuable training on global labour standards contained in ILO Conventions, OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, and the UN’s Global Compact.
They also heard presentations on APP’s forestry practices in Indonesia, the ways and means of the world’s three forest certification programmes, and they participated in a session on community-building that was conducted by Tim Woods of FitzpatrickWoods consulting group of Australia.
Also participating were union representatives from CFMEU’s Pulp and Paper Division of its Forestry sector, local union presidents from CEP Local 440 in Nova Scotia – representing workers of Paper Excellence at the Pictou Mill there – and CEP Local 1092 in Mackenzie, British Colombia, representing Paper Excellence pulp mill workers there.
As well, the United Steelworkers (USW) of the US had delegates from a pulp mill in Halsey, Oregon, attend, and the US-based union provided a look at its labour-environmental network called the BlueGreen Alliance. Other representatives came from the Swedish Paperworkers Union, Pappers, which sponsors a pulp and paper project in Indonesia, and the Pulp and Paper Products Manufacturing Employees’ Union (PPPMEU) of Malaysia.
The central conclusion formed at the workshop is that intensive work must now start in order to unite the different unions and their respective confederations at APP’s Indonesia’s pulp, paper and tissue mills.