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<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39" alt=""/>
Although wage negotiations will continue this week at Zambia’s largest copper mine, a strike there on 3-4 January ended early last Thursday when the Minister of Labour, Sport, Youth and Gender directly intervened to correct glaring mineworker exploitation. 
 
Some 2,000 miners, the majority represented by ICEM affiliate Mineworkers’ Union of Zambia (MUZ), took strike action against Canadian-based First Quantum Minerals Ltd. at the 231,000-tonne-per-year Kansanshi mine after negotiations slowed late in 2011. 
<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Mine Entrance.jpg" width="190" height="138" alt=""/>
Workers returned to jobs on 5 January after Labour Minister Fackson Shamenda, MUZ President Oswell Munyenyembe, management representatives, and an officer of the National Union of Miners and Allied Workers (NUMAW) brokered a deal late the night before. 
 
The deal is reported to displace short-term contracts with permanent and pensionable conditions of work, as well as a company pledge to review 12-hour work shifts. Miners are seeking an eight-hour day. The brokered settlement also saw First Quantum agree to award a 13th pay check beginning this year. 
 
Negotiations for a general increase in salaries will occur this week. Workers through their unions seek a 20% hike, while management has offered only 9%. The open-cast Kansanshi operation, begun in 2005, is First Quantum’s flagship mine and began expanding last year to where it will produce 400,000 tonnes annually of copper concentrates and copper cathode by 2015. Construction of a new concentrator also is underway this year and is scheduled for commissioning in 2014.

Two-Day Strike at Zambian Kansanshi Mine Ends with Permanent Contracts

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The ICEM vehemently supports 90 members of the affiliated Teamsters Union (IBT) in the US, who went on strike last month in Norwood, Massachusetts, at CertainTeed, a roofing materials subsidiary of French multinational Saint-Gobain. Members of IBT Local 25 in the Boston area walked off their jobs when their contract expired on 19 December over unreasonable demands to reduce their health insurance benefits. 
 
In an <a href="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1.ICEM.Teamsters%20Local%2025.US.pdf" type="internal">ICEM letter</a> today to Local 25 President Sean O’Brien, General Secretary Manfred Warda said the dispute would receive the Global Union Federation’s highest priority and would be brought to the attention of French trade unions and senior executives at Saint-Gobain in Paris. 
 
CertainTeed, a wholly-owned subsidiary with multiple plants in the US that manufacture asphalt roofing shingles, gypsum wallboard, and insulated fiberglass products, proposes to reduce the amount of health insurance it pays on workers, leaving them largely unprotected financially from illness or injury. 
 
“The company has become the epitome of greed, treating its workforce unfairly without regard for health and welfare and job security,” said O’Brien, the principal officer of 11,000-member IBT Local 25. In order to preserve the joint union-management run health care plan, the union proposed costs savings to the company on a pension plan that would not reduce workers’ retirement benefits. But CertainTeed wasn’t interested.
<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1201.certanteed.jpg" width="154" height="160" alt=""/>
At this point in the strike, CertainTeed workers would be without health insurance of any kind. But at a strike manifestation rally in front of plant gates on 5 January, O’Brien announced that Local 25’s Health and Welfare Fund would continue to provide health insurance at a cost to the union. The ICEM commends Local 25 for such social responsibility. 
 
The two sides are scheduled to meet today before the US Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) in the first negotiations since the strike began. Saint-Gobain increased its stake in CertainTeed from 32% to 57% in 1976, and then gained total ownership in 1988. In 1998, CertainTeed bought the Norwood plant from Bird & Sons 
 
Local 25’s so-called Taft-Hartley health care plan at Norwood pre-dates CertainTeed ownership, and the union is adamant in retaining it. The company proposes to replace it with a lesser company-controlled insurance plan that contains far few benefits.

ICEM Intervenes in Saint-Gobain Dispute in US State of Massachusetts

The International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine & General Workers’ Unions (ICEM) disagrees with a decree issued by the Government of Northern Cyprus last night that effectively blocks a legitimate strike in the electricity sector by EL-SEN, ICEM’s affiliated Turkish Electricity Authority of Cyprus Workers’ Trade Union. 

EL-SEN launched the indefinite strike on the morning of 19 January over the government’s draft bill to privatize the Turkish Electricity Authority (KIB-TEK). According to Article 16 of Collective Agreements and Strikes of Northern Cyprus, the government can suspend any strike for a 60-day period if it deems that the strike endangers the “essential works” of the country. After such suspension, the strike can continue but the government then has the option to postpone it again since the law allows the government to declare the strike illegal twice in a year. 

The ICEM considers the Northern Cypriot law as running opposite to norms contained in internationally recognized standards regarding the right to strike. 

“We are very familiar with such anti-worker, anti-trade union practices in Turkey and now the same holds true in Northern Cyprus,” said ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda. “Postponing a strike is in effect to ban one.” 

Although EL-SEN abided by last night’s decree issued by the Northern Cypriot Council of Ministers, the union and its members will stay off their jobs as democratic right of civil disobedience. The ICEM communicated its support of that decision to EL-SEN President Tuluy Kalyoncu today. A similar strike by the telecommunications union TEL-SEN that began at the same time on 19 January continues. 

EL-SEN and ICEM believe the state-owned utility KIB-TEK is sustainable and can be transformed into a viable public utility with a more efficient management. The ICEM also believes that the Northern Cypriot government must engage more fully with EL-SEN and other stakeholders before pushing forward legislation to privatize KIB-TEK. 

Before the strike, ICEM had sent a letter to Prime Minister Irsen Küçük urging the government to withdraw the draft privatization bill. The ICEM sent a second letter today, 20 January, to the Prime Minister protesting the Cabinet of Ministers decree last night. 

The ICEM is a Geneva-based Global Union Federation representing 20 million workers through 255 trade unions in 94 countries. 
For further information, contact ICEM Information 
Officer Dick Blin, <a href="mailto:dick.blin@icem.org">dick.blin@icem.org</a>, +41 22 304 1842, or +41 79 734 8994.

ICEM Protests Northern Cyprus Strike Ban in Energy Sector

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
An agreement was reached yesterday, 22 January, after a marathon 15-hour bargaining session between Bulgarian state-owned Maritsa East Mines (BEH-EAD) and two ICEM affiliates. The settlement ends a seven-day coalminers’ strike in Stara Zagora province that saw ICEM intervention last week. 
 
The strike started at 20h00 on 15 January and was carried out jointly, cooperatively, and ultimately successfully by the Federation of Independent Miners’ Unions (KNSB/CITUB) and Podkrepa’s Miners’ Federation. The settlement produced a partial payment to a bonus that was promised the 7,000 miners last July, but more importantly, calls for improved working conditions, an increase in investment at the three open-cast mines, and a commitment not to consider privatisation. 
 
Also, the settlement outlines guidelines to improve health and safety at Bulgaria’s largest mining complex, a key point raised in the ICEM intervention. The unions won assurances that the state company will make BGN 20 million (€10.2 million) available for safety. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Bulgaria Podkrepa.jpg" width="122" height="159"/>
The final talks occurred overnight on 21-22 January in Radnevo in south-central Bulgaria, center of the Maritsa mining and power generation facilities. 
 
In the <a href="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/5.ICEM.Maritsa%20East%20Mines,%20Bulgaria.20Jan.pdf " type="internal">ICEM letter</a> to Prime Minister Boyco Borissov and Economy, Energy, Tourism Minister Traicho Traikov, General Secretary Manfred Warda said, “Although remuneration issues are part of the dispute, we are of the certain belief that health and safety, lack of adequate equipment, and refusal of mine management to engage in social dialogue as mandated by European social charters are legitimate reasons for miners to withhold their labour.” 
 
Maritsa East Mines CEO Evgeni Stoykov had sought to get the strike declared illegal, but on 20 January BEH-EAD withdrew such a petition submitted to a Bulgarian court. Also on that day, the state National Electricity Company (NEK) suspended electric power exports to Turkey, Greece, Serbia and Macedonia in order to cover its own domestic needs. In 2011, NEK exported a total of 10.5 billion KWH to those countries. 
 
The suspension emboldened striking miners, with several hundred manifesting outside the headquarters of the company on 21 January. That sparked the urgency of weekend talks and produced the accord, which both unions said meet their requirements in ending the strike. 
 
The Maritsa East Mines, Bulgaria’s largest deposits of lignite coal, supply 90% of the coal for the country’s power industry. The mines supply coal to four thermal power stations, three that are state-owned by BEH-EAD and the other one that is owned by ContourGlobal of the US. 
 
Central to the dispute was revocation of an agreement signed on 12 July 2011 over a bonus premium for exceeding 2011 production levels. A targeted level of 27 million tonnes was surpassed and miners, who work 12-hour shifts, produced a total of 33 million tonnes, bringing a revenue stream to the company of BGN 500 million (€255 million). 
 
Although miners did not get their full bonus demands, BGN 1,000 per worker (€509), that was offset by management retreating from cuts to a staffing plan which would have seen 450 jobs, or 6% of the workforce, furloughed. Such downsizing would have affected safety. The unions also won commitments to improve on continual shortages of equipment, spare parts and monitoring devices, which also impacted safety. 
 
Maritsa East miners earn average monthly salaries of BGN 1,500 (€767).

Week-Long Coal Strike Ends in Bulgaria

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
A month-long strike by the ICEM-affiliated Teamsters Union (IBT) in the US continues, despite a union proposal put forward in a US Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) session on 13 January that would save the company pension costs, while preserving workers’ health care benefits – the key issue in the strike. 
 
The work stoppage by 90 members of IBT Local 25 in Massachusetts against Paris-based Saint-Gobain’s wholly-owned CertainTeed subsidiary began on 19 December over unreasonable demands to reduce workers’ health insurance benefits. In the FMCS session, the union showed how CertainTeed could save costs by taking advantage of a new programme offered by the New England Teamsters Pension Fund in exchange for remaining in a joint union-management health care fund. 
 
CertainTeed refused the offer. On 13 January, ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda wrote to Local 25 President Sean O’Brien and IBT President James Hoffa, stating that the dispute would receive the ICEM’s highest priority and would be brought to the attention of French trade unions and senior executives at Saint-Gobain in Paris. That <a href="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1.ICEM.Teamsters%20Local%2025.US.pdf " type="internal">ICEM letter</a> can be seen here. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1201.certanteed.jpg" width="154" height="160"/>
Now with the company turning away from a common sense resolve to the dispute, IBT Local 25 will broaden the Norwood, Massachusetts, strike within the US and has begun handbilling workers at other CertainTeed factories there. The company manufactures asphalt roofing shingles, gypsum wallboard, and insulated fiberglass products. 
 
The strike started when CertainTeed, based in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, sought to remove itself from the joint health care plan and opting for an inferior company-controlled plan that contains far fewer benefits. The cost to the company would be less, but workers would have far fewer health benefits, leaving them largely unprotected financially from illness or injury. 
 
“The company has become the epitome of greed, treating its workforce unfairly without regard for health and welfare and job security,” said O’Brien, the principal officer of 11,000-member IBT Local 25. 
 
At this point in the strike, CertainTeed workers would be without health insurance of any kind. But at a strike manifestation rally in front of plant gates on 5 January, O’Brien announced that Local 25’s Health and Welfare Fund would continue to provide health insurance at a cost to the union. The ICEM commends Local 25 for this social responsibility. 
 
Saint-Gobain increased its stake in CertainTeed from 32% to 57% in 1976, and then gained total ownership in 1988. In 1998, CertainTeed bought the Norwood plant from Bird & Sons. Local 25’s so-called Taft-Hartley health care plan – the union-management plan administered by the union – pre-dates CertainTeed’s ownership of the Norwood plant and Local 25 and CertainTeed’s Massachusetts workers are adamant that it be retained.

Saint-Gobain’s CertainTeed Balks at ‘Common Sense’ End to US Teamster Strike

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" style="width: 100px; height: 39px;" / width="390">

	In calling attention to jobs creation as equivalent economic growth, working people across Europe on 29 February, led by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), manifested in a Day of Action against the European Council’s adoption of a budget discipline treaty.

	The decentralised mobilisations occurred in scores of cities and worksites with a common theme pointed at EU governments and decision-makers: “Enough is enough! There are alternatives to austerity. Employment and social justice are the number one priorities.”

	The 29 February ETUC Day of Action took the form of demonstrations, work stoppages and information postings inside workplaces, as well as government institutions and stated that the European summit’s Treaty on Stability, Co-ordination and Governance is a “straightjacket” that will plunge the Eurozone into free-fall recession.

	 <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1202 euro austerity banner.jpg" style="width: 154px; height: 160px;" / width="390"> 

	The actions included two demonstrations in Brussels, site of the European Council’s 1-2 March summit where the misguided treaty will intrinsically slash wages and social protections, restrict collective bargaining, and provide even more neo-liberal policies, hardly the remedies for economic growth to assure a sustainable future.

	Union leaders, led by ETUC General Secretary Bernadette Ségol, met 29 February with Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Parliament President Martin Schulz in Brussels, while a mass rally took place at the European Council building. Members of all Belgian trade unions united in protest on 29 February, and targeted their manifestation outside the Belgian National Bank.

	A sampling of other actions on 29 February included a mass demonstration organised by the Romanian national trade union centres at Victoria Square in Bucharest. In Rome, Italian labour federations CGIL, CISL and UIL demonstrated at Pantheon Place, while Hungarian trade unions held a press conference and manifestation.

	In Greece, trade unions undertook a three-hour work stoppage, while even in Georgia trade unions protested ETUC’s Day of Action with a rally at Parliament in Tbilisi. This protest was against their government’s utter failure to adopt a fair labour code, all the while developing trade with European markets.

	In the UK, British trade unions used the day to gear up their defense of the National Health Service (NHS), which happens massively today, 7 March, across Britain. Both the ETUC and Trades Union Congress (TUC) denounce austerity measures that “fall hardest on the shoulders of the weakest” when public services are slashed.

ETUC Holds Day of Protest against Europe’s ‘Straitjacket’ Treaty

ICEM HIV/AIDS e-bulletin - No. 78, March 2012

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" style="width: 100px; height: 39px;" width="390" />

	Patience is running thin for a trade union alliance demanding proper labour rights for Holcim Cement workers in India. Management at both Indian subsidiaries of Holcim are flouting Indian law by employing contract workers in the core production process.

	Contract workers there receive only one-third of the salary paid to permanent employees, and efforts to organise and bargain collectively are met by intimidation, a yellow union’s corruption, and bribery of local officials.  During the struggle for recognition, three union members have been shot dead by police while protesting for the legitimate rights of Contract and Agency Labour (CAL) workers.

	The contract workers are organising into the ICEM-affiliated Pragatisheel Cement Shramik Sangh (PCSS) but after 16 years of existence, the union only achieved dialogue with management following victory in a six-year-long court case.

	 <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/CAL Vending Machine.jpg" style="width: 115px; height: 183px;" width="390" /> 

	Global pressure has forced Holcim to pay attention to the violations of contract workers in India, but when Holcim Executive Paul Hugentobler visited ACC Jamul recently, contract workers were all moved to a different shift and workers’ representatives were banned from taking part in the meeting with him. Instead, representatives of the sham company union, OP Banchore, were involved.

	The leader of this yellow union is the brother of the president of the local municipal authority, Rekhram Banchore. Together they have built a loathsome alliance, including allegedly settling local community violations by out of court settlements for issues such as failure to pay full taxes to the local Nagar Panchayat Jamul body, and encroachment onto government land.

	This yellow union at the plant repeatedly certifies management violations of contract workers who attempt to organise into the PCSS union. Management has forced a total of 200 contract workers into “voluntary” retirement by denying them wages and work during litigation processes for the regularisation process.

	This is illegal under Indian national law, but legitimised by the company union that signed these workers’ voluntary retirement scheme documents.

	Every contract worker active in the union is currently facing five-to-eight phoney criminal cases registered by management. PCSS leader Bhagwati Sahu has been in jail for ten months on spurious charges.

	Holcim’s international management has undisputedly been aware of these abuses since 2008. One worker found guilty of informing Holcim’s international management of violations was punished with a forced relocation to a different worksite hundreds of miles away.

	India is the second largest cement manufacturer in the world with capacity predicted to continue growing and Holcim is the largest producer of cement in India.

	Solidarity for the PCSS Holcim workers is being led by ICEM and the Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI), Swiss union affiliate UNIA, and continues to grow throughout the world. Thai affiliates of the two Global Union Federations plan a solidarity picket at Holcim in Thailand in early April.

	PCSS activists will visit Switzerland 10-18 April and hold a series of meetings and demonstrations.

	See more on the <a href="http://blogs.bwint.org/mnc/">BWI Company Monitor</a> page here or the ICEM’s Report “<a href="http://cal.icem.org/images/documents/Cement%20Report.pdf">Contract and Agency Labour in Asia’s Cement Industry</a>” here.

ICEM Again Calls on Holcim Cement to Stop Exploiting Indian CAL Workers

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" style="width: 100px; height: 39px;" width="390" />

	All eyes are on the Rotten Row magistrates’ court in the Zimbabwe capital Harare today, 21 March, as six political activists will hear their sentences after being found guilty of “conspiring to commit public violence.”

	The five men and one woman face up to a decade in jail simply for screening a video of the Arab Spring during an innocent academic meeting on 19 February 2011.

	The repressive Mugabe regime is manipulating the judiciary to stamp out and persecute any opposition; in this case by sentencing activists, and in many other cases by indefinitely dragging out court cases based on fabricated charges.

	The six Zimbabwean activists, Munyaradzi Gwisai, Tafadzwa Choto, Tatenda Mombeyarara, Edson Chakuma, Hopewell Gumbo, and Welcome Zimuto, face jail sentences of up to ten years. They confessed to plotting to overthrow the 88-year-old Mugabe, but these confessions were made while being tortured in custody. They were beaten with wooden planks.

	 <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Zimbabwe.png" style="width: 200px; height: 92px;" width="390" /> 

	The verdict was delivered on 20 March in a packed courtroom with riot police in position, after magistrate Kudakwashe Jarabini rejected the group’s claim that last year’s meeting had meant no harm to Mugabe’s regime.

	“Watching a video like the one in question is not a crime. But the manner of watching had no good intention,” the court was told by magistrate Jarabini, a relative of President Mugabe.

	They were arrested last year, together with 39 other people and initially were charged with treason, which carries the death penalty. But during the course of court proceedings, the charges were reduced and the other 39 people cleared.

	Three of the six, Munyaradzi, Tafadzwa and Tatenda, work with the Zimbabwe Labour Centre a non-profit organisation that gives legal support to unions and workers on labour matters and provides educational programmes. Gwisai is a law lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe. Chakuma is a trade union leader. 

	The right to meet, discuss events in the world, share ideas and speak openly and freely is a basic human right for which activists should not be victimised and vilified.  

	Send your SMS text message "Do NOT send the 6 Harare activists to jail!" now to:

	Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena + 263 712 801 172

	Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri + 263 712 808 290

	Police Minister Kembo Mohadi +263 712 605 424

	Security Minister Didymus Mutasa +263 0712 200 532

Global Indignation over Jail Time That Faces Zimbabwean Activists

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBriefAlert.jpg" style="width: 130px; height: 63px;" width="390" />

	Over 8,000 trade unionists and supporters rallied in Alma, Québec, Saturday, 31 March, on behalf of locked-out workers belonging to Syndicat des Métallos d’Alma Local 9490, an affiliate of the United Steelworkers (USW). Some 780 workers at an aluminium smelter of Rio Tinto’s Alcan subsidiary have been ruthlessly locked out of their livelihoods now for 14 weeks, and the economic stranglehold Rio Tinto has on the Saguenay-lac-Saint-Jean region of Québec is clear to all.

	Bus-loads of union militants from across Canada’s only French-speaking province converged on Alma, a community of 30,000, to stand with the victimised Alma steelworkers. And the USW organised convoys and buses as well from elsewhere in Canada, including Toronto, Hamilton and other industrial cities in Ontario province.

	Some 50 international trade unionists also attended, representing workers employed at Rio Tinto or Alcan in Australia, France, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the UK, US, and other nations. A day prior to the manifestation, the ICEM held its bi-annual North American regional meeting in Alma as a global signal to the 780 Alma workers that they are not alone in their struggle for fairness on the job.

	<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1204-alma-rally.png" style="width: 302px; height: 160px;" width="390" />

	The well-organised rally started with speeches at an Alma shopping mall, before a march complete with sound truck playing working-class music wound its way through the streets of the city to an amphitheatre. There, political and union leaders continued to chastise the world’s second largest resources company for delivering economic devastation to workers’ doorsteps in central Québec.

	ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda pledged that global labour will mobilise Rio Tinto workers across the globe in this struggle.

	“If the ruthless social agenda of Rio Tinto cannot be defeated here in Québec, there will be little hope that it can be stopped when others face company attacks,” Warda said. Rest assured, “we will take the indignities committed by Rio Tinto Alcan here throughout the world until this company agrees to stop the attacks against your community and your union.”

	Jyrki Raina, General Secretary of the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF), said Rio Tinto must “show respect for current and future workers and stop callously cutting labour costs and decent jobs without regard for the local economy.

	  <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1204-manfred-alma.jpg" style="width: 190px; height: 143px;" / width="390">  <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1204-jyrki-alma.jpg" style="width: 190px; height: 143px;" / width="390">  

	Manfred Warda, Jyrki Raina address Alma rally

	“If Rio Tinto wants to prosper, it cannot break the delicate balance that connects it to the community,” said Raina.

	ICEM Vice President and USW Canadian National Director Ken Neumann had a message for the Conservative government of Stephen Harper in his country, where the federal government has turned a deaf ear to several attacks by multinationals on Canadian workers.

	“Stephen Harper clearly fell short of his task by failing to impose conditions on the sale of Alcan to Rio Tinto in 2007 and to protect jobs,” said Neumann. “For someone who is so bent on involving himself in labour relations, why doesn’t he intervene with Rio Tinto to put an end to this abhorrent lockout?”

	That lockout was brought about by Local 9490’s rightful effort to stop erosion of permanent jobs that pay a living wage of C$34-an-hour against Alcan’s labour plan, which is aimed at replacing those jobs with outsourced work that pays half that amount.

	By late afternoon on Saturday, about an hour after the final speeches were given at Parc le Festiv Alma, Rio Tinto Alcan issued a defensive statement criticising the  USW event, and saying  a “calmer climate” was necessary in order to carry on with negotiations.

	       <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1204-alma-turk.jpg" style="width: 212px; height: 159px;" width="390" />       

	Turkish mineworkers solidarity for Alma locked-out Steelworkers

	But for nearly three months – until 19 March when Québec public pressure mounted primarily because Alcan was capitalising on the lockout by selling excess hydro-electric power back to the province – the company shunned bargaining, preferring instead to operate the modern and low-cost Alma smelter at reduced capacity while waiting for global aluminium prices to rise. (See <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4943-Negotiations-Restart-between-USW-Rio-Tinto-Alcan-in-Canadian-Lockout" type="internal">ICEM report</a> from 21 March.)

	Syndicat des Métallos Local 9490 and Alcan did return to talks for two days in March, with the help of provincial mediators, and two more days of negotiations occurred on 28-29 March. The two sides will in all likelihood meet again this week.

	But ever since the company prematurely halted negotiations and imposed the lockout on 30 December before a majority of workplace issues could even be tabled, Rio Tinto has been content to rob the Saguenay-lac-Saint-Jean region of C$1.8 million per week in lost salaries and benefits.

	With or without a settlement to the Alma lockout, the 31 March manifestation will stand as the prelude to a global fight against Rio Tinto to resist its anti-social agenda that has become all too common everywhere it does business.

Thousands March, Manifest in Alma, Canada, for Locked-out Steelworkers

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