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Organisation-building and capacity-strengthening are the priorities set by African trade unions affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). 
 
Meeting at the ICEM's first African Regional Conference (Johannesburg, 7-9 December), 120 delegates from ICEM unions in 16 countries of sub-Saharan Africa identified three main challenges facing affiliates in the region: 
 
The need for greater self-sufficiency 
 
Membership decline due to retrenchments, Africa's AIDS epidemic and a lack of union organising 
 
The particular need to unite and strengthen trade unions in countries under dictatorships. 
 
The answer, the African unions emphasised, is to "build democratic, powerful workers' organisations". They particularly noted the achievements made, "amid obstacles", by the Southern Africa Electricity Workers' Network. This was set up to promote cooperation among electric power unions in the region, at a time when its electricity supplies are being integrated. 
 
The conference based its findings on the research component of the ICEM's "Plan for Africa". As the next stage of that plan, affiliated unions in the region will each design an Organising Strategy. These strategies are, the delegates stressed, to be forwarded to the incoming ICEM African Regional Executive, which will be responsible for coordinating the work. Each union's strategic plan should incorporate the ICEM's goals of independence, self-sufficiency, internal democracy, the capacity to win real gains for members and the building of appropriate social alliances. 
 
ICEM project work in the region must be fully integrated into the Plan for Africa, the conference emphasised, and should focus on shop steward development, mainstreaming of women and outreach to the "informal sector" (i.e. the precarious, marginalised jobs on which most workers in developing countries are engaged). It must also improve existing ICEM sectoral networks in the region and establish new ones. 
 
Unions in the region must be at the forefront of peace initiatives to end Africa's civil wars and other conflicts. The "resources wasted in war" must be "redirected towards programmes that can contribute to human development". Noting that "in most instances, control of mineral wealth is the cause of conflict", the ICEM conference said the union contribution to peace should include monitoring "the role of multinational companies in war-torn countries." 
 
In fact, the African unions pointed out, "neo-liberal globalisation, with its emphasis on the free market and the decline of the nation state, has made the rich richer and the poor poorer on a global scale." To the multinational companies' line of TINA (There Is No Alternative), the response of workers worldwide should be THEMBA (There Must Be Alternatives). 
 
The African affiliates praised the ICEM's "efforts to find practical alternatives to the TINA propaganda line". The next ICEM World Congress (in Durban, South Africa, next November) should, they said, adopt a "powerful worker response to the negative effects of globalisation on workers of the South." 
 
Elected as ICEM Regional Chairperson was James Motlatsi, of South Africa, with Konstanteno Ngandu, from Zimbabwe, as Regional Secretary for Sub-Saharan Africa.

Organising - ICEM African Unions' Big Priority

Czech Republic affiliate Union of Mining, Geology and Oil Industry (OS PHGN) held its 5th Congress recently against a backdrop of rampant restructuring and privatisation of the coal industry on the eve of the country’s entry into the EU. Job loss in mining has been particularly steep in the Northern Bohemia region. Promises made by the ruling coalition government, led by the Social Democrats, to financially assist the unemployed have gone unfulfilled creating serious social and political tensions in mining communities. OS PHGN resolved to continue a campaign for a social plan and will consider withdrawing support for the SDP in the next elections if obligations are not met. Jan Sabel was elected president of the union and Frantisek Nekola vice president.

Czech Mining Affiliate Holds Congress

The NUM in South Africa said it would withdraw from bargaining and the current work-term agreement it has with Harmony Gold Mining Ltd. if means are not found to reduce Harmony’s projected job cuts. Harmony announced outside of talks on 2 April that it was closing six shafts due to insufficient financial returns and the strong Rand. Some 5,000 jobs are at stake. NUM agreed to continuous seven-day-a-week operations with Harmony to ensure marginal mines stay operational, but now SA’s largest gold producer has reneged on that pledge. NUM was in talks with Harmony when the firm made the surprise announcement about shuttering the six shafts.

NUM in South Africa Takes Issue with Harmony Gold's Job Cuts

ICEM President and Australian CFMEU National Secretary John Maitland officiated at a remembrance 4 April of the 1,600 miners who lost their lives in the mining areas of New South Wales dating back to 1801. The remembrance was the ninth such observance at the United Mineworkers’ Federation House in Cessnock. CFMEU Northern Mining & Energy Division President Peter Murray said it is important to demonstrate respect and condolences to families who have lost loves ones in the mines and as a result of hazardous mine work.

Australian Mine Union Marks Death Toll in NSW

The crisis in Ukrainian coal mines is worsening by the day. Crippled by customers' unpaid bills and by "reforms" partly dictated by global financial institutions, the industry is continuing to default on wage payments to its workers. 
 
By 1 February, active coalminers were owed between 3 and 14 months' pay, the Miners' Independent Trade Union of Ukraine (MITU) reports. The total wage debt to these miners topped 700 million US dollars last month. The many Ukrainian miners invalided out because of accidents and occupational diseases are faring no better financially. They are now owed some 135 million US dollars' worth of benefits. 
 
Desperate times breed desperate measures. Strikes are spreading rapidly, now involving between 20,000 and 25,000 miners each day. About 200 miners have launched an indefinite sit-in below ground. One miner burned himself to death in a protest last December and more have threatened to do so. 
 
"The miners are demanding that their wages be paid on time, that the arrears be paid and that state financing of the sector be increased during 1999," MITU President Mikhail Volynets commented yesterday. He said the country's President and government had reneged on a commitment to begin paying off the wage backlog. If the miners' "legimate demands" were not met, MITU would "lead a general miners' strike," Volynets pledged. 
 
He pointed out that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are pressing the Ukraine to cut coal industry subsidies, close mines and reduce the workforce. 
 
"All this doesn't favour the financial improvement of country in general, and in particular of the coal sector, which is a key Ukrainian industry," Volynets emphasised. "Because of the tough monetary policy implemented by the government under pressure from the World Bank, many industrial enterprises in related sectors have stopped working. This has also had a negative effect on the working of the mines. 
 
"In this situation, social and psychological tensions are intensifying more and more in the mining regions," Volynets warned. 
 
At the global level, the MITU is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). 
 
"The Ukrainian miners' claim is undeniably just," ICEM General Secretary Vic Thorpe commented. "They are simply demanding what they are owed. They have the full support and solidarity of their brothers and sisters worldwide. 
 
"We certainly call upon the Ukrainian mines and the Ukrainian government to ensure payment of the wage debt without further delay," Thorpe said. "But beyond that, we demand that the institutions of global finance, notably the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, should at last show some social responsibility. At least part of the international finance that now goes into often harmful 'restructuring' in Ukraine and similar economies must instead be earmarked for the payment of the huge debts owed to those countries' workers. Global action is needed now to right this scandalous wrong."

Ukraine: Mine Strikes Spread As Pay Debt Climbs

92,000 South African workers have united within a union spanning a wide range of major industries. 
 
CEPPWAWU (Chemical, Pulp and Paper, Printing, Wood and Allied Workers' Union) was created at the end of last week by the merger of the chemical and allied workers' CWIU and the paper and allied workers' PPAPWU. As well as the sectors listed in its name, the new union covers glass, rubber, plastics and pharmaceuticals. 
 
Elected as CEPPWAWU's General Secretary was Muzi Buthelezi, with Bengeza Mthombeni as Deputy General Secretary and Pasco Dyani as President. 
 
"Our membership will benefit from this merger through better service, improved finances and human resources, and more bargaining power," Buthelezi told ICEM UPDATE. 
 
The new union will be harmonising its collective bargaining this month and expects to have its local and regional structures in place by May. 
 
It urged its members to contribute today's (3 March) wages to the Job Creation Fund set up by South Africa's national labour confederations to tackle the unemployment crisis. 
 
At the global level, CEPPWAWU will be affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). The new union has taken a resolutely internationalist stance from the start, and specifically notes that "unions internationally from the chemical and paper industries have aligned themselves to form single organisations." 
 
"This strong new union will be a further boost for the ICEM's important organising drive in Africa," commented ICEM General Secretary Vic Thorpe. "South Africa is crucial to out efforts to unite the world's workers - a fact that we will recognise when the ICEM holds its World Congress in Durban this November."

South Africa's New Super-Union

Australian affiliate Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers’ Union (LHMU) won a verdict on agency fees in South Australia. The Industrial Relations Commission ruled non-union members must pay a fee for worklife gains through the enterprise bargaining process. LHMU Branch Sec. Mark Butler called it a “landmark decision” and vowed that all LHMU collective agreements in South Australia will include the new language.

Australian Affiliate LHMU Wins Agency Fees Case

The Uribe government and the Colombian oil firm Ecopetrol has escalated a 19-day strike by Union Sindical Obrera (USO) by sacking another 40 workers. The government has ruled the strike illegal on the “essential service” theory of oil refining. The ICEM argues that ILO jurisprudence regarding that definition proves differently. The government has now sacked 60.

Colombian Government Declares War on Oil Union

German IGBCE, French FCE CFDT and EMCEF, the European workers’ federation in chemical, energy and mining sectors, met in Paris 4 May and issued a declaration on the impending Sanofi-Synthelabo and Aventis pharmaceutical merger. The combined firm’s two biggest unions vowed to prevent site closures and job loss, maintain existing rights and obligations, and asks that the new management team be innovative inside the framework of existing social dialogue.

German, French Unions Meet over Aventis, Sanofi Merger

Shareholders' investment in tyre multinational Continental "is now being put at risk because of the irresponsible handling of labour relations in the United States." 
 
That was the disturbing message to shareholders attending Conti's annual meeting in Hanover, Germany, yesterday. 
 
Making the point was US tyreworkers' leader John Sellers. He was supporting a shareholder counterproposal to withhold indemnification of Continental's board until the company falls into line with the worldwide basic labour standards set by the UN's International Labour Organisation (ILO) - "including the right to form unions, collectively bargain and strike." The counterproposal would also have required Continental to renounce the use of strikebreakers. 
 
Sellers is Executive Vice-President of the Rubber and Plastics Conference of the American tyreworkers' union, the USWA. 
 
Behind his robust remarks in Hanover yesterday is a long-running industrial dispute between US tyreworkers and Continental's American subsidiary, General Tire. 
 
The core issue is that General Tire is refusing to pay workers at its Charlotte plant the going rate among leading employers of US tyre workers, even though the plant is now profitable. The American workers accuse Conti of failing to bargain in good faith and of trying to break the Charlotte local of the USWA. After provoking a strike, the company drafted in "permanent replacement" workers last September, thus effectively locking out and dismissing the strikers. 
 
In 1995, after Continental bought General Tire, the workers bailed out the Charlotte plant by "giving back" about 90 million US dollars in pay and benefits cuts. Charlotte is now showing a healthy profit, but the company is still refusing to bring its pay and conditions up to standard. 
 
As Sellers told the shareholders in Hanover, Continental now faces potentially massive costs for violations of US law. The USWA had experience of winning such "wars" which "inevitably end up costing renegade employers millions of dollars." And to fight the union's "massive evidence" of violations by the company, Sellers said, Conti also faces "additional costs - estimated to be over ten million dollars - for legal fees." 
 
Also speaking in Hanover yesterday were Earl Probst, President of the USWA local at Charlotte, and the union's corporate campaigner Jerry Fernandez. They were accompanied by General Tire workers Mark Cieslikowski and Charles Hill. 
 
The shareholder counterproposal was voted down - but with enough votes in favour to show that a fair number of investors had sided with the American trade unionists. 
 
Sellers also took the opportunity to warn that Continental will "soon be the subject of demonstrations and solidarity actions in all parts of the world." 
 
At the global level, the USWA is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), which has launched a strong worldwide campaign in support of the Charlotte workers. 
 
In Brussels today, Sellers told the ICEM Executive Committee about the latest developments in the dispute. He also thanked the ICEM and its affiliated unions for their support - in particular, the German union IG BCE for its assistance in getting the American workers' voice heard at the Hanover meeting..

Your Investment Is At Risk, Continental Tyre Shareholders Told

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