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Following results of German Works Council elections this spring, ICEM affiliate IGBCE has raised its representation voice inside companies to 85%. That is 5% better than results reflected in the last overall elections in 2002. 
 
IGBCE Governing Board Member Michael Vassiliadis termed the new number “an outstanding result” and a “clear signal” of worker confidence in Germany’s most diverse industrial union. 
 
“Under difficult conditions, we continue to add,” said Vassiliadis. IGBCE has over one million members in Germany, and the union, through its worker representatives, has strong voice on some 3,700 Works Councils.

IGBCE Gains Strength on German Works Councils

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The global mining industry did produce one piece of good news over the past fortnight. Canadian mining house Ivanhoe announced it would withdraw from Burma, expressing to sources discomfort with having to deal with the military junta, which jointly owns a copper mine with Ivanhoe. The company will sell its 50% in the Monywa mine to a consortium of South Korean investors, including Daewoo International, which already has investment deals with the Burmese generals. 
 
The Ivanhoe Mines exit will happen in a July 2006 sale. Last week, Burma’s military junta extended the house arrest on Aung San Suu Kyi, 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner. Her strong voice for democracy and human rights in Burma has now been silenced for the past three years by the corrupt Burmese military rulers. In total, she has spent a total of ten of the past 17 years in detention.

Canadian Ivanhoe Mines Pulls Out of Burma

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ICEM Norwegian affiliate NOPEF and other unions achieved a 2006 wage increase of 4.5% in the offshore oil sector. The accord came on 17 May after offshore workers rejected a 2.5% offer from the Oil Industry Association (OLF). 
 
The agreement covers 6,200 workers and also lays a framework for further dialogue on work conditions including the rising demand for skilled workers in Norway’s offshore oil sector. A total of 2.4 million barrels of oil daily is pumped from rigs off the Norwegian continental shelf.

Norway’s Offshore Energy Workers Negotiate 4.5% Raise

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On 19 May, ICEM’s French affiliate Fédéchimie CGT-FO elected, unanimously, Hervé Quillet as its new general secretary at an extraordinary National Committee meeting. 
 
The new general secretary replaces long-serving and popular general secretary Michel Decayeux, who is retiring, but will remain on as a member of the organisation’s Bureau Fédéral as well as of its Commission Exécutive Confédérale until the union’s next congress. He also remains in charge of European and international relations. Decayeux is a former ICEM Materials Section chairman and an Executive Committee Member of the ICEM.

Michel Decayeux Steps Down as GS of Fédéchimie CGT-FO in France

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ICEM German affiliate IGBCE and the country’s chemical employers’ federation, BAVC, announced in Berlin today, 12 June, a joint declaration toward implementing family-friendly policies in the workplace. The agreement is the first of its kind in any sector in Germany.
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The initiative serves as the pioneering effort toward achieving the necessary balance between work and family life. “This is a significant step to better compatibility between occupation and family duties,” said IGBCE’s Edeltraud Glaenzer. She added that the basic principles contained in the position paper will now need to be put in practice in chemical industry worksites. 
 
German Family Affairs Secretary Ursula von der Leyen, who was present for the signing, stated, “For the trade union and employers’ organisation to declare this family-friendly personnel policy, is a decisive prerequisite for a better balance between work and family life.”

IGBCE, Chemical Industry Announce ‘Family-Friendly’ Protocol Agreement

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Locked-out members of Communications, Energy, Paperworkers (CEP) of Canada Local 972 ratified a collective agreement with Stora Enso on 20 June, thus ending a five-month labour dispute and ensuring that the paper mill in Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia, remains open. 
 
The 600 paper mill workers ratified the contract by the narrowest of margins, 54%, while a separate clerical unit gave approval by an even slimmer margin. The coated paper and newsprint mill was threatened with shutdown by Stora Enso unless a new labour agreement was not ratified by 24 June.
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The mill is plagued by Stora’s insistence on cutting paper capacity, and the current high value of the Canadian dollar in relation to the US dollar. Stora Enso has now petitioned the province’s utility commission in order to gain a power rate reduction before it re-starts the mill.
The province of Nova Scotia has already given preliminary approval to a C$65 million, seven-year property tax decrease so that the company would continue to operate the mill. 
 
Throughout the 23-week lockout, CEP Local 972 received vast support from several sources. 
In a letter announcing the ratification, Local 972 stated, “This support came from other CEP Locals across the country, other unions across Canada and many other countries, numerous other unions, associations, affiliates, local businesses, local individuals, and our own members who also cared and looked out for one another. This tremendous show of support will be long remembered.”

Stora Enso Lockout in Canada Ends with Ratification Vote

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Trade union members of Amicus, an ICEM affiliate in the UK, staged a second four-hour strike on 30 March at International Paper Co.’s Inverurie mill in Scotland. The union and its 231 members at the paper mill will escalate industrial actions this week with two further strikes, tomorrow and Thursday, 4 and 6 April, if the company does not revise a pay offer for 2006 and 2007. 
Management has proposed an unacceptable pay freeze for this year and a minimal one-off payment in 2007. Workers for the past two years have contributed part of their weekly earnings to help fill a gap in the company’s pension scheme. The industrial actions have boosted Amicus support inside the printing and writing papers mills, as well as in the nearby community of Aberdeenshire.

Further Strikes at IP Paper Mill in Scotland

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French ICEM affiliate FCE-CFDT has called an eight-hour strike for tomorrow, 4 April, at all Total worksites across France in protest to the government’s contrat premiére embauche (CPE), the “first job contract” labour reform being imposed on young workers. 
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The union is asking all Total workers to join tomorrow’s inter-sectoral day of action, and has asked all trade union delegates to organise general staff assemblies in preparation. 
French labour federations are united in efforts to push the government and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin off CPE, which passed Parliament by decree without dialogue with social partners. The reform would allow employers to sack workers under age 26 in their first two years of employment without needing justification. 
French President Chirac announced last week the scaling back of the two-year period to one year. FCE-CFDT, who together with other unions rejected the Chirac compromise, has called the strike tomorrow at Total without saying exactly when the eight-hour work stoppage would begin.

FCE-CFDT Calls Total Workers Out on Strike

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South African affiliate National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has challenged Harmony Gold Mining’s sacking of 300 contract workers without consulting the union. Harmony fired contractor DBE Mining at the Kalgold mine in the Northern Cape, and will bring in a new contractor employing other workers. 
NUM, which has filed a complaint over the matter in a South African labour court, is demanding that Harmony, “in the current climate of a boom in gold prices,” hire the 300 on a permanent basis. 
In a statement, NUM said, “Harmony would like to hide behind the myth that the 300 workers are employees of a contractor while in reality they do critical work in a Harmony mine … subcontracting and outsourcing are new forms of exploitation through which big companies try to exonerate themselves from the stain of careless laying off of employees.”

Layoffs of Contract Workers Challenged by NUM

UK Trade unionists of Amicus at International Paper Co.’s Inverurie mill in Scotland will extend industrial actions into next week, giving notice to the US-based company that another four-hour strike will occur on Monday, 10 April, and then an eight-hour downing of tools on Thursday, 13 April. It will be the fifth time since 23 March that the 231-strong workforce will have struck, and the 13 April action will mark the first eight-hour strike. 
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The two sides met on 4 April. The union was heartened that company negotiators moved off a pay freeze for 2006, but the company attached unacceptable conditions to the sub-standard, two-year pay offer. It sought not to make the pay offer retroactive to 1 January, and the company also wants to make the first two days of January mandatory work days each year. 
 
Amicus union officials consulted with union members, and informed management today that their offer was unacceptable. “We will keep the door open to further bargaining,” said Amicus Asst. Branch Secretary Willie Wallace. “We have suggested that ACAS get involved and we sincerely wish to resolve this dispute,” he added. ACAS is the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service of the UK, an independent but public-funded mediation service with a longstanding reputation. 
 
Amicus branch leaders and trade unionists at the Inverurie mill are perplexed by the company’s bargaining posture. Absent in bargaining is good-faith and a fair exchange of ideas and proposals. Instead, managers come to talks with “take-it-or-leave-it” proposals, void of any desire or willingness for dialogue, according to Wallace. International Paper has presented three “last, best and final offers” in recent bargaining sessions, a fact not lost on Inverurie paperworkers as they’ve united more through this dispute than ever before. 
 
This week’s bargaining is a case in point. Amicus members know the company has never had a problem operating paper machines on 1 and 2 January. The voluntary system of working those days has never failed in the past. Considering also the company’s demand that any wage increase for first quarter of 2006 is lost, this week’s restructured “last, best and final offer” was easy to reject. 
 
“The mood among members is hardening,” said Amicus Asst. General Secretary Tony Burke. “The company does not understand that they cannot keep rehashing previous offers which have found no favour amongst our members.”

Eight-Hour Strike Next Week at International Paper’s Scottish Mill

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