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In Nepal, the ICEM has been informed that GEFONT&rsquo;s offices have been searched by the police on 18 February. At around 10.30 AM, 15 to 20 policemen entered the building during a union meeting. The police officers searched the premises thoroughly, up to the rooftop, intimidating the trade unionists present and forcing them to leave the building. When they apparently didn&rsquo;t find what they were looking for, the police left, but not without locking up the GEFONT office, taking the key with them. The offices were kept closed for the whole day and the key was only returned in the evening. The ICEM fears that the invasion by the police was in search of particular high-ranking GEFONT leaders, who the ICEM fears are in danger of being arrested. The ICEM wrote to the Nepalese authorities last week, voicing its concern about the labour rights situation in the country after the sudden dismissal of the Nepalese government, and asking for the protection of trade union leaders from arbitrary arrest.

Nepal’s Government Continues Rights Abuses Under Martial Law

ICEM Japanese affiliate UI Zensen&rsquo;s Central Committee has announced it will launch a Spring Offensive this year aimed at achieving basic wage increases. Japanese workers have faced double trouble in terms of battered family finances after years of wage neglect, and heavier tax and social security burdens placed on working class citizens. UI Zensen&rsquo;s courageous leadership is calling for a unified wage hike of &yen;1,000 or 2.5% as the goal for the offensive.

Japanese Affiliate UI Zensen Aims at Wage Increase

Industrial action in New Zealand is escalating over ICEM affiliate Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union&rsquo;s (EPMU) call for 5% wage increases across all sectors of the country&rsquo;s buoyant economy. On 15 April, 238 EPMU miners at collieries of Solid Energy in Huntly East and Rotowaro struck. Coal miners across NZ are seeking a 6% pay hike to offset lost wages from government passage of the Employment Contracts Act in the late 1990s. Miners are also seeking pay parity between operations of the North Island and South Island. Underground miners in the South are paid less than workers in the North, while open cast miners on the North Island earn less than those of the South. Metals and manufacturing workers, also represented by EPMU, are on the verge of striking if the 5% demands are not met.

Miners in New Zealand Take Strike Actions

Meanwhile, coal miners in South Africa, fearful they would be sacked by the sale of Zululand Anthracite Colliery by Ingwe Holdings&rsquo;parent BHP Billiton to Riverdale Holdings, staged an underground strike for several days beginning 10 April. Supported by the NUM, the strikers are seeing assurances that any redundancies at the colliery in northern KwaZulu-Natal State will be met with adequate payments. Another underground mine sit-in occurred in the Free State by 400 NUM members at Star Diamond near Theunissen. Miners were protesting the sackings of two workers who refused to work in dangerous conditions.

South African Coal Miners Stage Underground Strike

After three weeks of futile bargaining, talks broke off last week between Communications, Energy, Paperworkers (CEP) of Canada Local 689 and UPM Kymmene over efforts to end a four-month paper mill strike in Miramichi, New Brunswick. The Finnish paper company still will not submit the pattern labour agreement for the paper sector of eastern Canada to the striking 700 CEP members, which is the central issue to the strike. Rather, UPM Kymmene was pressuring Local 689 to force a vote of union members on a substandard proposal. Union members 14 April vehemently rejected taking a vote on anything short of the pattern agreement.

CEP, UPM Kymmene Fail in Canadian Talks to End Strike

The Botswana court case in which diamond-mining company Debswana pressed forward in order to extract maximum punishment on some 450 workers who struck last August was dismissed 24 March. An Industrial Court judge issued a detailed, 79-page ruling that said the court had no jurisdiction over criminal matters. Debswana, jointly owned by DeBeers and the government of Botswana, is on a ruthless campaign to destroy the lives of these workers who struck after the company used a new labour law to declare any strike at the 6,000-worker mining operations illegal. Debswana has forcefully evicted the strikers from company housing, and has closed educational opportunities to children of strikers in company-sponsored schools.

Mining Union Wins Court Case Against Debswana in Botswana

<img height="40" src="" width="100" alt="" />
About 120,000 South Korean workers staged a four-hour strike Friday, 1 April, that should serve as a prelude to a larger, nationwide strike if the National Assembly passes legislation to liberalise the use of contract and agency labour. 
Some 231 workplaces took part in the four-hour shutdown called by the Korean Federation of Trade Unions. 
In addition to the bill on the use of non-regular workers, unions are calling on the government to come down hard on companies abusing South Korea&rsquo;s so-called &ldquo;anti-illegal dispatch law,&rdquo; meant as a control to illegal employment practices but a statute continually violated by multinational companies.

Korean Workers Strike Over Labour Reform Bill

Industrial action by Transport &amp; General workers at a Michelin tyre plant in Stoke, UK, ended last week when union members voted 75% to accept a revised pay offer from management. But the union warned that Michelin would now have much work to do to regain the trust and respect of workers. Managers raised threats on the future viability of the plant at the time workers took decisive industrial action. And after revising the pay offer two weeks into the job action, the company tried to impose a voting deadline on T&amp;G&rsquo;s branch, prompting the T&amp;G to call it &ldquo;an attempt to bully our members.&rdquo; Some 500 T&amp;G members engaged in the industrial action at the tyre plant in the Midlands.

Settlement Ends Industrial Action at Michelin in UK

ICEM affiliate Power Workers&rsquo; Union (PWU) of Canada is protesting the province of Ontario&rsquo;s decision to close five coal-fired power plants by 2007. The public-sector union took ad space in major provincial newspapers to say the US$8.2 billion in shutdown costs will be a further burden on price rates&mdash;already up 25% for most provincial customers&mdash;and the answer to Ontario&rsquo;s energy future is a combination of nuclear power and better clean-coal technologies.

Canadian Power Workers Seek to Keep Power Plants Open

The Oil Workers Federation of Brazil (FUP) staged a 24-hour warning strike at Petrobras 31 March that saw 90% participation by the state-run company&rsquo;s workers. Oil workers are seeking a higher dividend from the company&rsquo;s profit-sharing plan. FUP had been conducting a series of two-hour strikes up to the 31 March action, and now has given the company until 10 April to meet the demands or face escalated strikes. The 24-hour strike last week came a day after Petrobras set a historic daily output record, hitting 1.65 million barrels of oil, a 0.6% increase over the prior record set on 14 March 2003.

Warning Strike Launched by Brazilian Oil Union at Petrobras

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