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In February 2007, South Korea's Labor Ministry announced a total ban on the manufacture, import, and use of asbestos, which will take effect in 2009. Under the plan, the Labor Ministry will restrict the use of products containing asbestos in steps through 2008, in order to allow for the examination of possible substitutes.
In 2009, all asbestos-removal companies will be required to register with the Labor Ministry, and all articles which involve the use of asbestos will be removed, according to Korea's construction laws and regulations. 
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The ministry, in making the announcement, noted that a number of countries in developed nations have already banned asbestos. It also said that when taken into the body, asbestos fibres can cause breathing problems by damaging the lungs, which causes asbestosis and an increased risk to cancer.

South Korea: Labor Ministry announces Total Ban on Asbestos by 2009

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In Taiwan, the NGO Tavoi will again organise a demonstration to mark 28 April. But this year, a three-day workshop will follow the 28 April commemoration event. 
 
The workshop will focus on occupational health and safety issues, and will be attended by trade unionists, other NGO members and scholars from India, Hong Kong, Japan, and other Asian countries. 
 
Each day in Taiwan, five workers die from industrial accidents and 20 more workers become permanently injured. The economic miracle that has engulfed Taiwan for the past four decades has also left an appalling trail of workplace carnage.

Taiwan: 3-day Workshop to Focus on Workplace Health, Safety Issues

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Some three months after miners of AVVS de Moederbond trade union in Suriname staged a strike at a Canadian-based gold-mining enterprise, called IAM Gold, they know their rewards. A new collective agreement was formally signed 25 April 2007, giving 900 miners their first collective agreement. 
 
It was the second strike within a year at the two-year-old gold pits – both against Canadian mining houses. IAM Gold bought the central Suriname site from Ciambor Inc. late in 2006. AVVS de Moederbond hit already that Canadian company with a strike that lasted four days in May 2006. 
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This first labour accord serves as a strong precedent in the resource-rich South American country, since new mining development is occurring and IAM Gold is keenly interested in moving into eastern Suriname. 
 
In this initial three-year collective agreement, miners will receive a 24% increase, retroactive to 1 January 2007. They will also receive a 10% raise in 2008. In 2009, the union and management will negotiate a further raise.
In addition, the union won improved medical care and child benefits, while the vacation scheme was enhanced. In signing the agreement on 25 April, IAM Gold, a company with assets in Botswana, Ghana, Mali, Peru, and other South American countries, expressed public conviction to AVVS de Moederbond President Errol Snijders that it will build a trusting, cooperative relationship with the mining union. 
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President Errol Snijders
IAM Gold, founded in 1996, holds joint venture stakes with AngloGold Ashanti in Mali, Goldfields in Ghana, and owns the Mupane gold mine in Botswana. Mupane is a shared enterprise with the state, and the ten-year lease with civil society comes due in the year 2013. 
 
IAM Gold was a takeover target of Goldfields in the recent past, but the deal failed when shareholders of Goldfields rejected it. IAM Gold, in 2006, acquired Gallery Gold, and has several shared investments with Battle Mountain Gold. It also has mining interests in Senegal and Tanzania in Africa, and in Argentina, Brazil, and Ecuador in South America. 
 
The Toronto-based company also holds mining interests in Canada and collects mining royalties on Canadian precious-metal mining.

Gold Miners in Suriname Win Two-year, 34% Wage Hikes

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ICEM affiliate Argentine Federation of Private Oil and Workers Union (FASPyGP) launched a series of rolling strikes to oil and gas production on 3 May across several provinces of the South American nation. The dispute is over a continued wage impasse between the union and several companies, covering 35,000 workers. 
 
The companies have balked at paying 2007 wage increases of 20%, an amount FASPyGP claims is only 45 minutes of combined production in oil and gas fields. The strikes have occurred at gas deposits near Mendoza and Salta, and other energy extraction in the provinces of Tierra del Fuego, Chubut, and Neuquén y Santa Cruz. 
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The companies being targeted include Repsol YPF, Argentine-British Pan American Energy, Apache, Argentina’s PlusPetrol, as well as units of major energy producers, such as Petrobras and ExxonMobil. The industry has offered only 15% increases. 
 
Oil and gas companies doing exploratory and extraction work in Argentina have increased gas output by 5.2% in the first quarter of 2007, while oil production has jumped 4.9%. The companies export some 65% of all production and with oil and gas prices remaining high, multinationals have prospered from the country’s natural resources. 
 
The government of Nestor Kirchner has called on oil and gas companies to expand their investment efforts in Argentina’s energy sector, as well as to compensate oil and gas workers fairly as a means to curbing consumer price inflation.

Argentina Oil Union, FASPyGP, Launches Oil, Gas Strike

ICEM WOMEN’S BULLETIN N° 18

The 86-day strike by members of the United Steelworkers (USW) at 12 Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. plants in the US ended 29 December, after rubber workers voted to approve a new accord at America’s biggest tyre producer by a two-to-one margin. USW announced yesterday that 10,000 of 14,000 striking union members voted in balloting, and that approval of the new three-year labour agreement was gained by a majority of members at all 12 branch locals.
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Some 500 Canadian USW members at four rubber accessory plants in the province of Ontario are voting on a separate contract proposal. Both the US and Canadian Goodyear workers have been on strike since 5 October 2006. 
 
"It took a strike, but we achieved a fair and equitable contract that protects quality health care for active and retired members,” said USW Executive Vice President Ron Hoover. "And by winning major capital investment expenditures, it secures our jobs for the future." 

The strike in the US centered on heath care coverage and job security. USW won a guarantee from Goodyear that it would commit US$550 million in capitalisation investments at the 12 plants over the next three years. 

The union also pushed Goodyear in week-long talks beginning on 19 December to increase a health care trust fund for active workers and retirees. The US-based company agreed to place US$1 billion in a Voluntary Employees’ Beneficiary Association, from which medical and prescription drug benefits for current and future retirees will come. Future contributions into this fund will include diverted cost-of-living payments and profit-sharing plants. 
During the strike, Goodyear announced that it would close a tyre plant in Tyler, Texas, in 2007, thus making 1,100 workers redundant. USW and Goodyear agreed in the December talks that closure would occur no sooner than 2008, and the union won sizeable retirement buy-outs, enhanced severance packages, and medical coverage for Texas workers for a full two years beyond closure of the private-label tyre operation. It also won a guarantee that future manufacture of such tyres will be done in a plant that had been on strike. 
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The 12-week strike was marked by the company circumventing the union and appealing directly to USW members to abandon the walk-out and return to work. But there were few defections among the nearly 15,000 strikers, and that fact no doubt forced Goodyear to compromise its original demands. 

“The credit really belongs to our members and their families, whose solidarity prevented the company from short-changing them, despite all of its attempts,” stated USW President Leo Gerard. 
 
This week’s contract ratification means workers will return to work on 2 January at both tyre and engineered rubber product plants in Akron, Ohio; St. Marys, Ohio; Marysville, Ohio; Gadsden, Alabama; Buffalo, New York; Lincoln, Nebraska; Topeka, Kansas; Fayetteville, North Carolina; Danville, Virginia; Tyler, Texas; Sun Prairie, Wisconsin; and, Union City, Tennessee.

USW Ends US Goodyear Strike after Membership Vote Approval

The 20-million-member ICEM, the Global Trade Union Federation representing workers in the mining industry, today commended its Colombian affiliate, Sintracarbón, and coal producer Carbones del Cerrejón for achieving a new collective agreement over the weekend. After the union’s National Assembly of Delegates issued a strike mandate on 25 January, Sintracarbón’s six-member bargaining committee met with the management of Colombia’s biggest coal enterprise throughout the weekend to achieve the new two-year agreement. 
 
“The ICEM applauds the fact that both sides saw the rationale to continue discussions even after it appeared a strike was inevitable,” stated General Secretary Manfred Warda. “This is a testament to the commitment that Sintracarbón and the company has for the Social Dialogue process.” 
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Carbones del Cerrejón, with its three multinational stakeholders, AngloAmerican, BHP Billiton, and Xstrata, are partners with the ICEM and Sintracarbón in a unique Social Dialogue arrangement adopted in 2004 in Colombia. The agreement, which also covers other multinational companies and several other ICEM-affiliated trade unions in Colombia, established a formal process for meaningful labour-management discussions between parties. 
 
Warda said it was essential that the three parent companies asserted themselves in talks over the weekend. 
 
The agreement, covering some 4,000 miners, awards a pay increase of 7.7% in the first year of the agreement, with a second year increase of either 1.5% above Colombia’s consumer price index for 2007, or 6%, whichever is higher. 
 
The ICEM congratulates Sintracarbón and its membership for standing steadfast in these negotiations in order to meet their other contractual demands. Those include sizeable payouts in both years of the agreement for university educations for children of miners; a series of bonuses for Cerrejón’s workers, which includes a ratification bonus and a set production bonus that will increase when the company’s coal price exceeds US$48-per-tonne; additional employer contributions to a pension fund in each year of the agreement; and extra monthly medical stipends for family members. 
 
The ICEM is specifically proud of the achievements Sintracarbón made for contract workers employed at Carbones del Cerrejón in Guajira state. That includes bringing 80 temporary workers to full-time, permanent status; and enlarging the level of benefits for contract labourers once six months of employment is complete. One more requirement is for the company to conduct interviews with contract employers to ensure they are complying with Colombian law, and that this process is shared with the union. 
 
For further details: <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/2105-Sintracarbón’s-Miners-Poised-to-Strike-at-Carbones-del-Cerrejón-in-Colombia" type="internal">/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/2105-Sintracarbón’s-Miners-Poised-to-Strike-at-Carbones-del-Cerrejón-in-Colombia</a>.

ICEM Applauds Coal Agreement Reached in Colombia

The 20-million-member ICEM filed a strong protest yesterday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas over this week’s assassination attempt on a prominent trade unionist. 
 
Rasem Al Bayari, deputy general secretary of the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU), managed to escape in the early morning hours of Monday, 29 January, when assailants fired rockets into his home. A day after this violent act, more attackers returned to his home and fired shots at the house. 
 
“The Palestinian Authority, as a responsible Authority, must uphold internationally recognised rights,” wrote ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda to Abbas, “including full respect for the fundamental human rights of workers, such as their right to life.” 
 
The ICEM has demanded that the Palestinian Government ensure the safety of Al Bayari and his family, and urges “a thorough investigation into the rocket attacks and the shootings” so that the perpetrators are brought to justice.
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 PGFTU Gen. Sec. Shaher Sae'd pionts to a bullet hole in the wall of the PCFTU conference room 
 

On 12 October 2006, the PGFTU’s headquarters in Nablus was attacked. This assault was followed by death threats to the union’s leaders. The Palestinian national labour centre then called it an escalation against trade unionism, because PGFTU leaders had been strongly speaking out on behalf of workers. 
 
The ICEM stands solidly behind PGFTU, and echoes the commitment of the Palestinian labour centre, at it reacted to this week’s cowardly and violent act on the Al Bayari’s home: “This act will not silence the workers and will not stop our activities to build the structures of the Palestinian State for the benefit of our people and workers.” 
Read the ICEM Letter to Palestinian Government <a href="/en/24-North-Africa-Middle-East-/2124-ICEM-Letter-to-Palestine-President-Mahmoud-Abbas" type="internal">here</a>.

ICEM Issues Strong Protest to Palestinian Government

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Some 300 French glass sector workers from four different unions protested in front of Saint-Gobain corporate offices in Paris on 20 February. The manifestation by workers of four Saint-Gobain Desjonquères (SGD) glass factories was over the company’s intention to reduce the workforce at a perfume and pharmaceutical bottle plant in Mers, as well as the possible sale or joint-venture spin-off of the Desjonquères glass business. 
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The unions, CFDT, FO, CGT, and CFTC, gained a meeting with senior managers during the protest, in which Saint-Gobain delivered a declaration that no workers would be sacked for economic reasons, and that any downsizings would occur through voluntary retirements and attrition. 
The declaration also included a guarantee that investment would be made to keep open the No. 7 furnace at Mers if demand is sufficient. In a statement last month, Saint-Gobain Desjonquères said it would shutter that furnace in 2008, cutting 125 jobs at the 1,245-worker factory. 
 
The unions also pressed management to take into account that some 400 temporary workers are employed at Mers. Workers from Saint-Gobain factories from Mers, Verreries de la Somme at Abbeville, Verreries de l’Orne at Argentan, and SGD Sucy-Enbrie took part in the manifestation. 
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On the day following the protest, the unions obtained a salary increase from Saint-Gobain of 2.5%, with a minimum wage hike of €55-per-month. They also won a €12-a-month increase in employer-paid health insurance, and a one-off bonus of €400. The unions credited the protest the day before with the substantial gains. 
 
The four unions, as well as a supervisors’ union, CFE-CGC, vowed to continue manifestations throughout the year in order to gain future job security guarantees from Saint-Gobain. Regarding a sale or spin-off of the glass business, the unions point to the fact that the Desjonquères business has enlarged the company four-fold in recent years. Outgoing CEO Jean-Louis Beffa has told market analysts that Saint-Gobain intends to exit the glass business, and to focus on building materials enterprises. 
 
Saint-Gobain bought the glass business of Henri Desjonquères in 1972 and operates ten glass factories around the world.

Saint-Gobain Protest Assures Fairness in Glass Business

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UK unions, particularly Amicus, are supporting Action Mesothelioma Day tomorrow, 27 February, to draw attention to the tens of thousands of workers and family members suffering from asbestos-related cancer. The campaign is headed by the British Lung Foundation.
Amicus, which has already distributed thousands of posters to convenors and shop stewards, is urging members to stage a one-minute period of silence at their worksites tomorrow. One Amicus action in particular has drawn attention: the convenor at the union’s Crewe branch, home to workers employed at Bombardier Transport, has led a drive to erect a park bench in the municipal square of Crewe to commemorate Amicus members who have died or are suffering from mesotheliama. 
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Mesothelioma is a form of cancer that is almost always caused by exposure to asbestos. Malignant cells develop in the mesothelium, a protective lining that covers most of the body’s internal organs. The resulting cancer can develop long after exposure to asbestos. 
 
Most people who develop the disease have worked in jobs where they have inhaled asbestos particles. Family members have also been known to develop it through contact with working parents in high-risk jobs, or merely by washing the work clothes of such workers. 
 
In the UK, about 2,000 people per year die from mesothelioma. It is estimated that by 2050, 95,000 people will have died from the disease. 
 
“Mesothelioma can develop up to 60 years after exposure to asbestos and because of this long delay, it has been calculated that the number of UK cases will continue to rise until 2015,” said Amicus Health and Safety Officer Rob Miquel. 
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“People have died needlessly from this most painful horrific disease,” stated Amicus Gen. Sec. Derek Simpson. “We will continue to fight for better working conditions, so that our children will not suffer the same fate.” 
 
The British Lung Foundation’s campaign began on 26 February 2006, when it presented the “Mesothelioma Charter” with 14,000 signatures to UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. The charter calls for better protection for employees from asbestos, better care and treatment for those inflicted with asbestos-related diseases, and more funding for research. Further information on the day and on the drive to stop this deadly disease can be found at the campaigning pages of the foundation’s website, <a href="http://www.lunguk.org/getting-involved.asp">http://www.lunguk.org/getting-involved.asp</a>.

‘Action Mesothelioma Day’ Set in UK for 27 February

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