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Trade unions representing hundreds of thousands of workers in the oil and gas industry in South America, North America, Central America and the Caribbean met in Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago, today and announced the formation of a new oil and gas union solidarity network in the hemisphere. The meeting was held under the auspices of the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), which will coordinate the new network. 
The unions that met represent oil and gas workers in twelve countries - Argentina, Barbados, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad & Tobago, the United States and Uruguay. 
 
They organise workers in all parts of the industry, from exploration and development to refining, distribution and marketing. 
 
As part of their effort toward greater collaboration in the region, the unions elected a six-member steering committee to guide the new network. Errol McLeod, President of the Oilfield Workers Trade Union of Trinidad & Tobago, was elected as the chairman of the steering committee. 
 
The unions recognised that they faced many common challenges, including the privatisation and threats of privatisation of state-owned energy companies; violence by governments and employers against union leaders and activists in several countries, and attempts at union-busting in many others; low commodity prices for oil and gas; over-capacity, reorganisation, and corporate mergers and acquisitions, leading to increased concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands; decreasing employment levels due to corporate downsizing; unsafe and unhealthy working conditions; and common multinational corporate employers attempting to play workers in different countries off against each other. 
 
The unions put forward a joint plan of action to confront these challenges, including the sharing of information on working conditions and collective bargaining in their respective countries; the formation of global union networks at targeted multinational corporations; and joint efforts to assist unions engaged in collective bargaining, disputes, and organising efforts at common multinational corporations. 
 
"The multinational corporations have strengthened their stranglehold over the natural resources and oil and gas markets worldwide, without regard to national borders," said McLeod. "Oil and gas workers have no choice but to unite with each other on a regional and a global basis for the common cause." 
 
"Oil and gas workers are tired of being the victims of globalisation," he said, "and the creation of this network is the beginning of a new, organised resistance."

Americas: Oil And Gas Unions Form Regional Solidarity Network

110,000 chemical workers in Germany's North Rhine area will receive a 3 per cent pay rise from today. 
 
The wage hike was agreed in the early hours of this morning, after tough bargaining between the workers' union, IG BCE, and the chemical employers. Also included in the package is a one-off extra payment of 200 deutschmarks for May 1999. In all, this represents an average income rise of 3.1 per cent. Apprentices' pay is also to be increased. 
 
The new agreement runs until 31 May 2000. Identical deals are now likely throughout the western German chemical industry - altogether, some 590,000 workers in 1,700 enterprises. The country's eastern states have separate bargaining arrangements. 
 
The hard-won deal is "a viable compromise" and "respectable in the context of this year's bargaining climate," commented IG BCE's head of bargaining Werner Bischoff this morning. "Now, structural questions within the chemical industry must be tackled through collective bargaining," Bischoff insisted. "We'll be dealing with this in the course of the next few months." 
 
At the global level, IG BCE is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM).

German Chemicals Pay Rise

Ukrainian nuclear workers' wages have been paid in full for the past three months, and reimbursement of the wage backlog owed to them is about to get under way. 
 
Alexander Jurkin, President of the nuclear workers' union ATU, confirmed this to ICEM UPDATE today. 
 
The back pay owed to Ukrainian nuclear workers is put at over 15 million US dollars. This March, the union threatened an indefinite strike at Chernobyl and Ukraine's four other nuclear power stations unless measures were taken to pay this debt. As a result, Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma ordered the government to settle the dispute and put the country's debt-ridden energy sector back on a sound financial footing. 
 
Jurkin had further talks this Monday with Deputy Prime Minister V. Kurachenko, at which it was agreed that the National Bank would provide the security for new private bank loans to the Ukrainian energy ministry. These funds will be used to pay off the outstanding wage debt. 
 
Jurkin is now in Brussels for the Executive Committee meeting of the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), to which the ATU is affiliated. This morning, his union confirmed that the agreed process is getting under way. A planned protest march on Kiev has therefore been cancelled. 
 
"I told the government exactly where I would be this week, that I would be in meetings with our International, and that the situation must not deteriorate again in the meantime," Jurkin commented this morning. "The government took the point." 
 
The ICEM had organised strong international backing for the Ukrainian nuclear workers' campaign. 
 
"This is an important victory for trade unionism in Ukraine and beyond," ICEM General Secretary Vic Thorpe emphasised. "In many transitional economies, the scandal of unpaid wages has driven workers and their families into deepest poverty. The Ukrainian nuclear workers, through their strong but responsible campaign, have secured a repayment plan for what they are owed. The ICEM will be watching to see that this promise is kept. And we will continue to press the governments and employers of Ukraine, Russia and other countries to ensure that all workers receive - in full and on time - the wages that are rightfully theirs."

Ukrainian Nuclear Wages Paid

Nigerian oilworkers may pull out of the country's oil-producing region unless steps are taken immediately to ensure their safety. 
 
That is the warning from oilworkers' union PENGASSAN, which at the global level is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions. 
 
The union gave Nigeria's brand-new democratically elected government one month to tackle the root causes of violence in the oil-producing areas. Otherwise, oilworkers may stop work and move to other parts of the country. 
 
Communities in the oil-rich Niger Delta say they have borne the negative effects of oil extraction, such as the pollution of fishing grounds, without reaping any of the benefits. Dissent in these areas was severely repressed by Nigeria's military dictatorship. The frustrations that this has produced, added to ethnic tensions, have fuelled violence in which oilworkers are frequently targeted. 
 
PENGASSAN's National Executive Committee was meeting today in Warri, at the heart of the troubled oil-producing region, to decide further action. 
 
The union's President Shina Luwoye emphasised that PENGASSAN will not leave the area for as long as its members continue working there. However, he warned that oilworkers would no longer put up with being the targets of violence. 
 
"Apparently, the safety of our members can no longer be guaranteed, as continued cases of arson, tribal killings, hijacks and hostages have threatened both the safety and the security of jobs, personnel and families," Luwoye said. "In the last three months, for example, operations in Shell, Chevron, Mobil and Agip were most times below 50 per cent of available capacity." 
 
He said Mobil workers had been reportedly locked out and abducted by community protesters this May, and that seven Chevron staff may have been killed in Warri earlier this year. Two Shell staff had "sustained gun wounds from a shoot-out between soldiers and aggrieved youths in the Western division of the company." There had also been "cases of arson against facilities and community assistance projects of Chevron, Elf and [national oil utility] SPDC." 
 
Luwoye said the new government should give high priority to a "legislative and economic framework for the permanent solution of the Niger Delta crisis." It should also implement "feasible economic and social development initiatives and projects for the Niger Delta", including "integrated and sustainable agricultural development." Consideration should be given to establishing a university in Bayelsa state. 
 
Meanwhile, Luwoye insisted, the new government should "immediately set up dialogue and arbitration processes to resolve all conflicts and guarantee immediate restoration of law and order in the Niger Delta." In the longer term, "the importance of true federalism" for Nigeria "can never be overstressed," Luwoye said.

Nigerian Oilworkers Warn New Government : End Violence Or We Leave

Australian affiliate CFMEU strongly opposes the Howard government’s plan to dissolve the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission in favour of a stripped-down ministerial advisory panel. The tripartite NOHSC coordinates campaigns to prevent workplace deaths, injuries and illnesses, and its research is vital in setting national health and safety standards. Many employers have joined CFMEU in lodging protests against the government’s cost-cutting measure that is sure to undermine initiatives for health and safety standards.

CFMEU Opposes Howard Government’s Health/Safety Plans

The South African task force set up between NUM and Harmony Gold Mining Ltd. to curb redundancies established an initial framework with re-skilling and redeployment at its core. The dialogue also hopes to identify growth points and points of decline inside the company, and continuous operations will be discussed within the context of creating new jobs. The task force was set up to avert a strike last month after Harmony’s announcement that it would close six mine shafts affecting 5,000 workers.

NUM and Harmony Gold Make Progress to Curb Redundancies

The ICEM has issued a circular calling on affiliates to again protest directly to Saint-Gobain CEO Jean-Louis Beffa over continued intransigence in bargaining at a US abrasives plant. A majority of some 800 workers in Worcester, Massachusetts, voted for ICEM affiliate United Auto Workers in August 2001 but after 121 bargaining sessions, workers and the UAW are still without a collective agreement. Protest letters can go to Beffa at Saint-Gobain, 18 avenue d’Alsace, 92096 La Défense, Cedex, France.

ICEM Protests Saint-Gobain’s Union-Busting in the US

ICEM sent condolences to Pakistan affiliate WAPDA Labour Union over a gas explosion 25 May that killed 17 miners at the Sunjidi coal mine in Balachistian province. The area is rich in coal reserves, but the mines have notoriously poor safety records. A private company which leases land from the government operates the Sunjidi mine. ICEM is calling on the Pakistani government to put in place more stringent health and safety controls.

Gas Blast in Pakistan Coal Mine Kills 17

ICEM affiliate FNV Bondgenoten of The Netherlands is in dispute with French-based BSN Glasspack at three plants just as Europe’s second largest glassmaker has been bought by Owens-Illinois of the US. The employer is seeking to escape pension obligations, raise the retirement age from 62 to 63, and cut a profit-sharing plant for 200 workers at plants in Leerdam, Maastricht and Schiedam. Workers are steadfast against BSN’s concessionary proposal. The collective agreement expires 1 July.

FNV Bondgenoten in Glass Dispute in NL

Germany needs a long-term, reliable consensus on energy policy, which must "take just as much account of economic and technical needs as of social responsibility and environmental challenges." That is the view of the country's mine, chemical and energy workers, as set out at a press conference yesterday by Hubertus Schmoldt, President of their union the IG BCE. 
<img height="191" alt="Hubertus Schmoldt: "Many jobs are at stake."" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/schmoldt.gif" width="147"/>
Hubertus Schmoldt: "Many jobs are at stake."

All concerned must avoid putting the energy consensus at risk, Schmoldt warned. German and foreign-based firms must be given a reliable basis for investment decisions. 
 
Germany is engaged in a major debate on its future energy options - not least due to the rise of the environmentalist Green party, which is now the Social Democrats' junior partner in the federal coalition government. 
 
In particular, the greening of German energy policy has placed a question mark over the future of nuclear power. 
 
An energy consensus could succeed only "if the phasing out of nuclear energy is implemented as a longer-term change," Schmoldt insisted. Decisions on nuclear must also be placed in a broader context, he said. "IG BCE supports a comprehensive energy policy whose central component is the well-tried principle of an energy mix. Native energy sources, particularly hard coal and lignite, have a full part to play in this, both now and beyond the year 2005." 
 
Plans for environmentalist energy taxes are one complicating factor in the current German discussion. Originally, exemptions had been proposed for energy-intensive industries. But the waiver plan got the thumbs-down from the EU, and German manufacturing industry could now face a uniform tax rate of 20 per cent on its energy bills. 
 
IG BCE still thinks that complete exemption for industry would be the "best solution," Schmoldt said. However, the union could view an energy tax positively provided that the rate for manufacturing industry were 15 percent or less, the tax burden remained constant in absolute terms and commitments to reduce energy use were rewarded with tax incentives. 
 
"Energy taxes must not increase industry's overall tax bill," Schmoldt said. "Moreover, there must be a binding commitment that the already announced second and third phases of the ecological taxation reforms will be introduced only within the context of a common solution at the European level. It would be damaging for Germany to go it alone, and we would resolutely resist this. Many jobs are at stake, as are the credibility and calculability of policy-making." 
 
At the global level, IG BCE is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), of which Hubertus Schmoldt is Vice-President.

Real Energy Consensus Needed, IGBCE Says

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