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Shell Employees Union of Batangas, an independent and fearless rank-and-file trade union at Shell in the Philippines, threatened to strike a refinery in Batangas Province over the company&rsquo;s proposal to place a moratorium on wage increases. In mid-September, the Philippines labour secretary took jurisdiction of the dispute, a move objected to by the 100-member union. Shell has placed the future of the 100,000 b/d refinery in jeopardy and the refinery&rsquo;s general manager said at the weekend that it suffers from insignificant investment by the super-major. Shell&rsquo;s Tabangao refinery is one of only two refineries in the Philippines.

Philippines Union Threatens to Take On Shell Over Wages

Dutch citizens are expressing themselves in mass dissent at the center-right coalition government&rsquo;s austerity measures that targets valued social programs. Led by trade unions such as ICEM affiliate FNV Bondgenoten, some 300,000&mdash;better than three times the expected number&mdash;protested in Amsterdam 2 October. A full spread on the protests in NL will be featured in the upcoming issue of the ICEM print magazine Global-Info.

300,000 Dutch Citizens Turn Out to Say &#039;No&#039; to Social Cuts

Nigerian affiliates NUPENG and PENGASSAN launched a two-day warning strike 7-8 October against Royal Dutch Shell in Nigeria. The strike was over Shell&rsquo;s planned 2,000-worker job cuts, a restructuring the unions feel is baseless. The two-day strike was meant as a precursor for further industrial action aimed at curtailing production if the Anglo-Dutch firm does not change its position.

Nigerian Affiliates Launch Warning Strikes against Shell

Nigerian Labour Congress President Adams Oshiomhole was arrested 9 October at gunpoint by the country&rsquo;s secret police. The arrest came on the eve of today&rsquo;s mass general strike called by the NLC that ICEM affiliates NUPENG and PENGASSAN are supporting. The strike is over the government&rsquo;s 15% October petrol price hike. The NLC has become the leader of mass dissent among Nigeria&rsquo;s population over government&rsquo;s failed social and petroleum policies. In September, a federal court in Abuja ruled that the position of NLC president does not exist under law and the labour federation has no power to call a strike.

Nigerian Secret Police Arrest NLC President

The ICEM&rsquo;s North American Women&rsquo;s Committee was prominent in Ottawa, Canada, at a rally and march aimed at forcing the government to maintain Canada&rsquo;s public, non-profit health care system. The ICEM women, meeting in Ottawa, were asked to deliver a live webcam message on the issue.

North American Women’s Committee at Canadian Health Care Rally

Gold-mining members of ICEM affiliate Turkiye Maden-Is marched and rallied in Bergama, Turkey, 14 September to convince the government to re-open Newmont Mining Corp.&rsquo;s mine there. An administrative court in Izmir ordered the mine shut on 19 August due to overstated environment concerns. The closure cost the jobs of 169 Maden-Is members, plus 300 contract workers.

Mining Affiliate in Turkey Seeks to Reopen Closed Newmont Mine

ICEM Netherlands affiliate FNV Bondgenoten has temporarily suspended talks with the Social Economic Council over policies of the right-wing government. Those include deterioration of social benefits for the unemployed and those sick, and a proposed block on workers seeking to take early retirement. On 20 September, a mass union rally in Rotterdam entitled &ldquo;This Government Policy is a Bridge Too Far&rdquo; will occur spanning the Erasmusbridge and Willemsbridge into the center of Coolsingel. And then on 2 October at 12:00 noon, a mass strike expected to draw hundreds of thousands of citizens is set for Amsterdam at Museumplein prior to Parliament&rsquo;s debate over taxes.

Unions in Netherlands Gear Up to Protect Social System

As locked-out American employees of global tyremaker Continental rounded off their solidarity tour of Europe today, &quot;Conti&quot; workers in Scotland were balloting on possible strike action. 
 
The US delegation represented some 1,450 strikers at the General Tire plant in Charlotte, North Carolina. 
 
Earlier this week they held talks with unions in Scotland, where Continental's Newbridge plant could soon be hit by a strike over imposed workforce cuts and longer work times. 
 
Continental's business strategy declaredly includes &quot;relocation of production to low-cost countries&quot;. 
 
On the company's own figures, its production of car tyres in &quot;low-cost countries&quot; has soared, by volume, from 0 percent in 1990 to about 35 percent today. So Continental is well on course to its target of making 40 percent of its car tyres in &quot;low-cost countries&quot;. 
 
This is creating pressure on pay and jobs at various older-established Continental plants, and serious prospects of closures. In some of the European countries visited by the US delegation, unions said the local Continental management had warned them not to meet the American strikers - for fear of compromising their own plants' chances of survival. 
 
The US visitors quickly established a rapport and solidarity with their Scottish colleagues, John McAllister says. He is the Branch Secretary for the GMB union at Continental's Scottish plant. 
 
&quot;The American Continental workers' situation is very similar to ours,&quot; McAllister told ICEM UPDATE. &quot;The company obviously wants low-cost operations everywhere except in its home country, Germany.&quot; 
 
Management at Newbridge is trying to impose new shift patterns that would mean fewer workers and longer hours, McAllister says. The company plans to cut 135 jobs there by April, and a further 60 over the rest of this year. 
 
McAllister saw Newbridge management today with proposals to salvage the situation. &quot;But how do I know that if I give something now, they won't be back for more? We recognise the company's need for profits and productivity. But here at Newbridge, we need some hope for the future. We can't go on working 42-hour weeks.&quot; 
 
Talks would be continuing, McAllister said. &quot;Obviously, we are hoping that a solution can still be found that will avert strike action.&quot; 
 
 
 
AMERICAN CONTI DISPUTE ENTERS SIXTH MONTH 
 
Meanwhile, the workers at the Continental's Charlotte plant in the USA have been on strike since last September, and have been effectively locked out since November, when the company &quot;permanently replaced&quot; them with strikebreakers. 
 
The core issue in the American dispute is that the company is refusing to pay the going rate among leading employers of US tyre workers, even though the plant is now profitable. 
 
After Continental bought General Tire, the workers agreed to &quot;give back&quot; US$90 million in wages and benefit cuts, in order to get the plant back to financial health. These give-backs amounted to $30,000 per worker. The clear understanding was that the workers would be properly compensated when the plant returned to profitability. In the meantime, General Tire is showing a healthy profit, but there is no sign that the workers are about to be paid their due. 
 
Due to a legal loophole, American employers can fire workers during a dispute, as long as the sackings are termed &quot;permanent replacement&quot;. This curious right is not absolute, however. If the company can be shown to have engaged in &quot;unfair labour practices&quot;, it could be obliged to take the strikers back and to foot a big bill for wage backlogs and compensation. 
 
The Charlotte workers are confident they can prove that General Tire bargained in &quot;bad faith&quot; - in other words, that it was not trying to reach a settlement. This would constitute an &quot;unfair labour practice&quot;, as would the company's withholding of information needed for collective bargaining. The only question is how long the legal proceedings will take. US labour law cases tend to be a slow business. 
 
The Americans' tour of Europe has been coordinated by the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), whose membership includes unions organising in Continental's operations worldwide. Affiliated to the ICEM is the US tyreworkers' union, the USWA, as well as the various unions visited during the European tour. 
 
 
CONTI SACKS TURKS FOR UNIONISING 
 
This afternoon, the Americans flew back home from their final stop - Turkey. There, they visited the city of Bursa, about 200km from Istanbul. Continental's ContiTech division has a plant in Bursa, making plastic parts for the car industry. 
 
Last November, workers at the ContiTech plant decided to organise a branch of the Turkey's Lastik-Is union. 47 of the 79 Bursa workers signed up for union membership. As soon as it heard the news, the ContiTech management in Bursa sacked 45 workers. All 45 were among the 47 who had opted to join the union. 
 
The Americans also had discussions with Lastik-Is General Secretary Halil Altunay at the union's headquarters in Istanbul yesterday. Comments by Altunay and the USWA's John Sellers were widely reported by the Turkish press and television. 
 
Sellers is Executive Vice President of the USWA and head of the union's Rubber/Plastics Conference. He accompanied the US Continental strikers' representatives throughout the European tour, and his remarks to the Turkish press summarised the American workers' case. 
 
Halil Altunay stressed the global aspects of the encounter between Turkish and American Conti workers. &quot;This is a good example of international workers' solidarity, as put into practice by our International, the ICEM,&quot; he told the Turkish media. &quot;It comes at a time when workers everywhere are having to face the consequences of the globalisation of capital. Instead of bargaining properly, Continental is trying to get rid of the union in a number of countries.&quot; 
 
 
WHISTLESTOP TOUR 
 
Over the past week and a half, the Americans also visited Slovakia, the Czech Republic, France and Belgium. In each country, they met with the unions and their leaders, explained their current dispute and received solidarity and support. The delegation also held discussions with the ICEM at its headquarters in Brussels. 
 
Immediately before the tour, USWA and ICEM officers had met in Germany - where Continental is headquartered - with ICEM German affiliate the IG BCE, worker representatives from the Continental Supervisory Board and officials of Continental's German Works Council (see ICEM UPDATE 3/1999).

Locked-Out American Strikers Tour Europe

Oil multinational Statoil has told America's Crown Central Petroleum that its contract to refine Statoil crude will not be renewed until normal relationships are established with the trade union at Crown's refinery in Pasadena, Texas. 
 
Statoil has also reportedly informed Crown that no further expansion of business cooperation will be discussed until the US refiner sorts out its disastrous labour relations. 
 
Behind this New Year boost for global labour rights is the Norwegian oil and petrochemical workers' union NOPEF. In solidarity with US oilworkers' union the OCAW, NOPEF pressed Norwegian-based Statoil to help end Crown Central's union-busting in Pasadena. 
<img height="247" src="" width="326" alt="" />
 
 
Crown has kept unionised workers locked out of its Pasadena refinery since February 1996. It launched the lock-out after it had failed to force OCAW members into a strike. The company used trumped-up charges of sabotage to justify the lock-out in its attempt to destroy the union at its Pasadena refinery. 
 
Last August, Statoil signed a two-year agreement for Crown to refine Statoil's crude oil into finished products for the North American market. 
 
The new Statoil threat to ditch Crown is &quot;a highly unusual action by a multinational oil company and further isolates Crown as a corporate outlaw, bully and union-buster on the world scene,&quot; said OCAW President Robert Wages. &quot;This should send a strong message to other oil companies not to deal with Crown, and we applaud NOPEF for communicating our concerns to Statoil's management and board.&quot; 
 
The news of Statoil's warning to Crown was released by the OCAW, which had been informed by NOPEF. 
 
After a first-hand investigation of Crown's union-busting last September, NOPEF President Lars Myhre declared that &quot;Statoil products should not be tainted by its association with Crown.&quot; 
 
&quot;Statoil supplies the American refinery with 35,000 barrels of oil a day,&quot; Myhre wrote in NOPEF's magazine last October. &quot;I have been in touch with Statoil and I am going to raise the Crown case with the company again... Statoil must either break off the contract with Crown or use its influence to change the company's ideas for the better, so that the dispute can be resolved decently. Things cannot go on as they are now.&quot; 
 
Myhre chairs the energy workers' section of the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), to which both NOPEF and the OCAW are affiliated. 
 
Last July, Statoil and the ICEM signed a pioneering global agreement on industrial relations (see ICEM UPDATE 66/1998). Crown Central falls outside the scope of that accord, which applies to Statoil's own operations worldwide. However, the new pressure on Crown will certainly be seen as further proof of Statoil's commitment to union rights worldwide, as set out in the agreement. 
 
In addition to union-busting, Crown stands accused of discriminating against women and African-Americans and of environmental racism for polluting low-income and largely Latino neighbourhoods which surround its Pasadena refinery. 
 
In August, Crown received a 1.1 million US dollar (0.93 million euro) fine from the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission. This was the largest air pollution fine in Texas history. 
 
Meanwhile, an OCAW-backed boycott of Crown's US service stations and convenience stores has spread in recent months. 
 
Further proof of the company's isolation is a decision by the American Trading and Production Company, Inc. (Atapco) - Crown's largest stockholder - to relinquish its ownership of Crown stock. Atapco consists of the inherited wealth of Louis and Jacob Blaustein, the founders of Amoco. It filed papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission to separate its holdings into three separate companies and to give its Crown stock to the family of Crown CEO Henry Rosenberg Jr, 
which is one of three major branches of the extended Blaustein family, in exchange for the remainder of the Rosenberg family's Atapco holdings. 
 
&quot;Even Crown's largest shareholder has had enough of Henry Rosenberg and is trying to get out of the line of fire,&quot; said Wages. 
 
Crown stock has been rocked in recent months, and at times it has dropped to below 7 US dollars (5.92 euro) per share, the lowest in its history. Credit rating agency Moody's has given Crown a negative rating. 
 
Recently, Crown shareholders filed a lawsuit against Crown board members and management for malfeasance and presiding over an 80 percent drop in Crown stock during a decade of unprecedented increases in the US stock market and in the stock of other independent US oil companies. The lawsuit alleges that Crown's management and board have rewarded Henry Rosenberg and his two sons, while ignoring shareholder value.

Statoil To Ditch Crown Central?

Further action on Rio Tinto, the world's biggest mining company, was mapped out by international trade unionists and parliamentarians meeting in London today. 
The strategy talks were called by the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). The unions are part of a broad international alliance of organisations campaigning for big improvements in Rio Tinto's environmental performance and in its respect for human rights, including trade union rights and the rights of indigenous peoples. 
 
As the London meeting got underway, a tense stand-off continued at Rio Tinto's Gordonstone mine in Australia, where the ICEM-affiliated miners' union CFMEU is pressing for the reinstatement of miners illegally sacked by the previous owner of the site. 
 
Trade unionists and British and European parliamentarians at the London talks declared their solidarity with the CFMEU and with the Gordonstone miners, and called upon Rio Tinto to rehire the miners without further delay. 
 
Meanwhile, Labor Party members of both chambers of the Australian federal parliament today issued a statement backing the CFMEU and the miners in their current disputes with Rio Tinto at Gordonstone and at other Australian mines. The Labor legislators said they would join a rally at Gordonstone next week. 
 
Rio Tinto, which recently bought Gordonstone from Arco, has been attempting to restart the mine with a group of hand-picked employees on a non-union contract. 
 
This has sparked daily confrontations over the past week on the Gordonstone picket line, which has been in place for 17 months following Arco's sacking of the miners. 
 
More than 50 pickets were arrested at Gordonstone today, including a member of the Queensland state parliament, after they prevented a bus from leaving the mine. Inside the bus were some of the hand-picked workers who have been preparing the mine for production. 
 
The Australian Federal Court today began hearing a CFMEU application to urgently bring forward the union's case to have the sacked miners rehired. 
 
The meeting in London today concentrated particularly on strategies regarding Rio Tinto's two Annual General Meetings this May. The dual-listed company holds yearly shareholder assemblies in both London and Melbourne. 
 
ICEM-affiliated British unions the AEEU, MSF and BACM organise within the UK operations of Rio Tinto, which is headquartered in London. 
 
Taking part in the London talks today were, among others: 
 
Richard Howitt, Labour Member of the European Parliament and the prime mover behind European legislators' call for a binding EU code of conduct for European enterprises operating in developing countries; British legislator Michael Clapham, who is prominent in the House of Commons all-party Occupational Health and Safety Group and who last year tabled highly critical parliamentary motions about Rio Tinto; Fred Higgs, ICEM Vice-President and National Officer of British ICEM affiliate the TGWU; John Maitland, ICEM Vice-President and National Secretary of the CFMEU; James Motlatsi, ICEM Vice-President and President of South Africa's ICEM-affiliated National Union of Miners; Bob Shannon, National Officer of ICEM British affiliate the AEEU; Simon Steyne from the International Department of the TUC, Britain's national union confederation; ICEM General Secretary Vic Thorpe and ICEM Mines Officer Damien Roland.

Rio Tinto Campaign: World&#039;s Unions In Strategy Talks

Archive

Philippines Union Threatens to Take On Shell Over Wages

300,000 Dutch Citizens Turn Out to Say 'No' to Social Cuts

Nigerian Affiliates Launch Warning Strikes against Shell

Nigerian Secret Police Arrest NLC President

North American Women’s Committee at Canadian Health Care Rally

Mining Affiliate in Turkey Seeks to Reopen Closed Newmont Mine

Unions in Netherlands Gear Up to Protect Social System

Locked-Out American Strikers Tour Europe

Statoil To Ditch Crown Central?

Rio Tinto Campaign: World's Unions In Strategy Talks

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