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The ICEM has written to French-based energy concern Total asking the company to rethink its position concerning investment in Burma. As one of the few remaining large foreign investors in Burma, Total&rsquo;s business enterprises prop the country&rsquo;s dictatorial junta behind a constant flow of foreign currency. Burma is a country that spends over 40% of its national budget on military expenditures, while 0.4% of GDP is spent on health and education. The letter anticipates an upcoming high profile NGO campaign against Total because of its links with Burma.

Total Must Disinvest from Burma’s Military Junta

The ICEM's North American Regional Coordinating Committee on 17 February pledged its support to the USWA in these talks. The ICEM will urge the company to negotiate a new contract consistent with the standards already set with other tyre makers, and will take global action to support the USWA in win a fair and just labour agreement. The ICEM NA committee also took action urging German rubber company Continental to back down from its concessionary agenda in mid-term reopening contract talks with the USWA. The ICEM is calling on Continental to also face its contractual obligations on pay and benefits over the company's plant closing of a Mayfield, Kentucky, tyre facility.

North American ICEM Region Takes Action Over Tyre Stalemates

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

UPM Kymmene in Canada has heightened the discord in a five-week strike at a kraft pulp mill and coated papers mill in Miramichi, New Brunswick. The Finnish company sought and won a court order in a New Brunswick court to limit the number of picketers at the mill&rsquo;s five gates. The 700 members of Communications, Energy and Paperworkers (CEP) Local 689 are holding strong in this threat to their livelihoods with strike pay from the national CEP, plus a supplement derived from contributions from other paper-sector members of the CEP. The strike was caused when UPM Kymmene refused to table the paper industry&rsquo;s pattern agreement for eastern Canada. No bargaining has been held since the 16 December strike began.

UPM Kymmene Intensifying Paper Strike in Canada

The Transport and General Workers&rsquo; Union of UK is polling 1,200 members at two Michelin plants for industrial action. Michelin&rsquo;s wage offer in December of either 3% or GBP 650 is inadequate, and separate polling of the two workforces will begin this week. The two sites are Stoke in the Midlands with 400 T&amp;G members and Ballymena in Northern Ireland employing 800.

Transport and General in UK Ready for Industrial Action at Michelin

German affiliate IGBCE proved instrumental in getting a tyre factory in Mexico reopened. The Continental AG plant in the western Mexican state of Jalisco was closed in 2001, idling 1,400. Working with several NGOs and the United Steelworkers of America (USWA), IGBCE convinced Continental to sell the plant to a group of Mexican investors and workers as a cooperative. The tyre plant, now called Western Tire Corp./El Salto Tire Factory, will employ between 600 and 700 workers.

Continental Tyre Plant in Mexico gets New Life Thanks to IGBCE

The Australian Federal Court today ordered mining and materials multinational BHP to cease offering and entering into individual contracts with members of its Pilbara workforce. 
 
The decision is a stunning victory for the Australian unions and for collective bargaining, with the court upholding all three grounds in the unions' case. 
 
The unions submitted that there was a &quot;serious arguable case&quot; that BHP had breached the law through its industrial bribery in the Pilbara by: 
 
- Prejudicing employees because of their union membership 
 
- Inducing employees to leave their union 
 
- Breaching a term of the Contract of Employment which provided that BHP should honour collective bargaining and not enter into individual contracts. 
 
The court's decision is the biggest victory for the Australian trade union movement since the waterfront dispute of 1998. 
 
&quot;BHP should immediately abandon its disastrous deunionisation campaign and respect the right of Australian workers to bargain collectively through their unions,&quot; commented Australian mining and allied workers' union the CFMEU today. 
 
At the global level, the CFMEU is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), which has been backing the campaign for labour rights at BHP.

BHP Must Halt Individual Job Contracts in Australia

A new website launched today highlights anti-union practices by ceramics, materials and construction multinational Imerys. 
 
American union the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers (PACE) and the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), jointly announced the start-up of the website on French-headquartered Imerys. PACE is an ICEM affiliate. 
 
&quot;The website allows Imerys workers and their unions throughout the world to communicate, share information and learn about the 'union-busting' practices of Imerys in the US,&quot; said PACE President Boyd Young. 
 
Imerys has been conducting a hostile campaign against union members and supporters at its plants in Georgia and Alabama. In Sylacauga, Alabama, Imerys management hired a professional &quot;union-buster', held mandatory anti-union meetings, and showed a film which implied that US unions are controlled by organised crime and that they cause plants to be closed. Imerys is also using a &quot;secret&quot; manual, uncovered by PACE, which instructs supervisors on how to conduct the anti-union campaign. 
 
PACE has filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board alleging that Imerys management harassed, threatened and spied on union supporters. Excerpts from the &quot;secret&quot; manual, a summary of legal charges, and an interactive message board are on the website. 
 
Fred Higgs, ICEM General Secretary, stated: &quot;Imerys so far has refused to stop its anti-union practices, and we will assist US workers who are battling for union representation in whatever way we can.&quot; 
 
The ICEM held a press conference on January 20 in Brussels, together with the Belgian General Labour Federation (FGTB/ABVV) and ICEM Belgian affiliate the Centrale Generale/Algemene Centrale, calling upon the Frere family to intervene. The Frere family controls 23 percent of Imerys shares through one of its many holding companies. The ICEM set up meetings with French and British union affiliates, who also represent workers at Imerys plants, and have pledged support for the campaign.

Imerys Campaign: Unions Launch Global Website

<img height="39" width="100" src="" alt="" />
ICEM-affiliated Sintravidricol of Colombia won a much-heralded victory in December 2007, achieving recognition and a collective agreement at three metal-moulding plants owned by US-based multinational Ross International. The victory followed a 23-day strike, and a three-year struggle that garnered international support through the ICEM. 
 
The agreement made all 240 workers at the three plants full-time employees, whereas the majority were previously on fixed-term contracts. 
 
That four-year agreement is now seven months from expiration, and Sintravidricol&rsquo;s Section Presidents for La Estrella and Sabaneta, Brahyan Sanchez Henao and Heriberto Giraldo Hernandez, are calling for the company to come to the table and discuss a new agreement for all employees of the group.
The union seeks improvements on paid leave for union activity, and greater stability and formalisation of employment to stop the increasing use of outsourcing at the plants. Sintravidricol formally submitted their list of demands on 5 April to the company. 
<img height="174" width="232" src="" alt="" />
Outsourced employees at two of the three worksites, Andes International Tooling Limited and Andes Cast Metals Foundry Limited, were successfully&nbsp;brought into Sintravidricol in 2007&nbsp;through a campaign supported by the ICEM and the United Steelworkers (USW) and its Flint/Glass Section, after those plants were opened in 2004. Workers at Moldes Medellin Ltd. had organised with Sintravidricol previously. 
 
During the bitter dispute of 2007 which culminated in the first agreement, the company signed two parallel agreements with non-unionised staff. A central goal of this negotiating round will be to scrap those divisive agreements and reach a settlement to cover all staff. Sintravidricol bargaining representatives will be seeking improved guarantees on development of mature industrial relations at the three plants. 
 
Messages of support can be sent to the union <a href="mailto:sintravidsab@unet.net.co; sintravidestrella@yahoo.com">here</a>. Messages to the employer can be sent <a href="mailto:daniel.posada@moldesmedellin.com.co; rubilem@yahoo.com">here</a>.

Colombian Glass Workers Seek to Build on Gains Made in 2007

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