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The Building and Wood Workers&rsquo; International (BWI) held its 2nd World Congress at the Grand Palais in Lille, France, last week, under the theme &ldquo;Global Solidarity for a Sustainable Future.&rdquo; The vision of the Congress read, &ldquo;A world with strong independent and democratic trade unions in the building and timber trades, where all workers have equitable access to stable jobs, fair wages and safe and healthy working and living conditions.&quot; 
 
Just fewer than 700 delegates, representing construction, and wood and forestry workers throughout the world, debated the most important issues in these sectors, as well as adopting the Global Union Federation&rsquo;s (GUF) strategy for the next four years. The plan sets out how to improve working and living conditions in the building and wood sectors and promote sustainable industrial development. 

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Outgoing BWI General Secretary Anita Normark
A host of meetings were held around the Congress, including the BWI International Women&rsquo;s Conference on 5 December, a Global Youth Conference and International Women&rsquo;s Committee on 6 December, regional committee meetings on 7 December, BWI&rsquo;s World Board and World Council on 8 December, with the main Congress taking place on 9-10 December. 
 
The Congress took up the General Secretary&rsquo;s report which prioritized the following areas of work: global migration, climate change, Chinese multinationals, the need for vocational training for affiliates worldwide, and the need to pursue the GUF&rsquo;s membership growth. 
 
The BWI said farewell to outgoing General Secretary Anita Normark. with BWI President Klaus Wieseh&uuml;gel, who was re-elected to another term, stating she would be badly missed by all. &quot;She has never forgotten the needs of trade union members and affiliates,&rdquo; said Wieseh&uuml;ge. 
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Newly elected General Secretary Ambet Yuson 
Newly elected General Secretary Ambet Yuson also paid tribute to Normark: &ldquo;Anita, you have been a great leader for this organization. To be your successor will not be easy.&rdquo; The new general secretary laid out his vision to create &quot;One International, One Movement and One Vision working together.&rdquo; 
 
Ambet, of the Philippines, worked for 20 years in his country&rsquo;s pro-democracy movement, which brought down the dictator Marcos. He has served as BWI&rsquo;s regional representative for the Asia-Pacific Region from mid -2007 to the present, and also worked for over 12 years with BWI affiliates as project coordinator and then globally as education secretary.

BWI Says Fond Farewell to Anita Normark; Elects Ambet Yuson New GS

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The coal-mining dispute in Australia between the Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union (CFMEU) and Peabody Energy at the North Goonyella mine intensified when the US-based company used the country&rsquo;s new Fair Work law to lock 280 miners from their jobs in central Queensland. Just as CFMEU was to ratchet up industrial actions in protest to a radical Peabody overhaul to an enterprise labour agreement, the company imposed a 10-day, unpaid lockout on 9 December. 
 
The very next day, some 20 CFMEU miners from Mackay, Queensland, flew to Brisbane where they were joined by 100 others in a protest at Peabody&rsquo;s Australian offices. The Brisbane protest happened while police and private security 800 kilometres away in Mackay erected barricades at mine gates, expecting the protest there. 
 
The dispute started in early November (see InBrief No. 144 article <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/3507-CFMEU-Begins-Job-Actions-at-Peabody-Coal-in-Australia">here</a>) when strike actions began following Peabody&rsquo;s intransigence over a CFMEU proposal to again extend the enterprise agreement, while giving a long overdue pay raise. 

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Miners at North Goonyella have been without a pay increase since May 2008. The labour agreement expired in March 2008 and was extended for one year. The two sides then began bargaining toward a new agreement but seven months later Peabody&rsquo;s steep concessionary demands brought forth a formal dispute. 
 
The mining company is seeking a radically changed work shift structure, one that would negatively impact pay grids. CFMEU members are concerned about fatigue and work safety, and also have grievances over living conditions in on-site housing. 
 
A Peabody spokeswoman termed the lockout an employer protective action under the Labour government&rsquo;s Fair Work law, which took effect 1 July 2009. It is one of the first defensive lockouts used by bosses under the Labour government&rsquo;s new law. 
 
At last Thursday&rsquo;s manifestation in Brisbane, CFMEU District Vice President Glenn Power said, &ldquo;We are here to protest and send a clear message to Peabody that their corporate greed and bullish attitude around the negotiating table needs to be reconsidered.&rdquo; 
 
The two sides were to meet today, 16 December, for further talks. Peabody mines coking coal from the underground mine at North Goonyella that is exported from Dalrymple Bay, Queensland, and used in steel-making. The mine and the adjacent open-cast Eaglefield mine produce three million short tons of coal per annum. Peabody bought the mines from Germany-based RAG AG in 2003.

Peabody Locks Out CFMEU Coal Miners in Australia

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The ICEM has participated at events each day of the Conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and will continue to do so. 
 
Find below a brief report from each day. 
 
6 December: COP15 is the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. As many as 400 trade union representatives from around the world will be here in Copenhagen to make the case for working people. COP15 is considered to be a particularly important Conference of the Parties, since the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, and COP15 is supposed to be the Conference at which a successor to the Kyoto Protocol is agreed upon, or at least substantially mapped out. There is a sense of urgency since the most recent assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is bleak. The world must act quickly. 

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The earth is a high-tech animated, illuminated model of the earth at the USA pavillion that can display multiple climate variables
The ICEM says that we need a fair, ambitious and binding agreement on greenhouse gas emissions to deal with the problem of climate change. However, an agreement that fails to include a strategy for job creation, job protection, and a Just Transition plan, will fail to create a sustainable future. It cannot be jobs versus the environment. It must be both, or it will ultimately be neither. 
 
7 December: COP-15 officially opened today, with the expected chaos at the registration tables as tens of thousands of official negotiators, observers, and press tried to obtain the badges that would allow them to pass through the tight security. 
 
At the first plenary session on &quot;Longterm Cooperative Action&quot;, there were no surprises as both rich, developed nations and poorer, developing nations staked out their initial positions. 
 
One thing is certain: when the bill for environmental collapse comes due, it is ordinary people - workers, their families, and the communities that depend on them - that will pay the price. Another path is possible, a path that seeks prosperity and sustainability through the transformation of existing jobs and the creation of a greener economy. Do we have the wisdom to choose it? 
 
8 December: The big news of today was a &quot;leaked&quot; draft final agreement that allegedly was produced by the Danish Prime Minister's office in consultation with other countries. Presumably, it is meant to be a fall-back agreement should the two weeks of COP15 fail to reach a substantive agreement. As such, it proposes no firm greenhouse gas emissions targets, no defined levels of financial assistance for developing countries, and is stripped of all references to social impacts including sustainable jobs or Just Transition. Most alarmingly, it raises the possibility that years of work leading up to this conference may be by-passed in the last minute, simply to have something signed at the end. Obviously this is unacceptable. As this story evolved, it emerged that there are several alternate texts being prepared or circulated outside of the &quot;official&quot; process. 

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Michael Cutajar,&nbsp;the chair of the &quot;Ad-Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action&quot;
9 December:&nbsp;a Wednesday, 9 December, meeting.&nbsp;The&nbsp; Ad-hoc Working Group on Longterm Cooperative Action released a new version of its &quot;Shared Vision&quot; paper, and a key demand of labour - a paragraph on Just Transition - is retained, so far. In the plenary meetings, much of the discussion was about financing, with several proposals to fold funding for climate mitigation and adaptation into overall aid funds, and allow it to be managed by &quot;international financial institutions&quot; such as the World Bank. Costa Rica and Tuvalu proposed fairly strong emissions reduction targets for both developed, and developing countries. This has at least temporarily split the G77 group of countries, as a number of members of that group were opposed to the proposal. 
 
10 December: 10&nbsp;December was a day of many closed-door meetings and rumours. On labour's key paragraph (in the &quot;Shared Vision&quot; document of the working group on Longterm Cooperative Action) covering decent work and Just Transition, there was support from Argentina, the EU, and the US, but the paragraph is still vulnerable to hostile amendments or outright deletion. This is the wording so far:
&nbsp; 
&quot;Realizing that harmonizing sustainable development while addressing climate change and demands for a more equitable utilization of the global atmospheric resource necessitate a paradigm shift that adjusts global economic growth patterns towards a [low-emission] [high-growth] sustainable climate-resilient development, based on innovative technologies and more sustainable production and consumption, while ensuring a just transition of the workforce which creates decent work and quality jobs, and seeking the active participation of all stakeholders be they governmental, including subnational and local government, private business or civil society, including the youth, and addressing the need for gender equity.&quot; 

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The &quot;Fossil of the Day&quot; is awarded by environmental groups to the country or countries that have been the worst behaved that day in their opinion
11 December: At today's plenary meeting of the Adhoc Working Group on Longterm Cooperative Action, &quot;labour's paragraph&quot; (discussed in yesterday's dispatch) survived - at least in concept - and will likely be retained in the final report of the &quot;Shared Vision&quot;! As several amendments were proposed labour must be cautious in our celebration until a final version of the paragraph emerges. However, this is an important milestone, and testimony to the effectiveness of many months of preparatory work and a week of lobbying here at COP15. We must now get to work to make sure the final version contains acceptable wording, and that politicians talk about it when the Copenhagen outcomes are announced. 
 
In other fora, debate continued between developed and developing countries over targets and financing. 
ITUC Copenhagen Reports <a href="http://climate.ituc-csi.org/2009-ituc-statement-on-climate.html?lang=fr">here</a>.

ICEM: First Week Diary and Commentary at Copenhagen

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With pressures mounting on Brazilian-based Vale to return to bargaining in the Canadian nickel strike now entering its sixth month, the company and United Steelworkers (USW) are fighting battles in the courtroom and before the public in what has become a pitched, bitter dispute between working-class Canadians and a rich, profitable multinational. 
 
If the public war of words over who first must amend its position so bargaining can resume is not enough, the two sides are now belligerent combatants in face-to-face side dramas, including changes to a picket line protocol agreement and grievances and unfair work practices before the Ontario Labour Relations Board. The latter is over Vale&rsquo;s intent to make non-striking USW members perform struck work. 
 
Canadian management of Vale has also deployed divide-and-conquer tactics by trying to drive a wedge between striking steelworkers, as well as giving the false public perception that its social rollback proposals to USW branch unions are a necessary ingredient to sustainable mining in Canada. 

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Some 3,250 miners and metalworkers went on strike at Vale&rsquo;s nickel mining, smelting, and processing operations in Sudbury and Port Colborne, Ontario, on 13 July 2009, while another 350 copper and nickel miners from Goose Bay and Voiseys Bay, Labrador, joined the strike on 1 August. Vale, which bought Canada-based Inco&rsquo;s assets late in 2006, is seeking to strip away a production bonus from Canadian steelworkers, impose a two-tiered pension plan, and gain contract language to allow it greater flexibility on using sub-contractors, which ultimately jeopardizes job security and the sustainable future of workers themselves. 
 
For ten weeks now, Vale has made threatening moves that it would re-start production at its mines and processing facilities in northern Ontario near Sudbury, something never before done in a labour dispute at Sudbury. The company most recently posted notices that it will re-start the massive Copper Cliff smelter using a selected contractor. 
 
The union has filed an unfair labour practice with the Ontario labour board because Vale insists on using USW Local 2020 members &ndash; clerical, admin, and technical workers &ndash; to perform mining and processing work. Local 2020 itself has filed serious safety grievances against Vale for assigning its members work they are not trained for. 
 
A picket-line protocol agreement signed on 29 July has been a subject of contention, primarily due to Vale&rsquo;s desire to amend it. The company wants to include in the protocol the transfer of buses carrying replacement workers across strike lines. This courtroom conflict also involves how long USW Local 6500 strikers can delay vehicles upon entry to company property, as well as lesser issues such as Vale&rsquo;s failure to supply strikers&rsquo; firewood, as stipulated in the original agreement. 

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Those and other picket-line issues are before an Ontario Superior Court justice, who is expected to rule on revised picket-line conduct before the end of December. 
 
Vale has also made an overture to the 200 USW Local 6200 members in Port Colborne, 400 kilometres south of Sudbury, to resume negotiations without Local 6500. This move is a blatant effort to divide the two workforces. Locals 6500 and 6200 share the same labour agreement. Local 6200 President Wayne Rae says separating the two workforces will never happen. 
 
And last week, Vale&rsquo;s Canadian managers circumvented official union structures by sending a letter directly to all workers on strike. The letter urged workers to call on their unions to return to bargaining and accept Vale&rsquo;s concessions because the company intends &ldquo;moving ahead on business,&rdquo; meaning a return to production using replacement workers and contractors. 
 
The USW responded in an 11 December press release, stating that it has already put forth a good-faith invitation to Vale to return to talks under no pre-conditions. &quot;We are publicly reiterating our position today because Vale's letter attempts to misrepresent our willingness to resume meaningful discussions,&quot; read the statement. 

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&quot;We are ready and willing to get back to the bargaining today, unconditionally. Given the impact this dispute is having on our working families and our community as a whole, it is incumbent on the union and the company to drop all preconditions and start talking to each other again. 
 
&quot;Unfortunately, Vale Inco continues to stick by its preconditions and its argument that it needs concessions to maintain its 'sustainability,' when its demands such as cutting the nickel bonus do not affect its sustainability whatsoever. Vale had to win a bidding war to purchase this profitable company. Inco made profits each year with nickel prices lower than today's. Vale has reaped huge profits under the current contract. No one can say Sudbury's rich nickel mines are not sustainable.&quot; 
 
USW branch locals in Ontario and Labrador have been buoyed by a private member&rsquo;s bill in the Canadian Parliament by MP Claude Gravelle. The proposed legislation would give transparency to all deals made within the Investment Canada Act, a haunting lesson on democracy to many Canadians since details between the federal government and Vale were kept secret when the company bought Inco. 
 
Gravelle has also submitted two additional bills aimed at making public all facts surrounding Vale&rsquo;s purchase of Inco and Xstrata&rsquo;s buy-up of Canadian-based Falconbridge, a deal that also included valuable copper-nickel assets in northern Ontario. 
 
For Sudbury Local 6500, the 3,100-member union continues promoting solidarity within its own ranks through unity, fraternity, and an acute community awareness that says successfully resisting Vale&rsquo;s take-aways is the real path for a sustainable future. 
 
From 10 to 15 December, Local 6500 embarked on a Week of Action that include several activities in Sudbury. Those activities included a 10 December, International Human Rights Day candlelight vigil and march done in unison with the Sudbury District Labour Council of the Canadian Labour Congress. The next day, 11 December, students and the faculty union association of nearby Laurentian University conducted &ldquo;Out of the Classroom and Onto the Picket Lines,&rdquo; in which class sessions were moved to the picket lines of the Copper Cliff smelter in order to study the causes and effects of the strike. 

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A Families Supporting the Strikers&rsquo; fundraiser was held on the weekend, 12-13 December, while a Steelworker Solidarity Support caravan from Toronto also visited picket lines on 13 December. Today, 14 December, union veterans and retirees will conduct a symposium entitled &ldquo;Lessons From the Past &ndash; What We Have Won,&rdquo; complete with reflections on a strike in 1978 and the necessity to retain what has already been gained. 
 
And tomorrow, 15 December, Local 6500 members and their families will hold a &ldquo;Fair Deal for Our Families&rdquo; march and manifestation at Vale-Inco&rsquo;s Copper Cliff offices. 
 
On 3 December, in another outpouring of support for the striking Canadian miners, scores of members from the US-based union Unite-Here joined Local 6500 and Local 6200 members who bused to New York City to protest an award by the Business Council for International Understanding to Roger Agnelli, Vale&rsquo;s CEO. 
 
The joining of hands by Unite-Here, who recently returned to the AFL-CIO, with the USW was symbolic of renewed unity inside the American trade union movement, solidarity now extending into Canada. 
 
The ICEM has been joined by the International Metalworkers&rsquo; Federation (IMF) in waging a global campaign in support of Canadian miners. The miners&rsquo; own English-language website gives complete and up-to-date details of the bitter strike. It can be found <a href="http://www.fairdealnow.ca">here</a>.

USW, Vale Spar Over Picket Line, Scab Threats in Canadian Nickel Strike

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ICEM participated in the 4th Congress of the Industrial Workers Union of Albania (FSPISH) on 14 November. The Congress took place in the Museum of History of Albania. The ICEM affiliate represents 22,000 members in the mining, oil, communication, metallurgy, and energy industries. It was the first time the ICEM had been involved with a Congress of the union. 

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The ICEM affiliate used the Congress to illustrate its increased focus on international work and solidarity. The FSPISH President, Br. Taf Koleci, outlined the current challenges and activities of the union and explained the main priorities of the union, moving forward. These include: increased priority given to relationship-building with other trade unions in Europe; increased cooperation especially with Mediterranean and Balkan trade unions through higher contributions to regional trade union bodies in energy, mining, chemicals, gas and petro-chemicals; continued solidarity work with foreign unions where cooperation already exists, through bipartite relationships and through the union&rsquo;s membership in ICEM, EMCEF, PSI, EPSU, ETUC, and RETUNSEE; FSPISH will &lsquo;fight&rsquo; for further development of its relationship with the ILO, seeking to build the foundations for strong tripartite social dialogue in Albania.

Albania’s FSPISH Congress Places Emphasis on International Solidarity

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ICEM will be closely monitoring the discussions at the climate change talks COP-15 (15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) in Copenhagen from 7-18 December. On 16 December at 2pm, we will be presenting the views of industrial unions at an event at the &ldquo;World of Work&rdquo; pavilion, in collaboration with the IMF, EMCEF, and EMF. 
 
Read the documents <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/3452-Cut-Emissions-Transform-Jobs ">here</a> for further information on ICEM&rsquo;s positions on climate change. 
 
 
ICEM&rsquo;s sustainability policy can be found <a href="/?id=204$">here</a>.&nbsp; 
 
Watch for frequent reports of the discussions on the ICEM website.

ICEM Prepares for Copenhagen Climate Change Talks

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ICEM Mexican affiliate Los Mineros continue to face government repression, and joint government-company action against them. Wednesday 25 November saw a convoy of 10 buses, carrying 400 members and supporters to a peaceful protest in the city of Zacatecas, blocked by riot police and held at Las Arcinas, in the municipality of Sain Alto, 25km from the city. The passengers were told that if they got off the buses, they would be beaten. 
 
The protest was planned as a call for justice over the murder of fellow mineworker Jeventino Flores-Salas in June this year, and also to show support for their exiled leader Napoleon Gomez-Urrutia. Miners from throughout Mexico travelled to Zacatecas on Tuesday 24 November, but were blocked by police the following day from entering the city. The strong suspicion is that Grupo Pe&ntilde;oles asked the federal police to act in this manner. The Mexican Constitution gives citizens the right to move freely, to peaceful demonstration and expression. All of these rights were denied by the police action. Although the workers were finally allowed entry into the city, they were not left alone by the police, and were not allowed to join the manifestation. 

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The union has criticised the state government of Amalia Garcia-Medina, who is supposedly left-wing, but still sides with the right-wing repression of the federal government. 
In other news regarding Los Mineros, the Australian Government is putting pressure on the Calderon Government to rethink its campaign of repression against the Mexican miners. This follows a resolution of the National Executive of ICEM affiliated CFMEU condemning the actions of the Mexican government following the Pasta de Conchos mine disaster in 2006. CFMEU lobbying to the Australian government has resulted in the Australian government making a strong statement of support for the international labour movement&rsquo;s campaign for improved trade union rights in Mexico.

Mexican Riot Police Block Buses of Unionists on Way to Peaceful Protest

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For all in the global ICEM family 2009 became a painful year due to the global crisis. But again union action and solidarity beyond borders proved to be the essential asset to defend and advance the interest of workers. Let us continue to build unity, let us strengthen global solidarity, let us together make sure there is a way forward and success for the workers that we represent. ICEM wishes you, your members and your families the best of luck and success in 2010. HAPPY NEW YEAR. 
Manfred Warda
ICEM General Secretary

Happy Holidays from the ICEM

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The 5th congress of the Slovak Chemical Workers was held in Svit, Eastern Slovakia, 25-26 November. It was followed by a merger congress with the energy workers which elected Juraj Blahak as President of the new union. Attempts to get the glass workers and construction workers also interested in the merger had failed before. 

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Juraj Blahak
Congress heard reports on economic development, very similar to those heard by the Hungarian Chemicals Workers, reported above (InBrief 146). Especially the automobile industry and with it the tyre industry is catching up, but there are still many uncertainties. Different speakers (also from the side of employers and employer associations who were invited) emphasized the relevance of social dialogue in addressing the effects of the global crisis. Employers criticized the government for prioritizing the attracting of investment from foreign companies, while neglecting to do enough for domestic companies.

5th Congress of Slovak Chemical Workers

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The joint publication of the Global Union Federations (GUFs) on climate change and other issues addressed at COP15, Copenhagen, is now available via the Council of Global Unions website <a href="http://www.global-unions.org/spip.php?article306">here</a>.&nbsp; Print copies are being distributed to the trade union delegation to the climate conference 

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The joint publication, entitled &ldquo;Getting the World to Work: Green Growth for Jobs and Social Justice,&rdquo; includes sectoral perspectives from each GUF, with a joint article published from ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda and International Metalworkers&rsquo; Federation (IMF) General Secretary Jyrki Raina. The publication also includes explanation of union consensus positions on climate debate issues from the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). 
 
The publication follows the success of a similar Council of Global Unions&rsquo; publication called &ldquo;Getting the World to WORK: Global Union Strategies for Recovery,&rdquo; in which global trade union federations, together with the ITUC and TUAC of the OECD, came together to present strategies in response to the global economic crisis.

GUFs’ Magazine on Climate Change Available Through Council of Global Unions

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