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ICEM UK affiliate Amicus is in a 90-day consultation period with papermaker ArjoWiggins in efforts to save 150 jobs at the Corpach Mill, near Fort William in Scotland. The company announced closure of the carbonless paper mill last month, but Amicus and two other unions representing workers at the mill are intent to find a buyer for the 39-year-old mill. In 2003, the British government gave the company a £5 million grant for construction of a new biomass boiler system for energy generation, but ArjoWiggins did not go ahead with the project.

Amicus Seeks to Keep UK Paper Mill Open

A candlelight vigil commemorating the 9th Workers’ Memorial Day will occur at ICEM in Brussels and at thousands of other unions worldwide on 28 April. This year’s commemoration will have twin themes—Safe & Healthy Work and Employer Accountability—to draw attention to reducing workplace accident and death rates. Avaible are death and injury rates throughout the world and fact sheets and other materials in three languages. ICEM affiliates recognizing 28 April in one form or another are encouraged to report their observance to Lucien Royer at royer@tuac.org.

Vigil Marks 9th Workers’ Memorial Day

Hibernia offshore oil workers in Canada won yet another legal victory 28 April when the Supreme Court of Newfoundland held union certification with CEP legal. The ruling was another and hopefully final setback for lead company ExxonMobil at Hibernia. CEP President Brian Payne said, “ExxonMobil has now run out of excuses and reasons” for denying the 420 workers a collective agreement. Hibernia workers were the first North American offshore platform workers to unionise in October 2001, and ExxonMobil used legal appeals and delays to block a collective agreement up to now.

CEP Offshore Workers in Canada Win Case Against ExxonMobil

Australian affiliate CFMEU criticized building firm Kavernar Clough for reprehensible conduct following an accident in which a crane dropped a 75-tonne steel vessel through a smelting tower. The accident occurred 1 June at Rio Tinto’s Hi Smelt nickel plant in Kwinana, West Australia. The CFMEU halted work for 48 hours to insure the smelting tower was fully inspected and certified safe. The construction firm, however, instructed its men to continue with a concrete pour just minutes after the accident directly beneath the tower.

Union Critical of Firm’s Safety Procedures at Rio Tinto Jobsite

The ICEM’s 4th Bridgestone Workers’ Global Network meetings were held in Brazil last week and delegates came from Japan, Spain, South Africa, US and host country Brazil. Topics included health and safety, breakdown of company finances by region and division, and delegates met with the director of the Japanese firm’s big Santa Andre tyre plant near Sao Paulo.

ICEM’s Bridgestone Network Meets in Brazil

Rio Tinto subsidiary Energy Resources in Australia enters a Northern Territory courtroom today to face landmark criminal charges under the NT’s Mining Management Act. The firm is charged with contaminating miners’ drinking and showering water with water used from uranium processing at Ranger Mine in Kakadu National Park. Some 30 workers took ill from the incident last March. The prosecution is the first under the 2001 statute.

Rio Tinto Faces Court Case Over Contaminated Water

The new Austrian government's policies were sharply criticised yesterday by the country's mining, metal and energy union the GMBE. In the same statement, the union condemned the climate of intolerance created by one of the coalition partners, Joerg Haider's extreme right-wing Freedom Party of Austria (FPOe). 
 
The government's programme will, the GMBE says, place "massive, unilateral burdens on workers, and particularly on women workers, but also on young people, the unemployed, the sick and the pensioners." It particularly criticises plans to raise the legal pension age and cut the incomes of those who retire earlier. And, as the union points out, the government intends to scrap previously successful employment programmes in order to finance big hand-outs to companies and farmers. The government programme also fails to bring in "reforms that are important for the workers - notably the protection of workers within a globalised economy and real improvements in training and retraining." 
 
On the FPOe's role in the new government, the GMBE says "the concerns of the European Union and other states are quite understandable". In particular, the union cites Haider's praise for what he called the "proper employment policies of the Third Reich" and his description of former SS officers as "decent people". [For more on Haider's sayings, the union recommends the Austrian Haiderwatch website - available in both German and English]. 
 
But, the GMBE insists, "we reject any blanket condemnation of the Austrians as a 'Nazi people'. After all, more than 70 percent of the electors did not vote for the FPOe." The union warns that boycotts of Austrian goods, services and tourism would "hit the wrong people, namely the workers." 
 
The FPOe has repeatedly "stirred up fear, intolerance and xenophobia," the GMBE says. It accuses the party of "playing different parts of the population off against each other." 
 
The GMBE "judges any government - of whatever party - on the basis of what it does for the workers in this country. We will act massively against the measures of the new federal government, which are worsening the situation of working, unemployed and retired people in Austria. At the same time, we oppose the brutalisation of Austria's political culture." 
 
At the global level, the GMBE is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM).

Austrian Union Slams New Government

Ukraine's worst mining disaster is now being investigated by a team led by Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko. The probe commission includes Mikhail Volynets, President of the Miners' Independent Trade Union of Ukraine (MITU). 
 
Saturday's explosion at the Barakova mine killed 80 workers and injured seven others, Volynets confirms in a fax received today by the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). MITU is an ICEM affiliate. 
 
Describing the accident as "the most serious in recent years", Volynets says the blast happened "during repair work" at the mine and was caused by a "mixture of dust and gas". Barakova is owned by the state holding company Krasnodonugol. As well as investigating the accident, the government team of which Volynets is part is bringing "vital assistance to the families of those killed and injured". 
 
Ukraine has one of the world's highest mining accident rates. Close to 1,500 Ukrainian miners have been killed over the past five years. MITU, backed by the ICEM, has been campaigning to reverse a catastrophic spiral of underinvestment, leading to falls in productivity, leading to further cutbacks in equipment and safety. Non-payment of miners' wages has been another serious problem in the cash-starved industry.  
 
"Beyond sadness and grief, drastic measures need to be taken to address the causes of these series of mine disasters," insists ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs in a message of condolence to the MITU. In particular, Higgs calls for implementation by Ukraine of Convention 176 on mining safety, adopted by the UN's International Labour Organisation (ILO). 
 
Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma has declared 13 and 14 March as days of national mourning for those killed in the Barakova disaster.

Ukrainian Miners' President Joins Disaster Probe Team

Chernobyl nuclear power station is to close before the end of this year, the Ukrainian government confirmed yesterday. 
 
Only one reactor is currently operating at Chernobyl, which was the site of the world's worst-ever nuclear accident when another reactor exploded in 1986. 
 
But now that Chernobyl really is to close, what about the workers? 
 
The station's workforce has totalled around 6,500 people in recent years. At least 5,000 other jobs depend on them - mainly in Slavutich, the town built to house the nuclear workers and their families after they were moved out of the irradiated zone around the plant. And in today's Ukraine, good jobs are very hard to find. 
 
Since 1996, the Chernobyl workers' union and its international federation have been pressing for a "social plan" that would help to avert job losses in the case of closure. That lobbying has now been stepped up. 
 
Yesterday, the Ukrainian Deputy Energy Minister Vitali Gajduk met Alexander Yurkin and Andre Mrost in Kiev to discuss the issue. 
 
Yurkin is the President of the Ukraine Atom Trade Union (ATU). He is also Vice-President of the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), to which the ATU is affiliated at the global level. Mrost is the ICEM's coordinator in the region. 
 
They explained the ATU/ICEM campaign to the deputy minister, who fully backed the unions' action. The Ukrainian government has now given its Fuel and Energy Ministry six months to draw up a programme of social guarantees for Chernobyl and Slavutich. 
 
But this begs the multi-million dollar question. Who will pay for the social safety net? 
 
In fact, a comprehensive draft social plan already exists. 
 
The commitment to close Chernobyl by the year 2000 dates back to the Ottawa memorandum signed in 1995 by Ukraine, the G-7 leading industrialised countries and the European Union. This agreement specifically recognised "the implications of the closure of the Chernobyl plant for the workers and their families." It promised that "the European Commission and the Government of the United States will assist the Government of Ukraine to develop an Action Plan for addressing the social impacts of the closure of Chernobyl." 
 
The ICEM and the ATU followed through in 1996 with a world conference of nuclear workers' unions, held in Kiev. The early closure of Chernobyl could be envisaged only if the social issues were properly tackled, the Kiev conference pointed out. In particular, it called for a full "social plan", including the creation of alternative employment for workers in Chernobyl and Slavutich. 
 
A detailed draft social action programme was drawn up the following year by a joint Ukrainian-EU-US working group that included trade union experts. The draft plan provides for retraining and other adjustment measures for the workers. It also entails the promotion of new small and medium-scale industries in Slavutich, notably in the field of energy efficiency and conservation. 
 
Under the 1995 Ottawa memorandum, western commitments to fund the Chernobyl closure included 4 million US dollars for social measures. As the nuclear unions' Kiev conference pointed out in 1996, this pledge is wholly inadequate. Today, an effective social plan for Chernobyl and Slavutich would cost between 50 million and 100 million dollars. 
 
Which is why the ICEM and its affiliated unions are now pressing the G-7 governments, the EU and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to finance the social package in full. 
 
For other aspects of the Chernobyl closure, money is no object. Yesterday's confirmation of the shut-down came just days after western donors had pledged an extra 300 million dollars for the building of a new shell to seal off the Chernobyl reactors. Their total commitment to that project alone is now 700 million dollars. A further 175 million dollars' worth of western aid could go towards paying for new Ukrainian nuclear plants to replace Chernobyl - although some western governments would prefer to finance stations fired by coal, lignite or gas. 
 
All of which puts into perspective the sums needed for a decent social plan. 
 
And there are good reasons for funding a social safety net. 
 
The safe operation, shutdown and decommissioning of Chernobyl depends first and foremost on the skill and concentration of its workers. They have been under great psychological pressure recently, due both to uncertainties over their future and to a problem of unpaid wages that has only just been resolved. 
 
Then there is the world's moral debt to the Chernobyl workers. The "liquidators", who went in just after the 1986 disaster to limit the spread of radiation, included workers from the plant. Some paid the price of their heroism. They contracted diseases linked to radiation, and in some cases they may have incurred hereditary damage. 
 
Not least, the lessons learned from a Chernobyl social plan could be of great value to the nuclear industry everywhere. 
 
As the unions' Kiev conference pointed out in 1996, "worldwide, over two hundred other nuclear reactors are scheduled for decommissioning by 2010. Chernobyl is the first challenge - not the last."

Chernobyl To Close: What About the Workers?

Major investors are backing calls for change at mining multinational Rio Tinto. 
 
In Britain, where Rio Tinto is headquartered, investors with over 28 billion pounds sterling in assets (over 43 billion US dollars) are supporting two resolutions proposed by the Coalition of Rio Tinto Shareholders. One of the resolutions concerns corporate governance. The other calls on Rio Tinto to ensure that its labour practices worldwide comply with the core standards of the UN's International Labour Organisation (ILO). 
 
British investors who have come out in favour of the resolutions include the Co-operative Insurance Society Ltd. (CIS). The CIS decision was announced by Britain's Trades Union Congress (TUC) today. CIS is one of Rio Tinto's largest shareholders, with more than 23 billion pounds sterling under management. A number of British pension funds have also swung their shareholder power behind the resolutions. 
 
Under its dual-listing structure, Rio Tinto holds two Annual General Meetings (AGMs) - one in London (on 10 May this year) and one in Australia (Brisbane, 24 May). The resolutions will be put to shareholders at both AGMs. 
 
"It should come as no surprise that shareholders are welcoming our proposals with open arms," said TUC General Secretary John Monks. "Institutional investors increasingly see the value of AGM resolutions that promote long-term shareholder value." 
 
The two resolutions are being backed by the TUC, by the trade union movements in Australia and the US and by the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). 
 
The ICEM has already offered to negotiate and sign a global agreement with Rio Tinto. Under such an agreement, the ICEM and its affiliated unions worldwide would verify, among other things, the company's compliance with ILO core standards. Through the ICEM, unions would have the right to raise with Rio Tinto corporate management any alleged breaches of these standards. 
 
However, the ICEM has also made it clear that Rio Tinto must resolve current industrial disputes in Australia before a global agreement can be signed.

Rio Tinto: Big Investors Want Change

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