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The United Steelworkers of America (USWA) and German-based Continental Tire are in disagreement over severance and health care benefits for 700 workers about to be sacked due to a plant closing in Mayfield, Kentucky. The company announced earlier this year it was discontinuing manufacture of auto and light truck tyres effective 31 December 2004 in Mayfield. The USWA on 17 September submitted a US$20 million costs-savings proposal to Continental, but the company rejected it, stating investment and lower-cost tyre production from Brazil, Mexico and China is the firm’s priority. Continental will maintain warehousing and a mixing unit in Mayfield, employing only 200 workers.

USWA Takes Issue with Continental Tire’s US Plant Closing

ICEM affiliate USWA, meanwhile, achieved a first collective agreement in the US for 130 Goodyear Tire & Rubber workers in Statesville, North Carolina. Workers there chose USWA for representation last February through a newly instituted card-check/neutrality agreement signed between the union and US rubber-maker in 2003 negotiations. The first labour agreement for the 130 at the tyre mold plant means they will come under the network of job security provisions agreed to in those 2003 negotiations, including the company’s commitment to utilize USWA members before reaching outside for contract labour. The USWA is still negotiating at two other Goodyear plants where workers chose union representation through the card-check, or showing of interest procedure spelled out in the 2003 labour agreement with Goodyear. Those plants are a steel tyre cord plant in Asheboro, North Carolina, employing 350 workers, and a Goodyear textile plant in Utica, New York, employing 160.

USWA Reaches Agreement with Goodyear at Newly-Organized Site

The UK’s Transport & General Workers Union (T&G) says French-based Imerys has unilaterally decided to implement pension scheme concessions on its 2,500 UK workers. Without consultation with the union, the company says it will eliminate the final salary scheme for new hires and terms of the scheme for existing workers will be downgraded. T&G points out that Imerys “had taken a three-year pension holiday” from 2000-03 that cost the scheme £9 million. Imerys also announced it would cut 80 jobs in the UK by next spring.

Transport & General in UK Has Pension Issues with Imerys

CEP is seeking binding arbitration for workers at offshore oil producer Hibernia, the ExxonMobil-led energy consortium that has flagrantly dodged a first union contract at the oil platform off the coast of Newfoundland. Some 420 workers voted for CEP representation in October 2001 but the company has used legal appeals and stall tactics to avoid the bargaining table. CEP is already in first contract arbitration at a similar North Atlantic oil platform called Terra Nova operated by Petro-Canada. Some 90 workers there voted for the CEP in April 2003. “Our members at Hibernia and Terra Nova have waited far too long to get Coordinator Joe Gargiso. “We prefer to negotiate terms but employer resistance is forcing us into following the mandatory first contract arbitration procedure.”

Arbitration Sought to Settle Canadian Offshore Oil Dispute

The All Pakistan Trade Union Federation is holding a series of rallies to protest price hikes, rising unemployment, retrenchment of workers and restrictions on trade union activity. The first rally, led by Gen. Sec. Gulzar Ahmed Chaudhry, was held yesterday at the Press Club in Lahore. Further rallies are set for tomorrow in different industrial areas of the country.

Pakistan’s National Labour Centre Rallies Over Union Restrictions

In December, ICEM reported on death threats and extortion attempts to Sintracarbón bargaining team members and their families. In fact, those threats were made to national officers of Sintracarbon—including a bargaining team member—as well as to leaders of the San Juan Del Cesar branch of Sintracarbón.

Death Threats in Colombia Aimed at Sintracarbon Leaders

UPM Kymmene and other Nordic paper companies are retaliating against affiliate Paperiliitto and paperworkers in Finland over industrial action banning overtime. At a UPM Kymmene mill in Kajaani, the company refused to pay workers already on the job when a paper machine was forced to stop because of the overtime ban. Other paper companies are applying the same tactic, unusual in such circumstances. 
Workers demonstrated late last week at Stora Enso mills in Kaukopää and Tainionkoski over lack of progress in paper industry bargaining, and demonstrations also occurred earlier at Metsä-Botnia mills in Joutseno and Rauma. Paperiliitto called the overtime ban because the Forest Industries Federation of Finland, after dropping from the national incomes policy agreement, is stalling in reaching agreement for 29,000 paperworkers.

Finnish Paper Companies Taking Hard Approach Against Union

Nepal’s monarchy continues its irrational restriction of civil liberties by targeting labour leaders for arrest on even the slightest provocation. On 8 April, national center GEFONT’s Vice Chairman Lalit Basnet and Hetaunda Zonal Chairman Madhusudan Khatiwada were jailed for speaking out against curtailment of basic trade union rights, including assembly. 
Similarly, GEFONT’s Bara Zonal Chairman Kamalesh Jha was arrested in Kalaiya while protesting King Gyanendra’s harsh authoritative measures. GEFONT’s Kanchanpur Zonal Chairman Dharmananda Panta was arrested 25 March hours after he was re-elected. He was released 6 April. Official government response to his incarceration: “(Dharmananda Panta’s) continued freedom would allow him to conduct interviews which are against the spirit of His Majesty’s proclamations, and would further escalate unrest, thus hampering peace and tranquillity.”

Nepal Clamping Down on Trade Union Leaders, Trade Union Rights

Industrial action in New Zealand is escalating over ICEM affiliate Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union’s (EPMU) call for 5% wage increases across all sectors of the country’s buoyant economy. On 15 April, 238 EPMU miners at collieries of Solid Energy in Huntly East and Rotowaro struck. Coal miners across NZ are seeking a 6% pay hike to offset lost wages from government passage of the Employment Contracts Act in the late 1990s. Miners are also seeking pay parity between operations of the North Island and South Island. Underground miners in the South are paid less than workers in the North, while open cast miners on the North Island earn less than those of the South. Metals and manufacturing workers, also represented by EPMU, are on the verge of striking if the 5% demands are not met.

Miners in New Zealand Take Strike Actions

French workers of ExxonMobil are waging strike actions and manifestations against the US energy company’s decision to close worksites, and make redundant thousands of workers. Backed by five unions, including ICEM affiliates belonging to CFDT and CGT-FO, 80% of all French ExxonMobil workers are engaged in stop-work actions from 11- 19 May. Despite record profits with each passing financial quarter, the world’s largest energy company is following its plan to shut multiple French worksites, affecting hundreds of jobs. 
Unionised workers themselves took the initiative for the actions, and a refinery at Fos was shut off 13-14 May, while another refinery at Dunkirk was stopped 12-14 May. Last week prior to a two-day stoppage at the Port Jerome Seine-Maritime centre, all 700 workers of the facility staged a defiant manifestation. Actions are ongoing at nearly all the company’s French operations: Esso, SAF, Mobil, ExxonMobil Chemical and Noroxo.

French Unions Strike to Stop ExxonMobil Retrenchments

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