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ICEM affiliate Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) won a round against global paper and packaging firm Visy Industries when the firm backed off forcing single-site labour agreements at 13 of its corrugated packaging plants in Australia. Visy had offered workers A$1,000 cash payment to accept the stand-alone labour agreements, but AMWU unity and resistance defeated the measure. The two sides agreed on a three-year, 14.25% wage hike covering some 600 paper-converting workers that preserves a system-wide agreement.

AMWU Wins Master Contract for Paperworkers in Australia

US affiliate United Steelworkers of America (USWA) and Bridgestone/Firestone will return to negotiations 16-17 November in St. Louis, Missouri, after a yearlong recess. The union halted talks in November 2003 and instead reached agreements with other global tyremakers in the US and Canada. USWA represents 5,000 rubber workers at seven Bridgestone/Firestone factories in the US.

Bridgestone and USWA Return to Bargaining Table in US

Brazilian affiliate FUB-CNQ will conclude voting on a new collective agreement with state-run Petrobras tomorrow, thus preventing unions from striking operations of the oil and gas major by 40,000 workers. Workers stand ready to approve a 12.1% pay hike plus additional benefits for retired workers. Petrobras will also create a special body to study workers&rsquo; retirement plans.

Oil Union in Brazil Gains Deal with Petrobras

The ICEM is central to global protests against the Colombian government&rsquo;s expulsion of four international trade unionists on 31 October. ICEM, along with representatives from the Textile, Education and Journalists GUFs, as well as ICFTU and Human Rights activists, met with Colombian Ambassador to Belgium Nicol&aacute;s Echavarr&iacute;a on 5 November in Brussels over the expulsions. Colombia has officially apologized for the trade union breaches, blaming the incident on immigration officials and &ldquo;erroneous interpretation&rdquo; of decrees. The four were due to attend a regional trade union coordination meeting. About the same time, union leaders from the UK, Ireland and Spain who were in Colombia at a women&rsquo;s trade union meeting had their 60-day visas cancelled and were permitted inside the country for only three days.

ICEM Protests Expulsions of Trade Unionists to Colombia

Another general strike over the price of fuel may occur in neighbouring Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone Labour Congress has called on its government to rescind a late October price hike&mdash;the third fuel price hike in nine months&mdash;or face a strike. &ldquo;Most industrial firms and employers depend on generators. Which invariably affects cost of production with a high probability for redundancy for workers and high process for products,&rdquo; the national center said in a release last week.

High Fuel Prices May Spark General Strike in Sierra Leone

UPM Kymmene, one for world&rsquo;s leading papermakers, is causing job loss and social destruction in its homeland&mdash;Finland&mdash;as well as in Canada. Last week, two 24-hour strikes shut production at both the firm&rsquo;s wood operations and papermaking mills in Finland. A strike on 4 November by 7,500 paperworkers called by ICEM affiliate Paperiliitto and one two days earlier by 3,500 woodworkers was caused by UPM&rsquo;s decision to retrench 672 jobs in the Finnish woodworking sector by closure of three operations and production curtailments at another two. Paperiliitto is also battling UPM&rsquo;s hard wage and other talks in the paper sector.

UPM Kymmene Bringing Labour Unrest Home to Finland

After three weeks of futile bargaining, talks broke off last week between Communications, Energy, Paperworkers (CEP) of Canada Local 689 and UPM Kymmene over efforts to end a four-month paper mill strike in Miramichi, New Brunswick. The Finnish paper company still will not submit the pattern labour agreement for the paper sector of eastern Canada to the striking 700 CEP members, which is the central issue to the strike. Rather, UPM Kymmene was pressuring Local 689 to force a vote of union members on a substandard proposal. Union members 14 April vehemently rejected taking a vote on anything short of the pattern agreement.

CEP, UPM Kymmene Fail in Canadian Talks to End Strike

The Botswana court case in which diamond-mining company Debswana pressed forward in order to extract maximum punishment on some 450 workers who struck last August was dismissed 24 March. An Industrial Court judge issued a detailed, 79-page ruling that said the court had no jurisdiction over criminal matters. Debswana, jointly owned by DeBeers and the government of Botswana, is on a ruthless campaign to destroy the lives of these workers who struck after the company used a new labour law to declare any strike at the 6,000-worker mining operations illegal. Debswana has forcefully evicted the strikers from company housing, and has closed educational opportunities to children of strikers in company-sponsored schools.

Mining Union Wins Court Case Against Debswana in Botswana

<img height="40" src="" width="100" alt="" />
About 120,000 South Korean workers staged a four-hour strike Friday, 1 April, that should serve as a prelude to a larger, nationwide strike if the National Assembly passes legislation to liberalise the use of contract and agency labour. 
Some 231 workplaces took part in the four-hour shutdown called by the Korean Federation of Trade Unions. 
In addition to the bill on the use of non-regular workers, unions are calling on the government to come down hard on companies abusing South Korea&rsquo;s so-called &ldquo;anti-illegal dispatch law,&rdquo; meant as a control to illegal employment practices but a statute continually violated by multinational companies.

Korean Workers Strike Over Labour Reform Bill

Industrial action by Transport &amp; General workers at a Michelin tyre plant in Stoke, UK, ended last week when union members voted 75% to accept a revised pay offer from management. But the union warned that Michelin would now have much work to do to regain the trust and respect of workers. Managers raised threats on the future viability of the plant at the time workers took decisive industrial action. And after revising the pay offer two weeks into the job action, the company tried to impose a voting deadline on T&amp;G&rsquo;s branch, prompting the T&amp;G to call it &ldquo;an attempt to bully our members.&rdquo; Some 500 T&amp;G members engaged in the industrial action at the tyre plant in the Midlands.

Settlement Ends Industrial Action at Michelin in UK

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