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Meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on 15-16 November 2005, 65 global trade union delegates from 17 countries at the ICEM World Conference for Pulp and Paper Industries, adopted the following statement: 
 
We recognise the current business difficulties in the global paper industry and inevitable restructuring, affecting workers and their families. However, the conference adopted a Resolution, making it clear to the Pulp/Paper Industry that continued International Trade Union Solidarity will be utilised to protect the interests of workers and their families at this difficult time in the global paper sector. 
 
The Conference also took note of the recent unprecedented international solidarity actions. This lays the ground for further international networking in the Pulp and Paper Industry. 
 
Such actions clearly demonstrate the will of ICEM global trade union affiliates in the Pulp and Paper Sector to use International Solidarity to resist harsh and inhumane attacks on workers and their collective bargaining agreements to achieve business goals. 
 
The conference adopted the following proposals: 
<ul>
 <li>During the next four-year period until the next ICEM World Conference for the Pulp and Paper Industries, affiliates will seek to initiate dialogue and achieve further ICEM Global Framework Agreements with pulp and paper companies; 
 </li>
 <li>Affiliated Trade Unions will adopt new and innovative international networking methods to further enhance Global Trade Union Solidarity; 
 </li>
 <li>Trade Unions in the industry will be fully joined to the ICEM&rsquo;s campaign against the abusive use of Contract and Agency Labour in all facets of work; 
 </li>
 <li>Affiliates will exercise greater vigilance in monitoring and ensuring responsible behaviour by global pulp and paper companies with regard to health, safety and the environment; 
 </li>
 <li>Affiliated Trade Unions will undertake to increase their efforts regarding the all-important gender issue, and seek to ensure Equal Pay for Work of Equal Value, and the elimination of all gender-based discrimination at workplaces. </li>
</ul>
It is the determination of all Affiliates and the ICEM to ensure that they are able to report real achievements on the above agenda at the next World Conference for the Pulp and Paper Industries. 
 
Adopted on 16 November 2005 
Brussels, Belgium 

For more information on this conference, including background documents and presentations, click <a href="/index.php?id=147">here</a>.

ICEM Declaration on the Pulp and Paper Sector

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A deadly past several weeks has brought more deaths from China&rsquo;s mines. 
On 11 November, 19 perished due to a gas explosion at Bayinsai Coal Tar Co. in Wuhai city, Inner Mongolia. That was preceded by two separate gas blasts on 6 November, claiming a total of 52 miners. At the one in Xingtai County, Hebei province, three gypsum mines collapsed killing 36 and seriously injuring another 30. The other happened at the Taiping Coal Mine, Shanxi province, where 16 died in a gas blast. 
On 8 November in Qitai County in the autonomous region of Xinjiang Uygur, 14 died in a workers dormitory where an employee of Beitahsan Coal Mine was handling explosives. Sixteen coal miners died on 27 October due to an explosion inside the Zhongxing Coal Mine near Aksu city in northwest Xinjiang region. 
Drilling through a water-eroded cave brought death by drowning to 28 miners on 4 October at Guang&rsquo;an Energy Group&rsquo;s Longtan Coal Mine in Sichuan province. A day earlier in Henan province, 34 miners died from a gas explosion at the Henan Hebei Coal Co., a joint venture between the state and Thai-based Banpu plc. And on the evening of 2 October, ten people died when they were overcome by gas after sneaking into a molybdenum mine in Liaoning province to work illegally. 
China&rsquo;s State Administration of Coal Mine Safety will have closed 7,000 mines due to safety concerns by the end of the year, and another Chinese agency posted on its website that in order to qualify for financial incentives available for safe mining practices, managers must accompany workers into mines on each shift.

More Deaths Hit China’s Mines

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ICEM affiliate National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) won a labour court ruling late last month against Continental Tyre. The court ruled the company must reinstate 40 workers who were retrenched at a Port Elizabeth factory in July. 
The unilateral decision by the company to curtail weekend shift operations and manpower in some areas of the plant last summer brought ICEM intervention with the German Works Council of Continental. 
In a separate decision also issued in late October, a South African Labour Department inspector determined that Continental violated the Employment Equity Act that seeks to correct racial imbalances left over from the apartheid era. The inspector found that Continental&rsquo;s policies have failed to assimilate blacks and whites into common work practices. The Port Elizabeth tyre factory employs 1,200. 
Meanwhile in Germany, IGBCE has won a year&rsquo;s reprieve for 500 Continental Tyre workers at the St&uuml;cken plant in Hannover. The plant was scheduled to close at the end of 2006, but ICEM&rsquo;s German affiliate convinced the company to keep the plant operating until December 2007.

NUMSA Wins Court Ruling in Continental Tyre Dispute

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All in all, South Africa&rsquo;s National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) is pleased with DeBeers&rsquo; finalised Black Economic Empowerment plan. 
But one major flaw persists: a 15% set-aside for &ldquo;key&rdquo; employees has been inserted into the agreement that has weighted the 26% stake held by newly-created Ponahalo Investment Holdings. Conforming to statute, DeBeers spun that portion of its Consolidated Diamond Mines in South Africa into a minority stake that will be 50% owned by workers and former workers, and another 50% owned by community interests and business people. 
But &ldquo;spoiling the apple-pie,&rdquo; the NUM states, is the 15% set-aside of this latter stake to key employees, which could lead to patronage or even racism. 
NUM Gen. Sec. Gwede Mantashe singled out the positive fact that Ponahalo, or &ldquo;emergence&rdquo; in the Setswana language, will be headed by a former diamond worker and trade unionist. &ldquo;This new partnership with DeBeers will lead to the betterment of workers and the communities of diamond mineworkers,&rdquo; he said.

NUM Sees Flaw in DeBeers’ Black Empowerment Deal

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ICEM&rsquo;s Social Dialogue project in Colombia has seen its first direct positive result, and glassmaker Owens Illinois is the employer that made it happen. 
ICEM and Colombian affiliate Sintravidricol had lobbied the US company to bring multiple plants of its Peldar and Vildriera Fenicia subsidiaries under a common labour agreement. Through commitment to dialogue rather than confrontation, Sintravidricol and the company successfully negotiated separate but similar agreements at two of the plants. 
The ICEM applauds both the union and Owens Illinois managers in Colombia for charting a course of respectful collective bargaining. ICEM&rsquo;s Social Dialogue project in Colombia, launched in October 2004, is in place due to strong support of Swedish unions.

Social Dialogue Project Makes Headway in Colombia

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Heavy-handed tactics by management of Stora Enso ended an 11-day strike by workers at a newsprint and publications mill in Gent, Belgium, 8 November. 
Local managers at the company&rsquo;s Langerbrugge paper mill refused any honest discussions on workplace issues, and succeeded only in placing 330 angry and victimized workers back on paper machines and other equipment. 
ICEM Belgian affiliate ABBV-FGTB, though not the largest union in the mill, led the strike for better pay and dignity on the job. Fifty-six percent of workers voted to continue the strike on 8 November, but a rule called for at least 60% strike approval if the walkout was to continue.&nbsp;

Stora Enso Managers Break Belgian Paper Strike

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Tensions remain high between ICEM affiliate Communications, Electrical &amp; Plumbing Union (CEPU) of Australia and Western Power. The issue of outside contractors is central to the dispute. 
Western Power, citing potential blackouts, has petitioned the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to terminate the 600 line and maintenance workers&rsquo; right to strike. 
CEPU has implemented industrial actions over the pay, overtime and contracting dispute, but on 31 October called off a possible action because the utility had conceded a matter over discipline&mdash;whether or not workers were entitled to union representation. Days earlier, a Western Power confidential letter leaked, detailing outsourcing plans including dividing an entire grid into zones and then allocating maintenance of those zones to contractors. 
CEPU termed the strategy &ldquo;privatisation by stealth.&rdquo; CEPU Secretary Bill Game, quoted in a Perth newspaper, said, &ldquo;Our guys are saying it&rsquo;s clearly their core work that is being outsourced. Part of what we are trying to do is prepare the industry for young people coming in, so that they can have permanency and security and not having to run all over the place doing outsourcing work.&rdquo;

Ongoing Dispute in Australia Between CEPU and Western Power

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ICEM Australian affiliates AMWU and CFMEU, along with public health groups, picketed James Hardie&rsquo;s profit announcement meeting last week in Sydney because of company delays in signing a final compensation package for victims of asbestos-related diseases. 
After heavy pressure, the building products company agreed last December to sign an A$4.5 billion package over 40 years for workers inflicted with the deadly diseases. James Hardie was announcing a half-year&rsquo;s profit jump of 67%, or A$141 million. 
The company, meanwhile, instigated, a labour dispute at two Queensland plants beginning 26 October when it locked out 110 workers, represented by Australian Workers Union (AWU), at one of the plants. Some 120 workers at the other launched an immediate sympathy strike. The dispute is over James Hardie&rsquo;s intent to divide the common enterprise agreement shared by workers of the two plants. 
AWU calls the company action one of greed, timed to coincide with passage of proposed industrial relations reform that would, among other things, severely weaken enterprise agreements. 
The 26 October lockout and strike at Meeandah and Carole Park plants near Brisbane lasted 28 hours and have been repeated twice in the ensuing weeks. Managers at the two plants have also punished workers by withholding scheduled production bonuses, amounting to A$1,200 per worker.

James Hardie Still Problematic in Australia

Click <a href="/wp-content/migration/icem/0511drugtesting.ppt">here</a> for an ICEM Powerpoint presentation on Drug Testing in and around the workplace.
The presentation offers an international overview on current regulations and practices in the area of work related drug testing. It discusses, amongst others things, the different rules and legislations that apply, providing a large number of country overviews. It also takes a look at the ILO's position on the subject and, towards the end, talks about the role of civil society. 
The presentation was made in October 2005 at a Special Energy Conference, organised by the CEP, ICEM affiliate in Canada, in Vancouver.

ICEM Powerpoint presentation on Drug Testing

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Negotiations resume today in the bitter 10-day strike at Stora Enso&rsquo;s Langerbrugge paper mill in Gent, Belgium. 
ICEM affiliate ABVV-FGTB and other unions are striking over local mill management&rsquo;s callous style of labour relations. Managers have pitched ultimatums and reactive measures at the workforce of 330 in the newsprint and publications papers operation since workers requested standard wage talks last spring. Then, management agreed to negotiations but only if 24 job cuts went along. 
Workers rejected a miniscule &euro;.12-an-hour pay hike with a 98% vote and Langerbrugge managers slammed the door on further dialogue. Even after the brewing dispute came to national level, management took an antagonistic bargaining posture and the matter went to a national conciliation. 
Unions issued a formal strike notice to Stora Enso if the conciliator&rsquo;s wage offer was voted down in a vote of workers by 66.67%. The conciliator&rsquo;s offer of &euro;.17-an-hour failed by a 78.7% vote, and workers struck on 28 October. 
Last week, paper mill management escalated the dispute by petitioning courts to impose a &euro;1,000-a-day fine on the unions for every worker turned away at plant gate pickets. To date, only 20 or so of the 330 workers have crossed picket lines, and those are employees in ancillary positions who fear their services will be contracted out.
Since the strike began, workers responded to a survey with 61.5% saying management&rsquo;s ultimatums were unacceptable, and they would continue a course demanding mutual respect in social dialogue. Langerbrugge bosses, however, have continued, in the words of one union leader, &ldquo;ill style of management&rdquo; by threatening to call off the start of talks today if workers were to receive picket-line support and solidarity from other workers. 
Managers have portrayed the dispute as &ldquo;all about pay&rdquo; in the trade press, but, in fact, the dispute in Gent is about an abusive and dictatorial approach to collective negotiations by Stora-Enso managers.

Harsh, Abusive Management Style Leads to Stora-Enso Strike in Belgium

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