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Global worker No1 2022

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A row is brewing between two Geneva-based international agencies over who is to codify worldwide occupational health and safety management norms. 
 
Workers' right to a global say on workplace health and safety could be under threat if the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) next month votes itself competent to tackle this complex issue. 
 
Any ISO efforts on this would cut across work already well under way within the UN's International Labour Organisation (ILO). And the ISO, unlike the ILO, excludes organised labour. 
 
The ILO sets ratifiable and binding international standards on a wide range of labour-related matters. Worker, employer and government representatives from all over the world meet on equal terms within this &quot;tripartite&quot; UN agency. All three groups draw up and adopt the ILO's standards, and all three monitor national governments' compliance with them once they are in force. 
 
Occupational health and safety is a major focus of these ILO norms, and organised labour has been one of the main driving forces behind the adoption and application of the standards. 
 
No such labour representation exists within the ISO, where strong corporate influence is brought to bear. The ISO is known mainly for two &quot;families&quot; of standards - ISO 9000 on quality management and ISO 14000 on environmental management. Through worldwide standardisation, ISO helps to speed the globalisation process by reducing &quot;technical barriers to trade&quot;. 
 
Any ISO move into the health and safety field would also be market-driven. In fact, the voting proposal now before the ISO's national member organisations argues that it &quot;will enable a faster response to market needs than could be met through the development of a standard in partnership with the ILO ...&quot; 
 
The proposal comes from influential ISO member the British Standards Institute. BSI wants to set up an ISO technical committee on occupational health and safety management systems, with the aim of &quot;developing a non-certifiable ISO standard based on [existing UK standard] BS 8800:1996&quot;. The ISO's national member organisations have until 10 March to vote on the British motion. 
 
BSI, meanwhile, got the industrialists on board by issuing a joint communique on 21 January with the multinational companies' Industry Cooperation on Standards and Conformity Assessment (ICSCA). &quot;ILO, due to its scope and membership, is not an appropriate organisation to publish an international standard on occupational health and safety management systems,&quot; BSI and ICSCA jointly opined. &quot;Instead, ILO is encouraged to participate actively in work in this area, through its liaison with ISO ...&quot; 
 
If it gets the green light from its members, this will be the ISO's second attempt to wrest the health and safety brief from the ILO. 
 
At the beginning of 1997, the ISO decided to discontinue its previous efforts to to draw up occupational health and safety management system standards. This followed an ISO seminar which found that the ILO, precisely because of its tripartite structure, was the more appropriate forum. 
 
Subsequently, the ILO drafted non-mandatory guidelines on occupational health and safety management systems, drawing on a detailed review of standards and codes of practice worldwide. These guidelines are due to be tested this year. 
 
&quot;The ILO is the proper forum for these efforts,&quot; declared Fred Higgs in Brussels today. Higgs is the General Secretary of the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), which has helped shape a number of major ILO health and safety initiatives. 
 
&quot;We call upon ICEM member unions, and all others who believe that workers are entitled to a say on occupational health and safety management, to press their national ISO member organisations for a 'no' vote on this motion,&quot; Higgs said. 
 
&quot;Global health and safety management standards in the workplace are not the sole prerogative of the big corporations,&quot; Higgs insisted. &quot;Organised labour must have a full say on this vital standard-setting activity. When workplace health and safety are at stake, workers are experts.&quot;

World Health And Safety Norms: ILO or ISO

Rio Tinto subsidiary Energy Resources in Australia enters a Northern Territory courtroom today to face landmark criminal charges under the NT&rsquo;s Mining Management Act. The firm is charged with contaminating miners&rsquo; 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 ICEM&rsquo;s ExxonMobil Global Workers&rsquo; Network, led by US affiliate PACE, helped achieve a first collective agreement for ExxonMobil gas production workers in the US state of New Mexico. Following two years of struggle, the Native American workforce chartered as PACE Local 5-50 won a US$2,000 ratification bonus and a wage re-opener in October 2004. PACE conducted two mass mobilizations of all unionized ExxonMobil workers to aid the new union members in the American southwest. More details can be found at the Network&rsquo;s website, www.exxonmobil-solidarity.org.

US Affiliate PACE Wins Gains for ExxonMobil Workers

The ICEM&rsquo;s 4th Bridgestone Workers&rsquo; 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&rsquo;s big Santa Andre tyre plant near Sao Paulo.

ICEM’s Bridgestone Network Meets in Brazil

US affiliate PACE criticized ExxonMobil for discriminatory practices against Native Americans in the state of New Mexico at a gas production site. After organizing with PACE two years ago, workers are still without a first collective agreement. ExxonMobil has denied the mostly Native American workforce a pay raise now for the second consecutive year. &ldquo;To single out Native Americans after a year in which ExxonMobil achieved US$21.5 billion in profits, its CEP garnered US$28.7 million in total compensation, and almost all ExxonMobil employees received some wage increase, to treat them differently from other workers appears overtly discriminatory to us,&rdquo; said PACE Executive Vice President Jim Pannell. He cited union data that the gas workers earn US$1.30-to-$2.66 per hour less than other company workers in the US.

PACE Takes on ExxonMobil Over Native American Rights

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, &ldquo;ExxonMobil has now run out of excuses and reasons&rdquo; 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

US affiliate PACE, together with national center AFL-CIO and a host of other ExxonMobil shareholders convinced the Texas-based company to include a statement of intent to uphold the ILO&rsquo;s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work in its 2004 Corporate Citizenship Report. The union, Amnesty International and other socially concerned stockholders, owning an accumulative 7.2 million shares, agreed to withdraw a shareholder proposal mandating the firm to adopt a workplace human rights policy based on the 1998 ILO Declaration.

PACE, Others Hold ExxonMobil Accountable on ILO’s Work Rights

The ICEM has signed yet another Global Framework Agreement. Together with Swedish affiliate Svenska Papersindustriarbetaref&ouml;rbundet, the ICEM on 15 April became signatory with Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget (SCA) to maintain high health, safety, environment and workers&rsquo; rights standards. SCA will formally launch the agreement in June with a public campaign, and will follow that by distributing the agreement in respective languages to all its global worksites.

ICEM, Swedish Pappers Union Sign Global Agreement with SCA

90 percent of Turkish glass production has been halted by a strike launched on 24 May. 

<img height="157" alt="" src="" width="380" />
photo: Kristal-İş 
Called by the glass, cement, ceramic and earth workers' union Kristal-İş, the strike has hit major glass production companies within Turkey's Şişe-Cam group. Some 6,000 workers are involved. 
 
The main issues are pay and subcontracting. The union has been negotiating a new collective agreement with Şişe-Cam since last December, but bargaining broke down over the employers' refusal to consider wage increases in line with inflation. Şişe-Cam insists that real pay will have to go down. The employers say that the International Monetary Fund programme for Turkey calls for cuts in workers' purchasing power. 
<img height="182" alt="" src="" width="380" />
photo: Kristal-İş 

Subcontracting of labour is on the increase in the Turkish glass industry, and Kristal-İş is firmly opposed to this trend. Kristal-İş also wants an assurance that all Şişe-Cam workers who want to join the union will be allowed to do so. Managers in some Şişe-Cam subsidiaries have been denying workers the right to organise, Kristal-İş says. 
 
At the global level, Kristal-İş is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). 
Subcontracting of labour is on the increase in the Turkish glass industry, and Kristal-İş is firmly opposed to this trend. Kristal-İş also wants an assurance that all Şişe-Cam workers who want to join the union will be allowed to do so. Managers in some Şişe-Cam subsidiaries have been denying workers the right to organise, Kristal-İş says. At the global level, Kristal-İş is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM).

Turkish Glass Strike Over Pay and Subcontracting

Norwegian electricity workers will strike this Friday over proposed legal changes that could allow large-scale outsourcing of jobs in the industry. 
 
The draft law is seen as a prelude to privatisation of the country's electricity sector, which is now mainly under state and municipal control. So far, the government has ignored calls from the power workers' union EL &amp; IT and the national labour confederation LO to withdraw the legislation. 
 
A first two-hour protest strike on 11 May will bring out 4,500 electricity workers across the country, EL &amp; IT announced yesterday. Altogether, the Norwegian power industry employs about 18,000 people. 
 
The union argues that outsourcing would compromise both security of supply and work safety. It would also pose a threat to electricity workers' jobs and employment conditions. 
 
At the global level, EL &amp; IT is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). 
 
The strike was announced as the Norwegian trade union confederation LO was holding its annual congress. EL &amp; IT delegates to the congress, which is continuing, asked the Norwegian trade union movement as a whole to express support for the strike and to oppose electricity privatisation. Market-oriented restructuring in the sector had already resulted in higher prices to the consumer, EL &amp; IT's Svein Davidsen told the congress. Privatisation would mean &quot;centralisation and foreign ownership&quot;, and therefore the end of local control. 
 
The LO congress also heard a call for a tenfold increase in Norway's consumption of natural gas by the year 2010. A resolution tabled by the ICEM-affiliated oil and petrochemical workers' union NOPEF argues that greater industrial use of Norwegian gas reserves would cut pollution and boost employment. 
 
A switch to gas-fired electricity generation could cut Norway's CO2 emissions by 60 percent, NOPEF's Lars Myhre told the congress. Myhre, who chairs the ICEM energy workers' section, also said more gas should be used as a feedstock for Norwegian industry - notably the petrochemical sector, which &quot;stands ready to expand its activities if access to gas as a raw material is ensured.&quot; To that end, he called for the construction of a new gas pipeline to Norway's industrial Grenland region. Transport was another sector where greater use of gas would cut pollution, Myhre said. A transition to gas-powered ferries would create many new jobs, he pointed out. 
 
In similar vein, a motion to the LO congress from the ICEM-affiliated Norwegian chemical workers' union NKIF calls for the recuperation of energy from industrial processes. With proper public support, the union argues, Norwegian industry alone could retrieve almost 10 terawatt hours of energy per year from its own production processes. 
 
 
 
POSTSCRIPT: STRIKE SUCCEEDED WITHOUT HAPPENING 
 
Thanks to intensive union lobbying, and to the strike announcement by EL &amp; IT, a majority of Norwegian members of parliament had agreed by 10 May to vote against the draft legal changes to which the unions objected. The strike was therefore called off at the last minute, having achieved its aims just before it was held. The formal parliamentary vote will take place towards the end of this month.

Norwegian Power Strike Called Over Outsourcing Plan

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