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The Australian Federal Court today ordered mining and materials multinational BHP to cease offering and entering into individual contracts with members of its Pilbara workforce. 
 
The decision is a stunning victory for the Australian unions and for collective bargaining, with the court upholding all three grounds in the unions' case. 
 
The unions submitted that there was a &quot;serious arguable case&quot; that BHP had breached the law through its industrial bribery in the Pilbara by: 
 
- Prejudicing employees because of their union membership 
 
- Inducing employees to leave their union 
 
- Breaching a term of the Contract of Employment which provided that BHP should honour collective bargaining and not enter into individual contracts. 
 
The court's decision is the biggest victory for the Australian trade union movement since the waterfront dispute of 1998. 
 
&quot;BHP should immediately abandon its disastrous deunionisation campaign and respect the right of Australian workers to bargain collectively through their unions,&quot; commented Australian mining and allied workers' union the CFMEU today. 
 
At the global level, the CFMEU is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), which has been backing the campaign for labour rights at BHP.

BHP Must Halt Individual Job Contracts in Australia

A new website launched today highlights anti-union practices by ceramics, materials and construction multinational Imerys. 
 
American union the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers (PACE) and the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), jointly announced the start-up of the website on French-headquartered Imerys. PACE is an ICEM affiliate. 
 
&quot;The website allows Imerys workers and their unions throughout the world to communicate, share information and learn about the 'union-busting' practices of Imerys in the US,&quot; said PACE President Boyd Young. 
 
Imerys has been conducting a hostile campaign against union members and supporters at its plants in Georgia and Alabama. In Sylacauga, Alabama, Imerys management hired a professional &quot;union-buster', held mandatory anti-union meetings, and showed a film which implied that US unions are controlled by organised crime and that they cause plants to be closed. Imerys is also using a &quot;secret&quot; manual, uncovered by PACE, which instructs supervisors on how to conduct the anti-union campaign. 
 
PACE has filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board alleging that Imerys management harassed, threatened and spied on union supporters. Excerpts from the &quot;secret&quot; manual, a summary of legal charges, and an interactive message board are on the website. 
 
Fred Higgs, ICEM General Secretary, stated: &quot;Imerys so far has refused to stop its anti-union practices, and we will assist US workers who are battling for union representation in whatever way we can.&quot; 
 
The ICEM held a press conference on January 20 in Brussels, together with the Belgian General Labour Federation (FGTB/ABVV) and ICEM Belgian affiliate the Centrale Generale/Algemene Centrale, calling upon the Frere family to intervene. The Frere family controls 23 percent of Imerys shares through one of its many holding companies. The ICEM set up meetings with French and British union affiliates, who also represent workers at Imerys plants, and have pledged support for the campaign.

Imerys Campaign: Unions Launch Global Website

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

A pipeline project between Chad and Cameroon headed by ExxonMobil has come under scrutiny with a study detailing abuse of workers by two contractors, TCC and Subsahara Services. US affiliate PACE and NGOs the union is working with have brought the issue to the attention of the US supermajor in ongoing talks over human and trade union rights at company worksites. The study says contract workers are not paid for certain social benefits; violations of work rules exist regarding the number of working hours; non-payment to workers who are injured is prevalent; and the firms are absent of plans regarding demobilization, professional reconversion and social reinsertion.

ExxonMobil Stands Accused of Pipeline Abuses in West Africa

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. &ldquo;Our members at Hibernia and Terra Nova have waited far too long to get Coordinator Joe Gargiso. &ldquo;We prefer to negotiate terms but employer resistance is forcing us into following the mandatory first contract arbitration procedure.&rdquo;

Arbitration Sought to Settle Canadian Offshore Oil Dispute

Members of Canadian affiliate Communications, Energy and Paperworkers (CEP) Local 689 struck Finnish papermaker UPM Kymmene 16 December in Miramichi, New Brunswick, over the firm&rsquo;s refusal to table the paper industry&rsquo;s pattern agreement for eastern Canada. Some 790 CEP members at a kraft pulp mill and a fine papers mill are striking to gain the pattern set when CEP signed a six-year accord with Abitibi-Consolidated last July.

CEP in Canada Strikes Finnish Paper Company UPM Kymmene

Belgian affiliate CG-FGTB held a day of manifestation 21 December followed by strikes at glass plants in protest to Glaverbel&rsquo;s decision to eliminate 284 out of 840 jobs. The protests, which included the white-collar Belgian union SETCa-FGTB and FNV Bondgenoten of The Netherlands, come as Glaverbel rapidly expands in eastern Europe and Russia. Glaverbel, Europe&rsquo;s second largest flat glass maker, is owned by Japanese petrochemical producer Asahi Glass, which bought a majority stake of the firm in 1981, upped its share to 90% in 2001 and purchased the remaining 10% a year later.

Belgian Unions Protest Japanese Glass Restructuring

Pay rises are combined with job creation measures in the new collective agreement for Germany's 30,000 rubber industry workers. 
 
This is the first sectoral agreement reached this year by the IG BCE union, which covers a wide range of process, chemical, mining and energy industries. The rubber sector deal is a &quot;first benchmark for the 2000 bargaining round,&quot; emphasised Werner Bischoff, IG BCE's head of collective bargaining. 
 
Employment-boosting measures are an important part of the new agreement, in line with the current &quot;Alliance For Jobs&quot; between unions, employers and Germany's social democrat/environmentalist federal government. 
 
For example, improvements to early retirement provisions will mean that rubber workers aged 55 and above can opt to work half-time while continuing to be paid at least 85 percent of their last full-time net wage. For workers on a three-shift roster, the corresponding figure will be 95 percent. 
 
At the same time, a new employment promotion fund to be administered jointly by the employers and the union will help to finance early retirement by rubber workers. Payments from the fund will virtually eliminate the net financial difference between retirement at age 60 and retirement at the legal age of 65. 
 
&quot;We have lived up to our responsibilities and made our contribution to the success of the Alliance for Jobs,&quot; Bischoff said. 
 
On wages, the agreement provides an overall increase of 2.9 percent in Western Germany, effective from 1 October this year until at least 31 October 2001. Workers will pay 0.4 percent of the increase into the employment promotion fund. In Eastern Germany, the increase will be 3.2 percent, effective from 1 March 2001 for one year. Here too, 0.4 percent of the pay rise will go into the employment promotion fund. 
 
At the global level, IG BCE is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM).

German Rubber Industry Deal Boosts Jobs And Pay

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

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