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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

Gustavo Soler, President of the El Paso section of the energy workers' union Sintramienerg&eacute;tica, has been murdered in Colombia. 
 
His death adds one more name to the long list of Colombians slain for defending workers' rights. 
 
Labour activists are among the most frequent targets for assassination in Colombia - mainly by right-wing death squads, and sometimes also by guerrilla movements. 
 
Sintramienerg&eacute;tica seems to have been singled out for particular attention. 
 
In a protest letter to Colombia's President Andr&eacute;s Pastrana today, Fred Higgs points out that in the El Paso-Cesar area alone, five Sintramienerg&eacute;tica activists have been murdered this year. This is &quot;a real policy of extermination directed against the leadership of Sintramienerg&eacute;tica,&quot; writes Higgs, who is the General Secretary of the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). 
 
Amnesty International has described attacks on trade unionists in Colombia as &quot;widespread and systematic.&quot; 
 
Human rights campaigners inside the country allege that the death squads are linked to the Colombian military. 
 
Colombia is far and away the most dangerous country in which to be a trade unionist, according to the 2001 trade union rights survey just published by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). 
 
Last year, the ICFTU says, no less than 153 of the 209 trade unionists assassinated worldwide were in Colombia. 
 
Many other Colombian trade unionists and their families are subject to death threats and other harassment, and some have &quot;disappeared&quot;. 
 
Almost all the murders of trade unionists in Colombia have gone unexplained and unpunished. 
 
&quot;It is inadmissible that crimes of this kind keep on happening and the perpetrators keep on escaping punishment,&quot; Higgs tells President Pastrana. &quot;It is the responsibility of your Government and of your country's Supreme Court of Justice to track down and punish the murderers

Another Colombian Union Leader Murdered

Mining giant Anglo American stands accused of reneging on a commitment to make anti-retroviral drugs available to all its South African workers. 
 
Instead, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) says, Anglo now plans to give preferential treatment to &quot;senior employees&quot; - apparently because the company thinks that providing anti-retrovirals throughout its workforce would be too expensive. 
 
The NUM finds this policy &quot;inherently racist and discriminatory, with beneficiaries of the scheme being, in the main, white workers and the black elite. The foot soldiers who generate wealth in the bowels of the earth are excluded.&quot; 
 
Both the NUM and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) have expressed &quot;dismay&quot; over Anglo's decision. 
 
When Anglo originally announced that it would make anti-retrovirals available to all its workers, COSATU hailed the policy as a breakthrough. However, the NUM, which is a COSATU affiliate, saw the move by Anglo as a publicity gimmick. 
 
&quot;The decision to limit provision of anti-AIDS drugs has vindicated the NUM's position,&quot; say COSATU and the NUM in a joint statement. Anglo's aboutface is &quot;a betrayal of the workers who produce the company's profits,&quot; the unions insist. &quot;Anglo has once again demonstrated that the company cares more for profits than workers' life.&quot; 
 
The NUM sees Anglo's policy reversal as a breach of the national agreement recently signed between the union and South Africa's mining employers. 
 
COSATU and the NUM &quot;call on the company to reverse its decision and provide anti AIDS drugs to all its workers. The NUM will engage the company in the coming days and will consider the necessary steps that may lead to a strike if the Anglo does not reverse the decision. COSATU will support the NUM in its attempts to reverse the decision.&quot; 
 
At the global level, the NUM is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM).

Anglo-American Called Racist After AIDS Drug &#039;Betrayal&#039;

Swiss unions have taken mining giant Glencore to task over the anti-union practices of its Peruvian company Iscaycruz S.A. 
 
Iscaycruz is trying to destroy a union created by its workers this May, the Swiss trade union confederation USS/SGB says. 
 
The USS has sent a protest letter to Swiss-headquartered Glencore International AG on behalf of all of Switzerland's trade unions, including the industrial and construction workers' SIB/GBI. At the global level, the SIB is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). 
 
The Swiss unions say their Peruvian colleagues were threatened with dismissal if they did not resign from their union, the FNTMMSP. After intimidating a number of workers into leaving the union, the company this August applied to have the FNTMMSP derecognised - on the grounds that it no longer had the legally required number of members for collective bargaining! 
 
The USS is pressing Glencore to ensure that its Peruvian company respects &quot;the right of workers to establish and to join trade union organisations ...; the right to collective bargaining; the right not to be dismissed without due cause.&quot; 
 
A copy of the letter has gone to the Swiss Secretary of State for the Economy, and the USS says it will raise the matter with the government if Glencore does not meet its demands.

Glencore Lambasted Over Anti-Unionism in Peru

For the first time ever, a Canadian union has organised workers on an offshore oil platform. 
 
The breakthrough was announced yesterday by the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union (CEP). At the global level, the CEP is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). 
 
The vote by workers on the Hibernia oil platform, off the coast of Newfoundland, sets an important precedent. 
 
As the neighbouring USA seeks new energy supplies, oil and gas are becoming one of Canada's biggest industries. So far based mainly on oil sands, where union organisation is already significant, Canadian oil production has rapidly expanded offshore. In 2000, about 89,000 people were directly employed in Canada's upstream crude oil and gas industry. 
 
The CEP has spent the last four years supporting efforts to bring union protection to the nearly 400 drillers, roughnecks, nurses, cooks and others who work aboard the Hibernia platform, more than 315 kilometres out in the ocean. 
 
&quot;I hope these are the first of many offshore oil workers - who face hazardous and stressful working conditions on the high seas - to benefit from the protection of a union,&quot; said CEP President Brian Payne. The victory opens the door for the CEP to start unionising other offshore platforms, he stated. 
 
&quot;The employer used every trick in the book to try to keep the union out,&quot; Payne said. But he noted that the organising process should be more efficient in future, after action by the Newfoundland labour minister involving round-table discussions with CEP participation.

CEP Organises First Offshore Workers in North America

Individuals inside Russian President Vladimir Putin's administration are reportedly behind a new &quot;association of trade unions&quot;, controlled by employers and the State. 
 
Any such structure would breach the International Labour Organisation's core standards on union freedom, Fred Higgs points out in a letter to President Putin. 
 
Higgs is General Secretary of the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). He asks Putin to &quot;personally intervene&quot; and to &quot;verify the present situation and inform us of your conclusions.&quot; The matter is urgent, Higgs says, as the new &quot;association' apparently plans to hold a congress on 26 October. 
 
The ICEM is particularly concerned because the self-styled &quot;Association of Trade Union Organisations of Workers In Pan-National and Transnational Enterprises&quot; seems to be targeting company-level or local-level branches of ICEM-affiliated Russian unions, in an effort to split the branches off from the national unions. Information reaching the ICEM also suggests that at least one of the Vice-Presidents of the new &quot;union association&quot; is, in fact, an employer. 
 
The new &quot;association's&quot; methods have been sharply criticised by ICEM unions in Russia. They are disturbed by the &quot;association's&quot; attempts to draw in members of the all-Russian trade unions and large trade union organisations. This drive has, they say, been accompanied by pressure from a number of government officials upon the leaderships of the unions and labour federations concerned. 
 
In a joint declaration, the Russian trade union confederations FNPR, VKT and KTR condemned the new &quot;association&quot; as a bid to &quot;create a trade union structure under the control of the employers and state bodies to destroy the existing all-Russian trade unions ... undermining the developing system of social partnership.&quot; 
 
The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) has also asked President Putin to investigate the &quot;association&quot;.

Putin Staffers Behind Russia&#039;s Yellow Union?

Twelve miners are missing, presumed dead, after a series of large methane explosions at an American coalmine on Sunday. 
 
Fires are still burning inside the methane-filled mine and searches cannot yet resume, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) said today. 
 
However, little hope remains for the missing miners, ten of whom had re-entered the mine after the first explosion in an attempt to rescue colleagues. The accident happened at Jim Walters Resources No. 5 coalmine in Brookwood, Alabama. 
 
UMWA President Cecil Roberts said that the miners' &quot;heroic efforts&quot; were &quot;a true testament to their courage and unwavering dedication to others working in a profession that daily puts them face to face with inherent danger.&quot; 
 
The first blast is thought to have happened after rocks loosened in a roof collapse hit a battery charger, causing sparks that ignited the methane. The miners who went back in search of their colleague were probably caught by the second explosion, which occurred 45 minutes later. The mine is North America's deepest vertical shaft coal pit, and employs 402 people. 
 
A miner who was rescued alive, but badly burned, died of his injuries yesterday. Three other injured miners are being treated in hospital. 
 
If the death toll of 13 is confirmed, this will have been America's worst mining accident in 17 years. 
&nbsp;
US's UMWA Information on the Mining Disaster: 
 
Press Release: 01/22/2003 - UMWA Investigation Report Details Conditions Leading to the September 2001 Brookwood (Ala.) Mine Disaster - Union Calls on MSHA to Reopen its Investigation into the Disaster 
 
UMWA Report on Jim Walter Resources #5 Mine Disaster (Under 2mb PDF) 
Ed. Note: Updated PDF as of 2/5/03. Filesize reduced to under 2mb. 
 
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 
 
&quot;Whether they were firefighters from Brooklyn, New York, or miners from Brookwood, Alabama, America's heroes are mostly ordinary people who do extraordinary things with extraordinary courage&quot; 
Elaine Chao, U.S. Secretary of Labor 
 
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 
 
On September 23rd, two explosions rocked the Jim Walter No. 5 underground mine in Brookwood, Alabama. Thirteen coal miners were killed in the explosions, twelve of whom had rushed into the mine to save their trapped co-workers. This is the single largest coal mining disaster in the United States since 1984. 
You can help the families of this tragedy by sending your contributions to: 
 
 
United Mine Workers of America L.U. 2368 Fund 
P.O. Box 99 
Brookwood, Alabama 35444 

UMWA's Fallen Brothers:
 
Gaston Adams Jr. 56 
Ray Ashworth 53 
Nelson Banks 52 
Dave Blevins 52 
Clarence Boyd 38 
Wendell Johnson 52 
John Knox 44 
Dennis Mobley 56 
Charles Nail 59 
Joe Riggs 51 
Charles Smith 44 
Joe Sorah 46 
Terry Stewart 
44 
 
Injured 
 
Tony Key 49 
Michael McIe NA 
Skip Palmer NA

13 Feared Dead In US Mining Accident

Archive

Pakistan’s National Labour Centre Rallies Over Union Restrictions

ExxonMobil Stands Accused of Pipeline Abuses in West Africa

Arbitration Sought to Settle Canadian Offshore Oil Dispute

CEP in Canada Strikes Finnish Paper Company UPM Kymmene

Another Colombian Union Leader Murdered

Anglo-American Called Racist After AIDS Drug 'Betrayal'

Glencore Lambasted Over Anti-Unionism in Peru

CEP Organises First Offshore Workers in North America

Putin Staffers Behind Russia's Yellow Union?

13 Feared Dead In US Mining Accident

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