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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’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’s reprieve for 500 Continental Tyre workers at the Stücken plant in Hannover. The plant was scheduled to close at the end of 2006, but ICEM’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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A four-hour general strike across Italy is scheduled for 25 November in protest to the Berlusconi government’s proposed 2006 budget. 
All three major trade union federations—CGIL, CISL and UIL, numbering 11.2 million workers—have called for the strike.
The Berlusconi budget, which must be approved by Parliament by year’s end, calls for US$24 billion in spending cuts, plus regressive revenue-raising measures. Among the proposed cuts are US$2.4 billion in social security costs that companies now must pay for the welfare of workers.

Italy Poised for General Strike on 25 November

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Workers at Mauritanian contractor El Majabaat El Koubra Tours (MKT) remain on strike due to the oil services firm’s sacking of union activists. 
The Energy and Petroleum Workers’ Union (CGTM) of Mauritania conducted a march and demonstration against MKT on behalf of the strikers on 18 November in the capital city of Nouakchott. The event drew over 1,000 protestors. 
The ICEM brought the dispute to international attention and on the day of the rally, MKT, a transport and logistic provider to Australian-based Woodside Petroleum, directed a four-page letter to the global union federation. The company admitted to the firings, but failed to justify reasons why the workers were sacked. 
In early October, MKT and the union reached a protocol agreement over terms, which included union elections for workers. But within days, the company sacked 16 workers, provoking the start of the strike on 14 October. A day later in efforts to reconcile the dispute, MKT agreed to take back ten workers, but not six others who were counted on by fellow workers to stand for election to union positions. 
The ICEM will continue to press MKT and Woodside for justice and recognition of legitimate trade union rights.

Contract Service Workers Remain on Strike in Mauritania

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Protests in Thailand against contract and agency labour continue in efforts to amend the New Labor Protection Act of 1998, which disproportionably created a mass of contract workers that possess no rights and no direct employee-employer relationship with the actual companies for which they work. 
On 20 November, 1,000 workers protested in front of Government House in Bangkok and, on 24 November, a similar protest in front of the Labour Ministry in the Dindaeng section of Bangkok occurred when Prime Minister Thaskin Sinawatra visited the ministry. This latter rally, attended by 500, called attention to Goodyear Tire and Rubber’s misdirected decision to shift contract workers in its rubber stock and warehouse operations from its own employment rolls to a contract agency following months of pressure by the ICEM. 
The two protests were preceded by a forum sponsored by the Thai Labour Solidarity Committee entitled “An Unjust Labour Contract: Stop Contract Labour System and Poverty.”

Thai Workers Protest to Government on Contract and Agency Labour

Tomorrow, a general strike will occur throughout France, called by the nation’s five major trade union confederations. French workers are saying no to privatisations, no to the new jobs contract proposed by the government, no to erosion of job security, and yes to public service investments and fair pay gains. Some 140 public demonstrations will be held across France, and a weekend opinion poll says 74% of French citizens support the day of actions. The strike has postponed—at least temporarily—a government campaign to promote partial privatisation of Electricité de France (EDF). Release of analysts’ reports of EDF’s initial public offering commissioned by the government have been ordered delayed until after 4 October strikes.

French Trade Unions Stage 4 October Actions

ICEM’s Global Network of ExxonMobil Workers’ Solidarity is spotlighting recent deaths and physical abuses to protesters among 4,000 contract workers who have been denied overtime pay by Chad-Cameroon Constructors (TCC), a pipeline-building consortium led by Esso-Tchad, Chevron, and Petronas of Malaysia. 
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On 18 September, national gendarmerie of Chad violently broke up a peaceful sit-in, leaving three dead, three with serious injuries and 30 arrested. Workers have been protesting in the capital of N’djamena and in the southern oil regions of Chad. 
The network’s attention on the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, opened in 2003 and now carrying 200,000 barrels-per-day, comes just months after Amnesty International issued a comprehensive report on how commercial contracts between Chad’s government and private-sector interests have destroyed human rights for both workers and civilians. 
Contract workers are owed some US$12 million in overtime wages collectively for completing the US$3.7 billion pipeline ahead of schedule. Visit the website of the ExxonMobil workers’ network at www.ExxonMobil-solidarity.org.

Two Dead Among Contractors on Chad-Cameroon Pipeline

A bitter chrome dispute in South Africa in which security guards fired tear gas at strikers of affiliate National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) ended last month. Ferrochrome workers at Rustenburg and Wonderkop won remuneration, leave and attendance bonuses and provident fund benefits. The strike against Xstrata plc. began 29 July and involved over 1,000 NUMSA members. At the strike’s outset, guards fired tear gas at 250 protestors in Rustenburg who were trying to preventstrikebreakers from entering the worksite.

Chrome Strike in South Africa Won by Affiliate NUMSA

Despite Thailand Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra declaring the 6 February election victory of his Thai Rak Thai Party a mandate for the privatisation of electric utility EGAT, ICEM affiliate EGAT-LU will continue to resist. The government went through the motions to conduct a survey among EGAT's 27,000 workers that offered 18 restructuring options with most centring on different forms of privatising the utility. EGAT-LU sent a letter to the Energy Ministry demanding a stop to the survey and again asking that a national referendum be held to keep the power sector as part of the public infrastructure.

Opposition to Thai Government’s Electric Privatisation

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A dispute has been settled and a first collective agreement is in place in Malaysia’s paper industry. ICEM assisted its affiliate Paper and Paper Products Manufacturing Employees’ Union (PPPMEU), as did Norwegian trade union Fellesforbundet in achieving recognition and a contract at a Malaysian Newsprint Industries mill in Pahang. 
 
Malaysian Newsprint is 34% owned by Norske Skog, with whom ICEM and Fellesforbundet have a Global Framework Agreement. The matter was brought before the Norwegian-based company by Fellesforbundet. 
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A union was formed at the nine-year-old mill in October 2004 and, in March 2005, a government ministry verified PPMEU certification. The union submitted proposals toward a first collective agreement in July 2005, but the company stalled in meeting its bargaining obligations. When the company finally did meet with the union, it informed the union that 70 of 220 workers were in “executive” capacities and exempt from the union, even though they perform manual tasks. 
 
The ICEM and Fellesforbundet attention to the dispute, and no doubt the formal intent-to-strike notice issued by PPPMEU on 15 May, brought pressure on management to settle. The initial three-year collective agreement will be backdated to 1 October 2005. Even though the scope of the bargaining unit wasn’t resolved, it will now be submitted to a Malaysian Industrial Court. Other partners in the newsprint mill include the Hong Leong Group of Malaysia (34%), the New Straits Times newspaper (21%), and Rimbuan Hijau Group of Malaysia (11%).

Global Agreement, Strike Threat Brings First Accord to Malaysian Paper Mill

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ICEM’s rubber and chemical workers’ affiliate in Turkey, Lastik-Īş, announced late in April that it would strike the four Turkish plants of three major tyre producers if the companies did not take a different track in negotiations. But that announcement was pre-empted by one of the companies, Goodyear Lastikleri AS, which locked out 1,300 workers at its two Turkish factories. 
 
Lastik-Īş has been negotiating with Goodyear, Pirelli Lastikleri, and Brisa Bridgestone Sabanci since mid-December over a renewal agreement covering 3,500 workers. Demands by employers for concessions on health care provisions, lower rates of pay for new workers, reductions in paid holidays, and flexibility regarding the use of contract workers caused the union’s Executive Board to call strikes at the plants starting on 22 May. 
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In a statement issued by Lastik-Īş, the union said: “The main reason why the conflict has continued so far is not the demands of our union, but the attitudes of employers who insist on dismantling our gained rights.” 
 
Goodyear Lastikleri AS, 74.6% owned of Goodyear Tire and Rubber of the US, sacked a total of 109 workers at its tyre plants in Izmit and Adapazari in November 2005, as part of a restructuring move. Brisa Bridgestone Sabanci, in which Bridgestone of Japan controls a 40% stake, employs 1,000 workers at a plant in Izmit, while Italian Pirelli employs another 1,100 workers at a facility, also in Izmit.

Goodyear Jumps Gun; Locks Out Turkish Tyre Workers

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