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Soaring gas and electricity prices, coupled with Britain’s pension funding crisis, has caused the closure of a recycled paper mill in Fife, Scotland. Smith, Anderson & Co. Ltd. announced closure of its Fettykill Mills operation, resulting in the loss of 106 jobs. 
 
ICEM affiliate Amicus has been working with the owners of the 146-year-old mill to get the government to address high energy prices, rates which have risen 50% since last year when a restructuring plan was implemented in efforts to save the mill.
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 “Once again, high energy prices and the pension crisis in the UK have contributed towards the decision to close another mill,” stated Amicus Assistant General Secretary Tony Burke. “This is a devastating blow to the paper industry in the UK and manufacturing in Scotland,” said Burke, adding the union’s priority now is to work with staff in order that they find other jobs. 
 
Smith, Anderson & Co. will continue to run paper converting operations for the manufacture of paper bags from two Scottish plants, employing 245 staff, but the company’s recycling collection company, Securecycle, will likely be sold. 
In Scotland over the past eight years, 11 paper mills have been closed, leaving only six in operation. In the past two years alone, 800 Scottish paperworkers have faced redundancies.

Energy Prices, UK’s Pension Crisis Leads to Closure of Scottish Paper Mill

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French materials producer Imerys has reneged on a commitment made two years ago to British workers. The promise, made in 2004 when the company moved some jobs from Southwest England to Brazil, guaranteed that 800 other jobs would remain. 
 
However, in early July, Imerys dropped a proposed restructuring plan on all former English China Clay mining and manufacturing operations, which Imerys bought in 1999, near Cornwall and Devon, telling the communities that all 800 jobs would be gone and production will move to Brazil by 2008. With Imerys being the region’s largest private employer, such a scenario would be fatal to the economic lifeblood of the Southwest. The ICEM will again join with UK’s Transport & General Workers’ Union (TGWU), and two other UK trade unions representing Imerys workers, to resist the company’s destructive restructuring plan. 
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Early in 2005, Cornwall and Devon workers, together with their unions, fiercely resisted Imerys insistence on closing the final pension scheme and downgrading benefit levels for existing workers and retirees. That fight was waged to retain the spending power that thousands of workers and retirees had rightfully earned due to years on the job. Now the fight is survival. 
 
Since the proposed plan was uncovered just a week ago, TGWU has already organised a general stewards’ meeting and demanded from Imerys an immediate and preliminary meeting. In addition, an MP from the area, Matthew Taylor, representing Truro and St Austell, has scheduled an emergency debate on the economic consequences to the region in Parliament tomorrow, 11 July.

French-based Imerys Drops Bombshell on Southwest England

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US affiliate United Auto Workers (UAW) has successfully organised two PPG Industries auto-glass plants in recent weeks, and has a US government-conducted election scheduled at a third on 27 July. 
 
On 28 June, workers at a flat-glass plant in Evansville, state of Indiana, voted for UAW bargaining representation, and a week earlier, glass staff at a PPG factory in Crestline, state of Ohio, joined the UAW. The Evansville plant employs nearly 400 workers, while the Crestline factory has 260 bargaining unit jobs. 
The UAW election on 27 July is at a PPG Industries plant in O’Fallon, state of Missouri. The operation, a former Chemfil company worksite, produces metal and other fastenings for glass destined for the auto industry. The UAW currently represents workers at four American PPG plants and is active in the 16-union Joint Union Council of PPG Industries in North America.

UAW in US Succeeding in Organising Auto-Glass Factories

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The United Steelworkers (USW) in America on 30 June selected Michelin’s BF Goodrich tyre operations as the bargaining template in order to achieve a master rubber contract for 27,000 workers in North America. Talks with three major tyre producers, Michelin, Goodyear Tire & Rubber, and Bridgestone/Firestone (BSF), have already started. 
 
The current master labour agreement for the US tyre-making sector expires with all companies on 22 July, but the USW and the major tyre producers generally go beyond that deadline in negotiations. Smaller manufacturers in the US, such as Yokahoma, also follow the bargaining pattern. 
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USW represents some 4,000 Michelin workers at three BF Goodrich plants, while it covers 17,000 Goodyear workers at 12 plants and 6,000 BFS workers at eight tyre facilities. 
 
“Significant in the selection of BF Goodrich is the fact that we believe that we can set an industry pattern that looks after our retirees, enhances job security and protects standard of living for our active and retired members,” stated USW Lead Negotiator and Executive Vice President Ron Hoover.

Michelin Chosen for Tyre Bargaining Pattern in US Talks

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Sappi paperworkers at a Belgian mill staged a 24-hour strike on 5-6 July in protest of the South African company’s restructuring plan. The paper mill’s 700 workers seek to persuade the company not to cut 123 jobs from the pulp and coated papers mill. 
 
Management at the Lanaken mill claims the restructuring is merely a costs-savings measure, while the unions see it as mass redundancies and forced dismissals. The unions will use social dialogue to argue that cost-cutting should not go beyond not replacing those who retire combined with a tightening on the number of fixed-term contract workers that Sappi utilises. 
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Preliminary talks between the unions and management will occur on 18 July, with social dialogue on the restructuring plan to take place in September.

Sappi Paperworkers in Belgium Strike over Proposed Job Cuts

The UK’s Transport & General Workers’ Union (TGWU) has enlisted a core of allies, including the ICEM, to resist 800 job redundancies and closures to English China Clay (ECC) operations in the South West by Imerys. TGWU has mapped a comprehensive community and global campaign against the French-based building materials group, which purchased ECC in 1999, in efforts to block the sackings.
<img height="55" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/UKTGWU.gif" width="100"/>    <img height="51" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/UKAmicus.jpg" width="100"/>  <img height="100" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/UKGMB.gif" width="100"/>
  
The TGWU, together with two other UK trade unions representing Imerys workers in the South West, Amicus and the GMB, have already placed the dire economic consequences of the sackings squarely in front of both local and national government officials. They will now engage a full community awareness campaign aimed at pressuring Imerys to honour a pledge made two short two years ago. That pledge, made after some jobs were lost in the South West, promised that 800 other jobs would remain. 
 
The campaign will consist of mass meetings, rallies, and a petition that will be taken door-to-door across towns and villages of the region. The campaign is also aimed at the British government in hopes that initiatives can be put in place to retain the jobs. The ICEM will head up the campaign on the global level. 
 
The proposed restructuring plan of Imerys fell like a bombshell on the economic fragile South West, where the average Imerys worker earns an annual salary of ₤23,000, some ₤4,500 higher than the local incomes average. Imerys’ surprise announcement in early July said that by the start of 2008, nearly all ECC mines and processing facilities across Cornwall, Devon and Lee Moor would be shuttered, as it moves production of kaolin and high-grade coatings for the paper industry to Brazil. The company cited high energy costs as the reason. 
 
At an emergency debate session in the House of Commons on 11 July, MP Matthew Taylor from the South West said one in five households in the region would be directly affected by the proposed restructurings, “and the number is probably one in three when the knock-on effects are taken into consideration.” Taylor said besides the 800 direct jobs on the line, 800 other jobs likely would be lost due to reduced spending power in the South West.
<img height="119" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMCement.JPG" width="120"/>
  
The European Works Council (EWC) of Imerys responded with a terse 17 July message directed at the company. The statement condemned an Imerys decision to close a 100-member workplace in France, as well as the proposed mass layoffs in the UK. The EWC “objects against the recent decisions of the group of closing a site in France and a huge restructuring in the United Kingdom,” read the statement. 
 
“This strategy of de-localisation of the activities, here to Hungary and to Brazil, is guided only by the search for higher profits. The members of the EWC Committee require Imerys, which is in excellent economic and financial health, to assume the full social consequences of these decisions, both in France and in the United Kingdom. The EWC will also be extremely vigilant on the conditions of employment for the workers in Hungary and Brazil. 
 
“It is not enough that the director of Human Resources for the group, challenged on these subjects during the meeting of 6 July, claims to be open to social dialogue and negotiation. It is also his responsibility to make certain that this policy is applied by the local HR directors. As regarding social relations and also issues of health and safety, local management has carried out actions in total contradiction with principles posted by the Imerys group.” 
 
The overall financial health of Imerys, according to first quarter 2006 disclosures, has not been affected by high global energy prices. The company’s first quarter results show that sales had increased 10.8% over the same period in 2005, and net income was up 13.2% over that of the first quarter of last year.

Campaign Mounts to Block Shift of UK Jobs by Imerys

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Nigerian oil workers’ unions, steadfastly acting as NUPENGASSAN, met in a Joint National Executive Council (NEC) on 30 August and issued a mandate to both government and energy companies that violence must stop and that the unions’ longstanding demands must be seriously implemented. ICEM affiliates NUPENG and PENGASSAN plans a three-day warning strike, starting 13 September across all oil and gas installations of the region if immediate action is not undertaken. 
 
If the government fails to provide a peaceful and safe working environment for oil and gas workers in the region following the warning strike, the unions would call an indefinite strike. 
<img height="114" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/NigeriaNupeng.gif" width="110"/>        <img height="105" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/NigeriaPengassan.JPG" width="100"/>
Following the day-long meeting in Benin City, a communiqué was issued containing harsh words for both the Nigerian national government’s “poor response” to the rash of kidnappings along the Niger Delta as well as to state governments, which have displayed a “hypocritical and non-chalant attitude … in the deteriorating state of insecurity and criminality which now pervades the entire region.” 
 
The statement says that the recent federal policy by President Olusegun Obasanjo to meet force-with-force has only created “deepening insecurity” in the region. NUPENGASSAN’s complete NEC communiqué can be read <a href="/index.php?id=25&doc=1943&la=EN" type="internal">here</a>.
The two unions also condemned governmental handling in the release of a kidnapped PENGASSAN member last month. Comrade Nelson Ujeye was killed on 20 August when joint military and police troops ambushed a militant youth group on Niger Delta waters as he was about to be released. The communiqué called it “a grievous fratricidal sacrifice that arose from applying a negative approach.” The story of Comrade Nelson Ujeye’s abduction and subsequent death, including the ICEM’s statement on the incident, can be found in a recent InBrief Alert <a href="/?id=77&doc=1927&la=EN" type="internal">here</a>. 
 
The NEC also took note of the increasing number of cases of expatriate quota abuse inside the employment ranks of energy companies doing business in Nigeria. 
 
NUPENGASSAN, also at the meeting, reiterated its incriminations against the government’s privatisation authority in the sale of state-owned Eleme Petro Chemical Ltd. Due diligence was not done in investigating the buyer of the Port Harcourt olefins refinery, the three-year-old Thai company Indorama. The enterprise is vastly under-valued, according to the two unions. 
<img height="101" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMOil.JPG" width="100"/>
The NEC also condemned pipeline vandalism, as well as the fact that the government allowed the nation’s five refineries to become mere transport “conduits” of imported petroleum products, rather than emphasizing local refining of such products to meet Nigeria’s domestic needs. 
 
And finally, the unions’ grievances include strong objection to merging the Petroleum Training Institute, established by law to provide mid-level Nigerian staff to the oil and gas industries, into the University of Benin, and calls on the government to grant full autonomy to the Department of Petroleum Resources, so that it can effectively serve as the oil and gas regulator. 
 
The ICEM strongly supports the unions’ warning strike next week, as well as their other demands. The ICEM also calls on oil and gas companies operating in Nigeria to apply the same efforts and resources in securing a safe work and living environment for Nigerian oil workers, and their families, as they do for foreign national employees.

Violence-Plagued Niger Delta Must Heed Oil Workers’ Unions Call

The month-long strike by Norway’s NOPEF union that is beginning to cripple energy production across the country’s oil patch will get an airing today before a state mediator. It will be the government’s second attempt to resolve issues that prompted NOPEF to strike a selective list of oil service companies on 21 June. 
 
Efforts just prior to the start of the strike by the state mediator failed.
<img height="90" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/NorwayFlag.gif" width="120"/>
  
The strategic strike by 87 NOPEF trade unionists is aimed at normalising the national oil services’ work agreement with other national contracts inside Norway’s energy sector. Work schedules and working terms and conditions common to other staff inside the sector remains the central issue to the strike. 
 
The striking NOPEF members are employed by Halliburton, Baker Hughes, Schlumberger, Weatherford and Oceaneering. Other oil service companies such as Aker Kvaerner, Geoservices, and Acergy are also affected. Major oil companies that are losing time and money on well development projects, new drilling exploration, and maintenance include Statoil, ConocoPhillips, Norsk Hydro, Shell, ExxonMobil, and Chevron. 
 
Work has been interrupted at Statoil’s Snorre and Stratford platforms, and at the Norwegian state company’s northern Snøhvit and Kristin oil fields, while the strike has slowed work at Norsk Hydro’s Heidrun and Oseberg platforms, and at ConocoPhillip’s Ekofisk platform.

Mediation Today in NOPEF’s Oil Services Strike

Probes into deadly coal mine disasters in the Americas earlier this year are now coming into focus. And at two of the worst – the Sago mine blast in the US state of West Virginia on 2 January and the 19 February explosion at Grupo Mexico’s Pasta de Conchos No. 8 mine in Mexico’s Coahuila state – inadequate government safety monitoring and a reckless company safety culture are just part of the causes.
                      
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In Mexico, a report issued last week by the government’s National Human Rights Commission said, in 2004, safety officials of Mexico’s Labour Department identified 48 major problems in Grupo Mexico’s Minera Mexicana mine. The report added, however, that nothing was done to correct the deficiencies until just 12 days before the explosion. Sixty-five miners were killed in the February 2006 mine blast, the majority of them contract workers who were given no training and inadequate oxygen supply devices. Some 25 of the miners killed were members of Mexico’s Miners & Metalworkers Union (SNTMMSRM). 
 
The Human Rights Commission stated that Labour Department officials tolerated carelessness and neglect on behalf of company safety representatives, and that they “had full knowledge of the working conditions of the mine where the catastrophe occurred (that) infringed on security standards,” said a statement from the agency. The government knew of problems with lighting and underground signal systems, as well as gas and oil leaks and a faulty smoke-release system. 
 
In the US, a joint state and federal investigation into the Sago disaster that killed 12 miners has found that company officials had workers falsify documents. Testimony saw workers admitting they had signed documentation brought to them by bosses that they had attended safety classes and training, when, if fact, they had not. Sago is owned by the Wolf Run Mining Co., one of many coal mines in the eastern United States bought in bankruptcy proceedings by US-based investment house International Coal Group (IGC).
<img height="131" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMminingsector6.jpg" width="120"/>
 An in-depth investigation done by a Pennsylvania newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, also found that seals inside the non-union Sago mine’s safety chambers were poorly constructed, using materials unable to withstand the force of a methane explosion. 
 
IGC attempted to bar safety officials from ICEM affiliate United Mineworkers of America (UMWA) from playing a role in the Sago disaster’s investigation, even though miners and family members of victims sought such help. Under mine safety regulations in the US, such union assistance in non-union worksites is permissible if so requested. IGC had private security forces physically stop UMWA safety officials from entering the mine property following the explosion, and the US government had to sue the company in order that the mine safety law was honoured. A US District Court ruled in favour of UMWA involvement late in January, but IGC appealed that ruling to a higher court. Last month, the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district court’s verdict.

Mine Safety Probes in the Americas Progress

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South Africa’s National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) will conduct week-long commemorations all this week in tribute to a defining mining strike that occurred 60 years ago on 12 August. 
 
Hundreds of miners, then part of NUM’s predecessor, the Black Mineworkers’ Union, struck on that day in 1946 at Witwatersran for a wage increase of 60 shillings and an end to single sex hostels. The strike was met by white police and the private security forces of the mining bosses, who violently put down the strike, maiming and killing several mineworkers in the process. 
 
“It is important to recall the contributions made by these black mineworkers, their resilience and resistance under difficult times,” stated NUM President Senzeni Zokwana, who also is President of the ICEM. Zokwana specifically mentioned the names of J.B. Marks, J.J. Majoro, and Thabo Mofutsanyane as courageous trade union leaders who made a stand on behalf of black mineworkers. 
 
“The fact that the NUM is here today is due to the early efforts of these leaders and workers in organising mineworkers,” Zokwana said. 
 
The commemorations started yesterday when African National Congress Secretary General Kgalema Motlanthe addressed a NUM memorialisation event in Welkom, Free State. All of NUM’s 11 regions will conduct activities this week that will culminate in a march on Saturday, 12 August, on the offices of the Chamber of Mines in Johannesburg. On Wednesday, 9 August, a tribute honouring the 50th Anniversary of the Women’s March to Union Buildings will be held. This will recognise the constraints still facing women who work in South Africa’s mining industry, as well as honouring women who have lost their husbands in mining accidents.

60th Anniversary of South Africa’s Witwatersran Mining Strike Occurs This Week

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