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The beginning of a Latin American network for Vale workers took root in Peru from 9-11 March, when 35 trade union representatives from six countries met in the city of Piura to discuss common problems and joint strategies to combat the anti-social policies of the Brazilian mining company. 
 
The meeting was sponsored by the US Solidarity Center and its Peruvian and Brazilian offices, and hosted by the ICEM Latin American/Caribbean Region and the ICEM affiliate, the Peruvian National Miners&rsquo; and Metalworkers&rsquo; Union (FNTMMSP). 
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The Piura department in northern Peru is where Vale intends to supply its entry into agri-business following last year&rsquo;s purchase of Bunge&rsquo;s Fosfertil subsidiary in Brazil, a manufacturer of fertiliser. Vale has recently begun production at the Bay&oacute;var mine, a phosphate development that is under its Peruvian subsidiary, Minera Miski Mayo. 
 
Union representatives from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Peru, and the US were present, and serious discussion occurred over Vale&rsquo;s social conduct throughout the world. The Canadian representative was from United Steelworkers Local 6500 in Sudbury, Ontario, and he told of Vale&rsquo;s anti-people policies following the purchase of Inco nickel mining and smelting assets in 2006 and a subsequent 360-day strike by 3,500 steelworkers in 2009-2010. 
 
ICEM Regional Vice President Sergio Novais chaired the meeting, and besides several FNTMMSP delegates attending, participants also included Brazilian union leaders from CNQ/CUT, the chemical workers&rsquo; union; SINDIMINA, a Brazilian mineworkers&rsquo; union representing Vale miners; STEFAM, a union of railway workers at Vale mines and other workplaces; and STIQUIFAR, a chemical, pharmaceutical, and agri-chem union.

Workers’ Network Meeting of Vale Convenes in Peru

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Two weeks after a pair of Norwegian unions, together with&nbsp;ICEM and the&nbsp;International Metalworkers&rsquo; Federation (IMF) signed a Global Framework Agreement (GFA) with Norsk Hydro ASA, two workers&rsquo; representatives of the aluminium and energy company&rsquo;s board of directors journeyed to Par&aacute; state in northern Brazil to brief workers and trade union leaders there. 
 
Sten Roar Martinsen, a process operator and full-time union representative from the Kopervik extrusion plant, and Billy Fredeagsvik, also an operator and union representative at Hydro&rsquo;s H&oslash;yanger aluminium smelter, met with workers&rsquo; representatives of Brazilian trade unions on 30 March and 1 April. Martinsen and Fredeagsvik are representatives of the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) on Hydro&rsquo;s 11-member board. 
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Sten Roar Martinsen&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;Billy Fredeagsvik
The mission, according to Norsk Hydro&rsquo;s website, was to brief Brazilian workers at a former Vale bauxite mine and aluminium smelter and refinery on the structure and principles for trade union dialogue at Hydro, as well as the impact and significance of the GFA that was signed on 15 March. 
 
In late February, Norsk Hydro concluded the purchase of Vale assets in northern Brazil for US$3.5 billion. Those assets include a 51% stake in the aluminium smelter Albr&aacute;s in Barcarena, Par&aacute; state, 57% of the Alunorte refinery, and a 61% stake in the future Companhia de Alumina do Par&aacute; (CAP) alumina plant, which will start up in 2012. A Japanese consortium of 17 companies holds the minority stakes in these companies. 
 
Also, on 30 March, Martinsen and Fredeagsvik met with union leaders at the former Vale bauxite mine Paragominas. As part of the deal, Hydro bought 60% of the 9.9 million tonne mine, as well as other bauxite mineral rights of Vale in Brazil. Hydro will now call its Brazilian mining assets&nbsp;Minera&ccedil;&atilde;o Paragominas. Hydro will purchase the remaining 40% in 2013 and 2015 for US$200 million in each year. 
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The Norwegian board members also discussed local issues with Par&aacute; state workers including access to housing in the rural areas, and health and education. 
 
&ldquo;This was an important first step,&rdquo; said Martinsen, &ldquo;towards establishing the right framework for including our Brazilian colleagues in Hydro&rsquo;s internal arenas for dialogue, to ensure that the interests and views of all employees in Hydro are represented in the appropriate forums and decision-making processes.&rdquo; 
 
Added Fredeagsvik, &ldquo;Through these initial meetings, we have created a solid foundation for further work together. The meetings have been interesting, positive, and highly constructive.&rdquo; 
 
Besides ICEM and IMF, Norwegian trade unions IndustriEnergi and Fellesforbundet are signatory to the GFA.

Norsk Hydro’s Worker Reps Talk with Trade Unionists in Brazil

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A long and drawn out court battle in Chhattisgarh state, India, saw exploited contract workers of Holcim Cement again win regularisation of their jobs in March through a High Court appeals ruling. But Holcim Cement of Switzerland is refusing to implement the court&rsquo;s order. 
 
The result is that hundreds of contract workers at one of Holcim&rsquo;s Indian subsidiaries, Associated Cement Co. Ltd. (ACC), and supporters are staging an ongoing&nbsp;&ldquo;dharna,&rdquo; or strike at the Bhilai Industrial Estate statue of Shankar Guha Niyogi, the legendary workers&rsquo; leader and founder of the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha (CMM) political party who was assassinated in 1991. 
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Shankar Guha Niyogi
The CMM-associated labour union Pragatisheel Cement Shramik Sangh is carrying the struggle for the contract workers, much like Niyogi did for irregular workers in mining, metalworking, and textiles three decades ago. 
 
The rightful fight for contract workers at ACC Jamul Cement to gain full wages, provident fund benefits, and even proper safety equipment dates back nearly 20 years. Holcim bought controlling interest in ACC and Ambuja Cement in 2006-2007 and has continued resistance to the legitimate rights of contract workers at its Indian cement plants. 
 
In 2006, an Industrial Court ruled that some 573 contract workers at ACC Jamul, many subsequently fired, must be made regular employees, with their wages and working conditions tied to the Cement Wage Board, or the&nbsp;Nevatia Award. Holcim, Lafarge, the Aditya Birla Group&rsquo;s Ultratech, and other major cement producers are tied to the Wage Board by hard fought strikes of the past. 
 
The Wage Board agreement has tight restrictions on the use of contract labour, limiting it to loading and unloading raw materials but with pay at the same rate as permanent workers. 
 
Holcim defied the Industrial Court&rsquo;s ruling by paying only between two-to-five days salary per month &ndash; at US$2 per day &ndash; because that is how few days contract workers were on the job at the time of the Industrial Court filing because Holcim was trying to get them to resign. 
 
Pragatisheel Cement Shramik Sangh filed a writ petition with the High Court, and that portion of litigation is still pending. However, on 21 March, the High Court did rule that the paper arrangements between irregular workers and Holcim&nbsp;are &ldquo;sham and bogus&rdquo; and directed management&nbsp;to regularise over 100 contract workers. However, the ruling neglected to recognise the rights of about 400 who were coerced into accepting voluntary resignations. 
 
India is the world&rsquo;s second largest cement producer behind China. The country has an annual growth rate in cement of 11%, which has seen the leading cement producers make major investments and acquisitions. 
 
But multinationals like Holcim and Lafarge are doing nothing to stabilise employment and bring decent work to&nbsp;rural people who are recruited and then exploited as contract workers. Alone in Chhattisgarh state in central India, it is estimated that 3,200 permanent workers are employed in the cement industry, while 11,000 others toil as short-term, expendable contract workers.

Holcim Defies India Court Ruling on Rights for Contract Workers

ICEM HIV/AIDS e-bulletin - No. 67, April 2011

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An illegal coal mine in Mexico&rsquo;s Coahuila state that was operating for only 20 days exploded on 3 May, killing 14 miners. The tragic methane gas blast occurred a short distance from the Pasta de Conchos colliery, where 65 miners employed by Grupo Mexico perished in a similar underground gas explosion in February 2006. 
 
Beneficios Internacionales del Norte SA (Bansa) was listed as the company operating the mine near Sabinas in the rich Coahuila coal belt of northern Mexico. Immediately after the powerful explosion that saw three of the dead blown completely out of the 60-metre-deep tunnel, officials could not determine the owner because of conflicting data in local registry citings. 
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It was days after the blast that Bansa was determined to be the operator of the 340-acre mine site through a concession from local authorities. A local official defended that concession, telling press that when the federal government awards a concession, generated income goes to coffers in Mexico City, with nothing allocated for the community. 
 
The colliery employed 25 non-union miners and had no certification or registry regarding safety. The Mexican federal government closed the mine and is now involved in body recovery and investigation. 
 
The underground explosion rocked the surface so strongly that a 15-year-old minor who was picking coal off an external conveyer belt had to have both arms amputated and is in serious condition in a hospital. 
 
The 3 May tragedy in northern Mexico stands as yet another example of safety risks and dangers by unregistered and unreliable mining installations when demand and pricing of a mineral is at a premium.

Mine Blast Near Pasta de Conchos Kills 14 in Mexico

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Glen Mpufane of South Africa officially took up duties as ICEM&rsquo;s Mining and Diamond, Gems, Ornament, and Jewellery Production (DGOJP) officer on 2 May. He comes to the ICEM after a long career in South Africa&rsquo;s trade union movement preceded by 18 years of work in the apartheid-era gold mining industry. 
 
&ldquo;We are privileged to bring a person who not only has depth and knowledge of the mining industry, but one who displays great activism as a trade unionist,&rdquo; said ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda. 
 
Mpufane, 52, is a native of Daveyton in Gauteng province, and worked for Ergo mining at the Brakpan mine, then an AngloAmerican and later an AngloGold concession. He worked as a fitter mechanic and helped form the Ergo Branch of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in 1982. 
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New ICEM Mining/DGOJP Officer, Glen Mpufane
He served as a shop steward, health and safety secretary, branch chairman, and then full-time health and safety steward for the branch. He also served as NUM regional secretary for health and safety, before taking a position at NUM in 2000 in health and safety. In 2004, he was named International Department Head for the NUM, a post he held until 2010. 
 
He worked as head of Secretariat for ICEM South Africa affiliate Chemical, Energy, Paper, Printing, Wood, and Allied Workers Union (CEPPWAWU) for six months in 2010-11, prior to coming to Geneva to join the ICEM. 
 
&ldquo;There are huge challenges in mining, not the least is safety and health,&rdquo; said Mpufane. &ldquo;We have many challenges, including the challenge to deliver decent collective agreements to mineworkers.&rdquo; 
 
Mpufane is married with four children, the youngest, Amo, is 16 months old.

Glen Mpufane Joins ICEM as Mining/DGOJP Officer

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Deteriorating safety conditions inside Rio Tinto&rsquo;s Australian coal mines in New South Wales was brought to the company&rsquo;s annual general meeting (AGM) in Perth on 5 May. ICEM affiliate Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union (CFMEU) delivered a sharp attack on the company&rsquo;s laxness over health and safety at majority-held Hunter Valley coal mining and processing operations. 
 
CFMEU NSW Northern District Vice President Robin Williams said that a significant number of accidents and incidents are not reflected in Rio Tinto&rsquo;s annual report. Williams and a workplace leader from each of three coal operations were vocal and critical of the company&rsquo;s coal-mine safety before shareholders at the AGM last week. 
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Williams said Rio Tinto has &ldquo;an adversarial approach to mine safety&rdquo; at Coal &amp; Allied Ltd., which includes mines at Mount Thorley/Warkworth, the Hunter Valley operations, and Bengalla. He said a &ldquo;culture of fear&rdquo; permeates the workplaces where threats of discipline and common and are &ldquo;outdated and should have no place in modern Australian mining. 
 
&ldquo;We do not want a situation,&rdquo; Williams added, &ldquo;where workers are uneasy about speaking out in case they face disciplinary procedures. If there is an accident or incident at a mine site, we want a proper investigation to make sure that it doesn&rsquo;t happen again, not a scapegoat who is disciplined.&rdquo; 
 
The mineworkers told shareholders that the company&rsquo;s goal of zero harm and reality are far apart. They said the culture of fear that exists at Hunter Valley actually exacerbates risks. Rio owns 76% of the Hunter Valley coal operations. 
 
CEO Tom Albanese also had to address the near overflow this year of a tailings pond at Rio&rsquo;s 68% held Ranger uranium mine in the Northern Territory. The company&rsquo;s Energy Resources of Australia Ltd. (ERA) shut production in January due to heavy rains. Albanese said the company will inject A$220 million&nbsp;into ERA for updated water treatment and management systems.

CFMEU Takes Coal Safety Concerns to Rio Tinto’s AGM

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Successful industrial relations between ICEM glass workers&rsquo; union Sintravidricol in Colombia and the US-based multinational Ross International has now built on the foundations of a first collective agreement four years ago. The union won a renewal agreement with significant improvements for workers. 
 
See an <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4361-Colombian-Glass-Workers-Seek-to-Build-on-Gains-Made-in-2007">ICEM InBrief</a> from last month. Bargaining was finalised on 6 May, months ahead of the expiration of the existing agreement. The scope of the agreement is expanded to cover five plants of Ross International in the two sections of Sintravidricol, La Estrella and Sabanata. 
 
Two divisive other agreements originally signed by the company during a dispute in 2007 which led to the first collective agreement will be scrapped in the new deal. All 250 workers will now be covered by the same governing contract, with slight variations between the sections.
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Salary increases will equal 4.6% in the first year, inflation plus 1.2% in the second year, and inflation plus 1.3% and plus 1.4% for the final two years of the agreement. 
 
Significant improvements also included education allowances for primary, secondary, and university education for workers&rsquo; children, also new transport links for shift workers, increased holiday leave, paid leave for union activity, increased housing allowance, and a signing bonus for each worker in each year of the agreement. 
 
All workers will now be employed on indefinite contract status. Prior to the 2007 agreement, 80% or more of the employees were on short-term contracts. 
 
The official signing of the new deal by local management and Sintravidricol&rsquo;s Section Presidents for La Estrella and Sabaneta, Brahyan Sanchez Henao and Heriberto Giraldo Hernandez, is expected to take place this week. Salary increases will go into effect on 1 September.

Colombia Glass Workers Get Great Gains in Settlement

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An <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4103-Two-Dead-in-Dynamite-Blast-Near-Chile-s-San-José-Mine-Rescue-Site">ICEM report</a> from November 2010 told how inexperienced miners with no training detonated explosives on their first day of work inside the Los Reyes copper mine in northern Chile, killing 2. The incident happened only three weeks after the fabled rescue of 33 copper miners and only 70 kilometres from the San Jos&eacute; mine in Chile&rsquo;s Region II. 
 
Now some rather startling facts have surfaced courtesy of an expose on Chile&rsquo;s mine safety practices in the newspaper El Mercurio. As reported originally, the owner of the company, a Mexican national named Germ&aacute;n Zayas Baz&aacute;n, fled Chile and within six hours of the 8 November explosion landed in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on a flight from Chile. 
 
Germ&aacute;n Baz&aacute;n was in Chile on a tourist visit. His whereabouts now are unknown and there has been no attempt to extradite him by Chile&rsquo;s government, reportedly because the mine accident is still under investigation. 
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What is known is that on 15 September 2010, the Los Reyes mine was ordered by the National Service of Geology and Mining (SERNAGEOMIN) inactive. But Baz&aacute;n somehow managed to get local authorities to reverse the order. At the same time, Baz&aacute;n was openly advertising in Copiap&oacute; and elsewhere, seeking people to work long shifts for high pay, no qualifications required. 
 
The deadly incident happened on the first day of work for three workers, ages 37, 26, and 21, were inside the mine. None had license to handle dynamite, they were without hard hats and mining lights, and the mine was without a fixed telephone line. El Mercurio reported that after the blast, Baz&aacute;n drove the 21-year-old worker &ndash; who lost an eye from an exploding stone &ndash; to a hospital and then fled to the Copiap&oacute; airport. 
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In new light of safety ills that beset Chile&rsquo;s mine industry, the SERNAGEOMIN inspector charged with overseeing the mine&rsquo;s official closure was sacked and the regional director then resigned. Sill in question is how Baz&aacute;n managed to acquire a deal to sell copper and other metals to Empresa Nacional de Mineria (Enami), a state-owned firm that processes and sells metals. 
 
Separately from Los Reyes, SERNAGEOMIN has acknowledged that only 7%, or 27 of 394 small-scale mines in Region II are operating legally. Currently there is legislation drafted in Chile to reform SERNAGEOMIN. Part of the bill would institute a mining regulator that would be charged with overseeing exploration and mine development plans. The new regulator will have oversight on mine safety too. 
 
In January, the Chile Mining and Energy Ministry did approve a 62% increase in the agency&rsquo;s funding, which is expected to raise the number of mine safety inspectors across the country from 18 to 45. But with over 4,000 mining operations, that number is far too low and it is still too early to judge the effect revisions in the proposed legislation will have.

2010 Chile Copper Mine Blast Reveals Regulation Gaps

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Codelco, the state-owned mining company of Chile and world&rsquo;s largest copper producer, reached early terms with three of its five mining unions at El Teniente in Region VI ten days ago. The 40-month agreement will take effect on 1 July 2011 and will cover 2,500 of El Teniente&rsquo;s 4,000 miners. 
 
The branches of Federaci&oacute;n de Trabajadores del Cobre (FTC) that agreed to terms were Sindicato No. 5, Sindicato No. 7, and Sindicato de Trabajadores Caletones. One of the two other branches rejected the proposal, while the other was not included in bargaining. 
 
The package is expected to be considered by those mineworker trade union branches in the coming days. 
 
The collective agreement includes a 3.85% wage increase on 1 July and a CLP 12.3 million (&euro;17,680, US$25,324) bonus, which matches the bonus paid miners at other Codelco divisions in 2010. It also includes an optional loan of CLP 3 million, and a 10% increase in the annual bonus that comes on Chile&rsquo;s national day, 18 September.
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El Teniente is an underground mine that includes some 2,400 kilometres of shafts. It includes an ore processing operation producing molybdenum, and its output of copper lingots and copper anodes is 404,000 tonnes per year. In 2010, it accounted for 27.2% of Codelco&rsquo;s US$5.8 billion profit. 
 
At another Codelco copper operation, Chuquicamata, part of the El Norte division, FTC branches and management met 12 April to discuss staffing requirements. The Chuquicamata mine recently shed a number of jobs due to union-negotiated early retirements as the operation prepares for a conversion from an open-cast mine to an underground one. 
 
FTC Sindicato No. 1 Vice President H&eacute;ctor Roco said the union, and three other FTC branches at Chuquicamata, want workers to be given the opportunity to transfer to areas where retirements have lowered job rolls, and they also want a say in the planning of the transition to underground mining. 
 
Codelco employs 17,000 miners in Chile at five divisions: El Norte, Salvador, Andina, El Teniente, and Ventaras.

Early Accord Comes to One of Codelco’s Copper Mines in Chile

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