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An international campaign for the reinstatement of 50 Mexican rubber workers employed by German-based Continental AG, was successful after 22 months. The illegal dismissals on 18 May 2009 were made under the guise of the global financial crisis. The ICEM-affiliated National Union of General Tire/Continental Workers&rsquo; Union (SNTGTM), led by General Secretary Alberto Espinosa Rocha, launched a full mobilisation of the union for their reinstatement and&nbsp;to&nbsp;support each sacked worker who chose to fight for re-employment. 
 
The struggle, termed to&nbsp;&ldquo;Resist One More Day than Continental,&rdquo; supported especially the reinstatement of union activists Juan Pablo Hern&aacute;ndez Lara and Alfredo Calder&oacute;n and was won one year, ten months, and ten days after the sackings,&nbsp;when 50 colleagues returned to work at the factory in San Luis Potos&iacute;, 430 kilometres&nbsp;north of Mexico City. 
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SNTGTM Secretary-General Alberto Espinosa Rocha
The members of SNTGTM, through the decision of the union's&nbsp;Congress to wage the fight, supported every worker contesting&nbsp;dismissal, and the union&nbsp;paid them the minimum wage for a worker in the sector throughout the&nbsp;legal process. That income is low, but the faith and support from fellow members was vital. 
 
The SNTGTM and reinstated workers gave special thanks to the ICEM, International Metalworkers&rsquo; Federation (IMF),&nbsp;the United Steelworkers (USW), and the&nbsp;AFL-CIO, for their solidarity and support internationally. The SNTGTM singled out the IGBCE and European Works Council for their important assistance in forcing the struggle onto the agenda of Conti's management meetings. 
 
In recent months, the union has recovered hundreds of jobs and established conditions for increased factory production in Mexico. The&nbsp;SNTGTM is&nbsp;now fighting&nbsp;the proposed regressive labour law in Mexico, which, if enacted, would&nbsp;jeopardize their hard-won achievements.

Victory for Mexican Rubber Workers, 50 Reinstated

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A strike by the ICEM affiliate, Pan-Hellenic Federation of Employees in Petroleum Products, Refineries, and the Chemical Industry (POEPDHV), was extended another week until 19 April. The strike began at Hellenic Petroleum&rsquo;s (ELPE) flagship refinery in Aspropyrgos on 3 April, and then spread to Hellenic&rsquo;s two other refineries at Elfsina and Thessaloniki after a judge declared the walkout legal. 
 
Greek oil workers are striking over inadequate staffing levels and safety issues at ELPE&rsquo;s new refinery units at Elfsina and Thessaloniki, as well as resistance to company plans to curb pay gains and link pay with productivity. The strikes, originally of 10-day durations, came with orderly shutdowns to ensure operational integrity of the refineries is maintained, and with assurances that full safety compliance is followed. 
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On Thursday, 7 April, POEPDHV announced another week of strike action, due to occur 12-19 April. Three days earlier, a judge denied ELPE&rsquo;s request for injunctive relief in an effort&nbsp;to declare the strike illegal. POEPDHV President Nikos Orfanos said the extension is in full support of the workers&rsquo; struggle and on demand from refinery workers. Further bargaining between the union and ELPE is scheduled for 13 April. 
 
ELPE operates three of Greece&rsquo;s four refineries and controls 50% of the country&rsquo;s downstream market. The company is 35.5% owned by the Greek government. 
 
The ICEM fully support its Greek trade union affiliate and calls on the company to adequately staff its new refining units for safety reasons, as well as to justly compensate oil refinery workers.

Greek Petrochemical Union Extends Refinery Strikes until 19 April

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Bahrain&rsquo;s authorities and business leaders are retaliating to a general strike led by the national trade union centre General Federation of Bahrain Trade Unions (GFBTU) with a campaign of mass sackings, intimidation, and violence against all workers involved. 
 
The general strike was called on 13 March, and ended 22 March, in support of pro-democracy protests in the Persian Gulf island-state. The agreement to end the strike included a promise to GFBTU, an affiliate of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), by authorities that strikers would not suffer repercussions. 
 
Estimates suggest over 1,000 workers will be laid-off during the crackdown, including staff at Alba Aluminum Bahrain BSC, Bahrain Telecommunications Company, Gulf Air, Bahrain Airport Services, and APM Terminals Bahrain at the Khalifa Sea Port. All sackings were due to worker absence during the strike. 
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BAPCO Union President Abdul Ghaffar Abdul Hussain
The president of the union at Bahrain Petroleum (BAPCO), Abdul Ghaffar Abdul Hussain, has been fired for his absence during the strike and also for &ldquo;inciting workers to strike.&rdquo; The company has begun legal prosecution of Hussain. BAPCO also fired nine other workers, and is investigating the cases of&nbsp;230 workers&nbsp;who participated in the strike. 
 
BAPCO union President Hussain was central in the creation of the GBFTU. All employees at BAPCO are now fearful of losing their jobs in the coming days. Absenteeism of BAPCO employees on 16-17 March was 60%. 
 
(See <a href="/wp-content/migration/icem/27.ICEM.Bahrain.6April.pdf ">ICEM's letter to the King of Bahrain</a>.) 
 
Last week, security forces&nbsp;closed down the GBFTU headquarters and are expected to soon call the organisation&rsquo;s president, Salman Mahfooz, in for questioning. Roads leading to the union office were closed and workers were blocked from reaching the headquarters. Most of those workers had been seeking guidance from their union following their sacking. 
 
The GBFTU website has been shut down. Parliament is calling on the government to immediately refer trade union leaders involved in the strike to the public prosecutor&rsquo;s office. 
 
All members of the GBFTU executive, spanning all industries, have been suspended from work pending investigations. On top of this cynical multi-faceted attack on Bahrain&rsquo;s independent trade unions, companies are now planning legal cases against the unions in a further attempt to permanently end their activities. 
 
Over 300 activists have been arrested with many missing and at least 20 killed since protesters took to the streets in February, inspired by popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. The violent suppression of the Bahraini people&rsquo;s reform protest has been facilitated by armed forces from neighbouring Saudi Arabia. 
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ILO Director-General Juan Somavia
This disgraceful attack on core human and trade union rights of the Bahraini people must end immediately, global trade unions say. ILO Director-General Juan Somavia issued a statement on 6 April calling&nbsp;repercussions to the strike &ldquo;extremely alarming, in particular as the GFBTU had called on workers to return to work and had been given assurances by State officials that they will not face any punitive measures for their participation in strikes.&rdquo;

Kingdom of Bahrain Retaliates Against Trade Unions for General Strike

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The European Metalworkers&rsquo; Federation (EMF) and Areva, the Paris-based nuclear power and nuclear service provider, signed a protocol agreement on 1 April intended to facilitate career enhancement and employee competencies within the 13 European countries that Areva operates in. 
 
Entitled &ldquo;Memorandum of Agreement on Professions and Competences Forecast,&rdquo; the protocol framework is the second that EMF and Areva have adopted, the first being a 2006 Equal Opportunities pact that a European Commission (EC) project now oversees. 
 
The new agreement is intended to forecast and manage career development of Areva staff by providing training, work-life balance, mobility, transfer of knowledge throughout the company, as well as giving a positive work environment across a person&rsquo;s entire employment career with Areva. 
 
(See the <a href="http://www.emf-fem.org/Areas-of-work/Company-Policy/News/EMF-and-Areva-sign-important-agreement ">EMF announcement and the 12-page agreement</a>.) 
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The three-year agreement will be tracked under a separate EC project called Forecasting and Anticipating Competencies in Europe through Social Dialogue (FACES). The protocol calls for an annual appraisal that will &ldquo;articulate the positioning of the employee in such a way that their qualifications and their payment is in relation to their level of competencies and performance.&rdquo; 
 
The agreement states that such assessments will not conflict with existing national collective bargaining agreements. 
 
It commits the company to develop a training policy in step with the needs of workers &ldquo;to both preserve and renew competencies in order to have the best possible career evolution.&rdquo; Each of Areva&rsquo;s 35,000 workers in Europe will have access to 30 hours of training per annum, which can be allotted over three years. 
 
The agreement&rsquo;s overall monitoring device is a committee of Areva management and the European Works Council Select Committee, which will evaluate and present the results yearly to the EMF. 
 
Areva is a ten-year-old company that was formed through a three-way merger between CEA-Industrie, COGEMA, and Framatome to combine the French Government's interests in several nuclear power and information technology businesses. CEA-Industrie, (Commissariat &agrave; l'&Eacute;nergie Atomique or French Atomic Energy Commission) owns about 80% of Areva. The company globally operates in 43 countries and employs 48,000 staff. 
 
Areva designs and builds nuclear reactors and components for nuclear power plants, and it also supplies nuclear fuel, engineering, maintenance, and inspection of nuclear facilities.

EMF, French Nuclear Group Areva Sign Worker Training, Evolution Accord

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Mobilisation in the Netherlands toward strike action won 330,000 metalworkers a 25-month labour agreement in the small metals and electric-technical sector. The pay package of 4.45% exceeds Dutch inflation and is expected to set the pace for national contracts in the coming weeks in automotive and the big metals sectors. 
 
FNV Bondgenoten, CNV Vakmensen, and De Unie reached a tentative agreement with the Metaal &amp; Techniek industry asssociation, representing 30,000 employers, late on 6 April, which now prevents another two weeks of scheduled mobilisation that could have led to industrial actions. A prior agreement in the sector covering metal fabrication, installation, as well as plumbing, heating, and electrical installation expired 1 April.&nbsp; 

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FNV Bondgenoten&rsquo;s Jan Berghuis 

&ldquo;The employers didn&rsquo;t want a fight and we were quickly mobilising toward strike action,&rdquo; said Jan Berghuis, head of the sector for FNV Bondgenoten, who called the pact &ldquo;trendsetting.&rdquo; 
 
&ldquo;With inflation expected to be less than 2%, this is a very good result and it will likely prove very important in the big metal and automotive sectors.&rdquo; 
 
Some 150,000 metalworkers in basic steel and other heavy metal production resume talks through their unions on 19 April. The agreement in that sector expires 1 May. The automotive sector, where 90,000 workers are employed, has a social agreement expiring on 1 June. 
 
The accord in light metals and electric-technical provides exceptional training opportunities and investment of such for workers, a key part of the deal. Berghuis also said the unions won language regarding the use of short-term contract labour that specifies this work can only go to labour-hire firms that have collective agreements with the unions. 
 
The 4.45% pay increase will come in four steps over the next 18 months. Berghuis said the only disappointment came in not securing a higher wage or a stipend for young workers. But young workers brought into the sector during the financial crisis will benefit by the 4.45%. 
 
The three unions and Metaal &amp; Techniek industry had been at a bargaining stalemate since late February, and only a week ago mobilisation meetings and union activity indicated there could be a rare Dutch strike in this sector. But a compromise on wages, extending the agreement into a second year, the unions gaining the necessary continuing education and training criteria, and workable language on contract labour means the agreement will be recommended for ratification by all three unions.

Dutch Unions Agree to ‘Trendsetting’ Terms in Light Metals, Electric Sector

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ICEM-affiliated Sintravidricol of Colombia won a much-heralded victory in December 2007, achieving recognition and a collective agreement at three metal-moulding plants owned by US-based multinational Ross International. The victory followed a 23-day strike, and a three-year struggle that garnered international support through the ICEM. 
 
The agreement made all 240 workers at the three plants full-time employees, whereas the majority were previously on fixed-term contracts. 
 
That four-year agreement is now seven months from expiration, and Sintravidricol&rsquo;s Section Presidents for La Estrella and Sabaneta, Brahyan Sanchez Henao and Heriberto Giraldo Hernandez, are calling for the company to come to the table and discuss a new agreement for all employees of the group.
The union seeks improvements on paid leave for union activity, and greater stability and formalisation of employment to stop the increasing use of outsourcing at the plants. Sintravidricol formally submitted their list of demands on 5 April to the company. 
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Outsourced employees at two of the three worksites, Andes International Tooling Limited and Andes Cast Metals Foundry Limited, were successfully&nbsp;brought into Sintravidricol in 2007&nbsp;through a campaign supported by the ICEM and the United Steelworkers (USW) and its Flint/Glass Section, after those plants were opened in 2004. Workers at Moldes Medellin Ltd. had organised with Sintravidricol previously. 
 
During the bitter dispute of 2007 which culminated in the first agreement, the company signed two parallel agreements with non-unionised staff. A central goal of this negotiating round will be to scrap those divisive agreements and reach a settlement to cover all staff. Sintravidricol bargaining representatives will be seeking improved guarantees on development of mature industrial relations at the three plants. 
 
Messages of support can be sent to the union <a href="mailto:sintravidsab@unet.net.co; sintravidestrella@yahoo.com">here</a>. Messages to the employer can be sent <a href="mailto:daniel.posada@moldesmedellin.com.co; rubilem@yahoo.com">here</a>.

Colombian Glass Workers Seek to Build on Gains Made in 2007

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The ICEM was deeply saddened early last week to learn of the sudden passing of Gabriel Miranda, a leader in France of the CGT glass and ceramics section. Comrade Miranda, long active in the ICEM&rsquo;s Materials Sector, died of an aneurysm late in the evening of 21 March. He was 59. 
 
In a statement of sympathy to CGT General Secretary Bernard Thibault, the ICEM said: &ldquo;Many ICEM affiliates across the globe are indebted to Comrade Miranda for his selfless and devoted works of solidarity not only in France, but throughout the world. ICEM recognised Gaby as always the first person to respond to a call for solidarity and he never hesitated to extend support to the struggle of glass workers from Thailand to Korea to Australia and in many other countries.&rdquo; 
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Gabriel Miranda
Miranda served as secretary of CGT&rsquo;s glass sector from 1987 to 2005. He was mayor of his village of Saint-Beno&icirc;t de Carmaux, in province Tarn near Toulouse, beginning in 2009. He served on the town council there since 1983. On the evening of his death, he was leading a meeting of his communist compatriots regarding an agenda on community affairs for upcoming local elections. 
 
He was a working man who stayed true to his political convictions of liberty, freedom, and justice for the common person throughout his life. He fought for retaining post offices in small villages, public-sponsored day-care centers, and public health clinics. 
 
Miranda began as a glass fitter at a factory in Albi and also worked for Saint-Gobain in Tarn province. He had been secretary of the French Saint-Gobain Works Council. He is survived by his wife Brigitte and four children. A celebration of his life and work was held in the Saint-Beno&icirc;t town hall on 25 March.

ICEM Mourns Death of French Glass Sector Leader, Gaby Miranda

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A strike by 450 mostly Hispanic foundry workers in the US enters its second week today. The strike by members of the Glass, Molders, Pottery, Plastics and Allied Workers&rsquo; Union (GMP) is against Pacific Steel Castings in Berkley, California. 
 
Workers began the strike at midnight, March 20, at contract expiration after the privately-held company refused to move from a concession-laden contract offer that contained skyrocketing increases to the share of employee-paid health care. A leading American trade union journalist, David Bacon, reported that the out-of-pocket increase in health coverage to US$300-per-month would mean a 10% drop in workers&rsquo; salary earnings. 
 
The company also seeks to increase the yearly deductible for health coverage from the current US$1,500 to US$6,000. 
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Bacon reported that Pacific Steel Castings is seeking a two-year wage freeze, with only miniscule raises after that. Workers of GMP Local 164B have gone without pay raises for the past two years. 
 
Pacific Steel also wants work-rule changes that will inhibit seniority and promote job speed-ups, discrimination, and favouritism. GMP International Vice President Ignacio De La Fuente told Bacon that wage freezes over the past two years were meant to offset rising private health insurance costs. 
 
On 22 March, Berkeley police in riot gear used force to disperse strikers who were attempting to discourage truck drivers from making deliveries into the plant. A seven-month pregnant worker, Norma Garcia, was pushed to the ground and hospitalised. 
 
Pacific Steel&rsquo;s customers are in the petroleum, truck assembly and repair, and heavy equipment industries. It is one of the largest steel casting foundries in the US with revenues totalling US$100 million annually. It is wholly-owned by the holding company Tri-Pacific &amp; Pvt. 
 
GMP was a long-time affiliate of the ICEM but dropped global union activity in the early 2000s. The ICEM has been encouraging the Media, Pennsylvania-based union to return to the ICEM family because of joint work being done in the glass industry in Colombia.

Bitter Strike Breaks Out Between US GPM Union, Pacific Steel Castings

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The governing body of Metalliliitto, Finland&rsquo;s Metalworkers&rsquo; Union, gave leadership of the union authority to establish a blockade of construction at Olkiluoto III, the country&rsquo;s long-delayed fifth nuclear power reactor now underway on the southwestern coast. The approval for industrial action was given because of wage arrears and noncompliance of Finnish social standards by a Polish subcontractor, KMW Engineering. 
 
The blockade could come as early as this week and will largely depend on an audit report by a regional state agency, and on further negotiations between the union and contractors. The blockade has the support of Finland&rsquo;s Construction Trades Union, the Finnish Electrical Workers&rsquo; Union, and Pro, the union for salaried workers in Finland. 
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Photo: YLE/Termonen Tapio
The Polish company is hundreds of thousands of euros in wage arrears, has failed to keep overtime pay records, and reportedly has been negligent over health and safety matters. Metalliliitto has asked for pay records for all of 2009 and 2010. The union also claims that KMW&rsquo;s employment practices are substandard to those established in the national metal sector collective agreement. 
 
The French nuclear company Areva is the main contractor for Olkiluoto III , which is being built alongside two other nuclear reactors by the private-sector Finnish energy company Teollisuuden Voima Oy (TVO). Metalliliitto has attempted to negotiate with all parties connected to the 1.6 gigawatt (1,600 megawatt) nuclear project but none have been willing to hold KMW responsible for its social dumping. KMW is building cooling units at Olkiluoto III. 
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Metalliliitto President Riku Aalto
Metalliliitto President Riku Aalto said the union has consistently been denied even the bare minimum of data on its information requests. He said social dumping continues at Olkiluoto III, in part, because unions in Finland are restricted from filing legal cases to stop such practices. Aalto said that is not the case in countries such as Sweden, Norway, and Germany. 
 
Olkiluoto III is already three years behind schedule, with construction now scheduled to end late in 2012. Commissioning of the reactor would then happen late in 2013. The original &euro;3.95 billion project is reported to be &euro;1.5 billion over budget and has been marked by litigation among contractors and between contractors and TVO.

Finland’s Metalworkers close in on Blockade of Nuclear Plant Work

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Second-year salary adjustments for some 20,000 white- and blue-collar Finnish pulp and paper workers ran separate courses over the past 12 days, with ICEM affiliate Ammattiliitto Pro &ndash; representing 4,000 salaried professionals &ndash; issuing a strike notice on 23 March against one company. A two-week strike will begin on 6 April at all UPM operations if official government mediation beginning today fails. 
 
Meanwhile, Paperiliitto, representing 16,000 workers at some 60 paper operations, agreed to terms with the Finnish Forest Industries Federation (FFIF) on 16 March. Workers will receive a guaranteed 2.5%, or &euro;.41-per-hour increase. The union also granted other adjustments in the collective agreement. 
 
Both ICEM affiliates have been negotiating separately with the FFIF on wage terms for the back end of a two-year labour agreement. The parties had until last week to reach accord, or bargaining is automatically shifted into the government&rsquo;s dispute resolution process. 
 
Ammattiliitto Pro, formerly Toimihenkil&ouml;unioni or TU prior to a merger in December with the insurance and banking union Suora, gave the strike warning because FFIF refused to put forward a similar national pay offer as the one given and accepted by Paperiliitto. Instead, there was no increase extended on the national level, with employers saying wage hikes will only be negotiated on a mill-by-mill basis. That stand quickly became an insult to dedicated staff.
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Jukka H&auml;m&auml;l&auml;inen
&ldquo;We seek a binding pay formula in this portion of the collective agreement,&rdquo; said Jukka H&auml;m&auml;l&auml;inen, chief Pro negotiator for the paper sector. &ldquo;We want a system that recognizes the increased work and greater responsibility taken on by our members.&rdquo; H&auml;m&auml;l&auml;inen said only a short few years ago, there were 6,000 white-collar workers in Finland&rsquo;s pulp and paper sector. That number is now 4,000. 
 
The union will begin an overtime ban on 1 April, the date the current two-year agreement is terminated if no resolve is realized. And then at 06h00 on 6 April, a full strike by 1,000 Pro members at UPM will commence that is certain to affect production at the Helsinki-based company&rsquo;s Finnish mills. 
 
In the accord between Paperiliitto and the FFIF, blue-collar workers receive effective today a 1.5%, or &euro;.24-per-hour increase, and then another 1% (&euro;.17) will be negotiated on the local level. If that isn&rsquo;t accomplished by 21 April, then it reverts back to the national level where a process is established to guarantee that increase retroactive to 28 March. 
 
Paperiliitto also agreed to grant local branches the option to increase work shifts from ten hours per day to 12, although it is mandated that there be no accumulative increase in yearly working hours. The union also agreed to a mobility clause, granting paper firms the flexibility to make short-term transfers of new hires employed in maintenance areas to other company operations. For current maintenance workers, companies must get one-time or more consent agreements from the individual for such a temporary transfer. 
 
The union agreed to the mobility language as deterrent to the use of outside contract or agency labour, and to assure that maintenance work will continuously be performed by Paperiliitto members.

Finnish Paper Sector Wage Accords Divert Between ICEM Affiliates

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