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<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
ICEM Swedish affiliate IF Metall launched a new campaign ‘Strong Together’, 20 November, to highlight the strength of their local trade union reps, and to illustrate that there is power in unity. That message was made with members picking up cars at the locals in the cities of Kiruna, Umeå, Eskilstuna, Trollhättan, Gothenburg and Malmö. 
 
“Alone you cannot lift a car, but together we can,” said Jan Thelin, a shop steward at LKAB mine in Kiruna, and one of the members who lifted a car. “Imagine what more members can do together!” 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1011.if metall campaign.png" width="141" height="146"/>
The campaign will be continued until the IF Metall Congress in June 2011. See videos of the events and further information on the campaign <a href="http://www.ifmetall.se/ifmetall/home/home.nsf/LUUnique/CADBBFCAB43A8C90C12577E000299F9D?OpenDocument">here</a>.  
 
The first group of IF Metall members to be the focus of the action was the 14,500-strong health and safety representatives. Those representatives conducted a hazard investigation before the lift.

IF Metall Campaign 'Stronger Together'

By a vote of 521 to 398 on 6 December, members of Sindicato de los Trabajadores de Collahuasi voted to end a 32-day strike against the world’s third largest copper miner, located in Chile. The Union of Workers of the Collahuasi Copper Mine and Doña Ines de Collahuasi, owned jointly through 44% stakes each by AngloAmerican and Xstrata, resumed talks early last week with help from Roman Catholic Prelate Marco Antonio Órdenes, Bishop of Iquique. 
 
The union's Second Director, Carlos Daniel Rojas, told the ICEM early today that Bishop Órdenes succeeded "in opening the door" with the company when there appeared little hope that talks would resume, and the union took it from there to work out a settlement. 
 
The final resolve came in negotiations over the weekend and early Monday, 6 December, with an acceptable compromise. 
 
The vote Monday night ends the longest private-sector Chilean copper strike, surpassing one of 26 days in 2006 at the Escondida mine, owned 57.5% by BHP Billiton and 30% by Rio Tinto. 
 
Terms of the settlement will give the 1,551 miners of Collahuasi a wage increase of 16.3% over a 42-month period, and a bonus payment of 14 million pesos (US$28,733). Other key issues in the strike, which began on 5 November, were company-paid health care and education costs for miners’ children. The union did make advances in both these areas from prior levels paid by the company. 
 
The strike was marked by a united workforce led by President Manuel Muñoz and Second Director Rojas. The miners of Collahuasi took up residency in the Santa María School in Iquique, and staged peaceful and near-daily manifestations in that city. Those demonstrations were strategic in order to draw attention to their cause of gaining adequate health coverage and educational stipends from an employer that posted net profits in 2009 of US$1.56 billion due to high copper pricing. 
 
Last night’s vote took place inside the Santa María School. Collahuasi miners were scheduled to return to work high in the Atacama desert of Chile’s northern Region I, some 285 kilometres from the port city of Iquique, today, 7 December. 
 
"The Collahuasi miners and their families showed strength and fortitude in a dignified and peaceful way against an enterprise intent on maintaining production and turning profits," said ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda. "For that, they have earned the pride and admiration of the world's mining unions." 
 
Coverage of this heroic strike, taken from the ICEM website, can be found <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4117-Chile’s-Collahuasi-Copper-Strike-Now-in-Crucial-Stage" type="internal">here</a> and <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4102-Miners-Dig-In-at-Chile’s-Collahuasi-Copper-Strike" type="internal">here</a>.

Strike Ends at Collahuasi Copper Mine in Chile

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/CAL_en.jpg" width="110" height="50"/>
A sit-in strike by contract workers at the Hyundai Motor factory in Ulsan, South Gyeongsang, South Korea, which at times turned violent, ended on 9 December. The 25-day strike ended when three unions, including one representing the contract workers, met and agreed to halt the strike on condition that management would negotiate in good-faith to make the workers full-time Hyundai staff. The strike and blockade of production was over the auto manufacturer’s refusal to grant permanent work status, in accord with a July Korean Supreme Court decision. (See related story <a href="/index.php?id=73&la=EN&doc=4149" type="internal">here</a>.) 
 
The workers, some 550 in total who are members of the Hyundai Motors Irregular Workers’ Union, began sit-in actions at Ulsan on 15 November and are demanding an end to discrimination in wages and job conditions. The militant strike action was started by some 30 workers after Hyundai sought to replace a terminated seat-assembly subcontracting company called Dongsung with another, and insisted that the contract workers sign individual contracts with the new company. 
 
In the weeks prior, some 1,900 contract workers at Hyundai, buoyed by the 22 July Supreme Court decision stating they must be made permanent and direct workers of the car producer after two years employment, joined the Korean Metal Workers’ Union (KMWU). With the change in subcontractors, Hyundai also attempted to coerce the workers to withdraw from the KMWU. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1012.CAL Korea Hyundai Motor.jpg" width="250" height="160"/>
The strike had been met by the use of beatings and tear gas by local police brought in by the world’s fifth largest car-maker. At the outset on 15 November, Hyundai managers attacked the sit-down strikers with heavy metal fittings and iron frames. Scores of contract workers have been arrested, and the company has filed both criminal and civil lawsuits against the strikers, including a civil one against 419 strikers seeking 16.2 billion (US$14.1 million) for lost production. One contract worker attempted to set himself on fire during a plant gate rally on 20 November. 
 
At times, three assembly lines had been blockaded by angry contract workers, costing Hyundai some 24,000 units of production. As of early last week, contract workers were occupying one line at Ulsan, the world’s largest integrated automobile manufacturing facility, thus cutting production of the company’s newly-unveiled Accent model, as well as Click and Verna subcompact models. 
 
Union leaders at Ulsan had been seeking dialogue with Hyundai Motor management in order to resolve the ever-growing number of issues, but reportedly senior management would not meet until the strike actions cease. 
 
The strike by contract workers did catch the attention of autoworkers throughout the world. On 6 December, the American United Auto Workers’ (UAW) Union held a manifestation attended by 150 people at the Hyundai-Kia America Technical Center in the US state of Michigan in support of the Korean autoworkers.

25-Day Sit-In Strike by Hyundai’s Contract Workers Ends 

Asia-Pacific labour and management representatives from BASF met in Singapore on 10 February. The network takes shape following the successful ICEM regional dialogue with BASF managers in Latin America/Caribbean. BASF’s Eggert Voscherau called the AP network “important and necessary” and one that “has to be continued.” Recently, ICEM, German affiliate IGBCE and BASF teamed up so that BASF workers in Malaysia could have trade union recognition rights in Malaysia.

ICEM’s Regional BASF Network Meets in Singapore

<img height="40" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100" alt=""/>
Bargaining will resume today in the lockout of 25,000 paperworkers in Finland. The Executive Committee of Paperiliitto on 5 June rejected a mediator’s proposal that, on the whole, sided with many of the concessionary proposals put forward by the Finnish Forest Industries Federation. Those proposals would have given paper companies the unlimited right to outsource work that would see as many as one-third of all full-time paper sector jobs disappear, and would have weakened worker protections against layoffs. 
Employers have now extended the lockout to six weeks, or until 29 June. EMCEF announced that it will investigate whether Finnish paper firms forced the lockout in order to increase paper prices through reduced supply and the ICEM continues to encourage paper sector unions across Europe not to accept work orders from Finnish paper mills and converters.

Finnish Affiliate Rejects Paper Companies Harsh Concessions

A dispute has surfaced between ICEM affiliate Associated Mineworkers of Zimbabwe and that country’s Council of Mines. The employers’ group walked out of negotiations after refusing to award reasonable wage and salary adjustments, and then unilaterally granted inferior pay hikes amounting to half of what AMWZ considers a liveable wage. Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Labour has intervened and ordered the matter be put before conciliation.

Mining Dispute in Zimbabwe Centers on Wages

The Communications, Energy, Paperworkers Union of Canada picked Suncor Energy last month as the pattern-setter for this year’s round of oil talks. That means some 10,000 CEP members at five majors and several smaller companies will have similar terms in pay hikes, shift increases and other wage-related premiums at their bargains. General pay hikes agreed to at Suncor are 3%, 3.5% and 3% over three years. The Suncor agreement has a unique company contribution to CEP’s Humanity Fund, the union’s assistance fund to workers in developing nations. Union leaders have made it clear that CEP members across Canada’s oil sector are determined to get the same terms as those achieved at Suncor.

Canadian CEP Sets Oil Pattern with Suncor

The CEP, meanwhile, welcomed 340 Shell oil workers from Montreal into their ranks. An unaffiliated local union there voted to join Canada’s dominate energy, paper and communications union and will become CEP Local 121.

Shell Stand-Alone Union in Montreal Joins Canadian CEP

The National Union of Mineworkers in South Africa still has not received answers to the sudden lay-offs of 400 diamond miners employed by Antwerp-based Rex Diamond Mining at the Loxton Mine in the Northern Cape. Despite inquiries by the NUM and ICEM over the status of the miners, the firm has said only the retrenchments are of a “short term arrangement,” yet has provided no information that would clarify the benefits due the workers.

South Africa’s NUM Awaits Answers from Rex Diamond

ICEM Dutch affiliate FNV Bondgenoten and four other unions at DSM’s chemical plant in Geleen engaged in a stop-work march and rally 12 April at the firm’s headquarters in nearby Heerlen in the southern NL province of Limburg. Some 2,500 workers participated in this first-ever such action against DSM. Under the slogan “Stop the Breakdown of DSM Employment in Limburg,” the unions protested DSM’s recent announcement that 1,000 workers at sprawling industrial chemicals operations would be made redundant this year. DSM intends to replace the 1,000 with 500 contractors. The Geleen complex once had 15,000 employees. Prior to this most recent announcement, it employed 5,000.

FNV Bondgenoten Protests DSM’s Retrenchments in the Netherlands

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