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International Coal Group (ICG), the US-based company responsible for 12 mining deaths last week in the state of West Virginia, operates 21 US coal mines in America, all non-union. Yet, three emergency-response teams from nearby United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) staffed mines, plus the ICEM affiliate’s Health and Safety director were involved in rescue efforts at ICG’s Sago mine on 2 January after 13 miners became trapped following a gas explosion.
ICG has become a major eastern US coal supplier to utility companies at a time of high demand and high prices. The company is a creation of Wilbur L. Ross, a bankruptcy buyout opportunist who has a two-decade-long record in steel, textile and now coal bankruptcies. Ross uses US court bankruptcy proceedings to gain tax deferrals and cancel workers’ bargaining rights, pension benefits and retiree health care.
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ICG bought bankrupt Horizon Natural Resources, Anker Coal Group and CoalQuest Development, among others over the past few years. ICG gained a stake in Anker, the former owner of Sago, in the early 2000s and increased his holding as the company weakened and entered bankruptcy in 2002.
He only recently finalised buyout of the company for US$173 million, adding some eight coal mines and loading facilities to ICG. Also in late 2005, Ross took ICG—founded only in 2004—public, infusing US$250 million cash into the firm, and causing Ross to state: “It’s all new money for the company. Neither my firm nor the founding shareholders are selling any stock on the offering at all.” Ross’s controlling stake increased from 9.2% to 13.7% on the initial public offering. 
 
It is evident Ross’s “new money” and current coal revenue profit-taking are not intended for miners’ social welfare, whether it be retirement benefits or job safety. On 30 August 2004, 17 UMWA members were arrested by police when they and 800 others protested before a US bankruptcy court in Louisville, Kentucky. Some 3,000 UMWA members, both active and retired, were about to lose job security, and health care coverage as Ross and IGC took control of Horizon at a discount value in the bankruptcy court.
Early last week, the UMWA was actively involved in saving lives at the Sago mine. In a statement by the union expressing deep sadness to miners’ families, and reflecting on the “inexplicable confusion” over initial reports that the miners were alive, President Cecil Roberts said, “Though not members of UMWA, the miners who work in the Sago mine include neighbors and relatives of UMWA members.” The efforts of rescuers, he added, “demonstrate once again that we are all brothers and sisters in the coal fields, and we pull together to help each other in times like these.”
Roberts had another message last week, published in a West Virginia newspaper. It concerned the effect that energy demand and high coal prices have on marginal properties with inferior safety records when pressed into service: “We hope we don’t lose the focus on how dangerous this business is,” stated Roberts.

Sago Mine Disaster: Safety, Workers’ Rights Victimized by Bankruptcies

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Contract workers, employed by some 400 companies providing services to world leader copper producer Codelco in Chile, are striking for bonuses to gain a fair share of rising copper prices that have reached record highs on international markets. 
The 28,000 contract employees, working from food service to transport, struck all four divisions of state-owned Codelco’s across Chile two weeks ago and are seeking bonuses totalling US$970. On 4 January, police used tear gas to disperse strikers from roads leading to the El Teniente mine, the world’s largest underground copper mines and one of the four divisions. 
Contract workers earn less than half of what the 15,000 full-time, unionised workers of Codelco earn. Copper currently is selling at a record high of US$4,575 a tonne, and Chile through its Codelco earnings realized US$5.3 billion in profit through export of copper in 2005.

Contract Workers in Chilean Copper Mines Strike

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US oil supermajor ConocoPhillips has defied both Australian and East Timorese oil and maritime workers by employing a flag of convenience ship to transport liquid natural gas from Australia to Japan. The company, which owns 64% of the Bayu-Undan gas field in the Timor Sea, was set to send it first shipment of LNG to Japanese utility customers last week from Darwin, in northern Australia. 
The company has hired no Timorese or Australian crew members to work on the vessel, said the Maritime Workers Union of East Timor. ConocoPhillips had earlier ignored East Timor government initiatives to build a gas processing facility on East Timor soil for the new field, choosing instead to build a 500-kilometre pipeline to Darwin. 
The Bayu-Undan field is in disputed East Timorese waters off the country’s southern coast. The Maritime Union of Australia has pledged to get East Timorese workers involved in Bayu-Undan’s new production, and both unions promise an international campaign against ConocoPhillips. This will become a topic of the newly-organised Joint ICEM-ITF Oil and Gas Trade Union Alliance.

ConocoPhillips Snubs Union Labour in Shipping

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In the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, members of ICEM affiliate International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) voted 2 January to continue their five-month strike against US-based National Gypsum. Some 90 IUOE Local 721B members are striking the company at a quarry in Milford and at a loading dock in Burnside, over proposed changes to their pension plan, contracting out demands, and weakening of seniority rights. 
A proposal put forward by a provincial mediator, late in 2005, produced no significant changes from the company’s initial offer. The strike began 10 August 2005, some five months after a prior contract expired. The quarry produces rock used in building materials for the US housing market. National Gypsum has been attempting to operate the two workplaces with replacement workers.

Operating Engineers Remain on Strike in Canada

The 20-million-member ICEM calls on the government of Serbia-Montenegro to meet the legitimate pay demands by ICEM-affiliated EPS Trade Union at three enterprises of the state-run electric power generation and distribution services, i.e. the PE Electric Power Industry of Serbia, the PE Elektromreža Srbije (the Serbian Transmission System and Market Operator) and the PE Underground Pit Mine Extraction. 
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Workers at these three enterprises are owed wage arrears for 2004 and 2005. The government has failed to respond to union demands, as well as to make an adequate wage offer for 2006. Workers at the three enterprises began a series of one-hour strikes on 10 January in protest of the non-payment of wages, and have conducted similar one-hour strikes every day since. 
 
“The inflation rate in Serbia in 2005 reached 17%,” said ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs. “It is unconscionable that the government is withholding payment of wages due for past years and refusing to make an acceptable offer this year.” 
 
Serbia-Montenegro’s government had requested that EPS Trade Union postpone any strike action until the end of February 2006. The ICEM says that such a request is irresponsible considering the non-payment of wages in 2004 and 2005. 
 
The ICEM fully supports the strikes, and has offered assistance to the 43,000-member EPS Trade Union in meeting their pay demands.

ICEM Calls on Serbia to Pay Backwages, Reach 2006 Pay Terms

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Meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on 17-18 November 2005, trade union delegates at the ICEM’s World Conference for the Materials Sector, encompassing the Cement, Glass, and Ceramics Industries, adopted the following statement: 
 
The state of the business scenario in the Cement, Glass, and Ceramics Industries has been one of mergers, acquisitions and re-location of production. The ICEM’s World Conference for the Materials Sector recognized the disruption such business conditions cause to workers and their families. The Conference adopted measures to safeguard the trade union members and their families from the uncertainty caused by the consolidation of companies and the economic consequences brought to workers and their families. The Conference resolved to take all necessary steps to protect the interests of workers in the Materials Sector. 
 
The Conference adopted the following proposals: 
<ul>
 <li>During the next four-year period until the next ICEM World Conference for the Materials Sector, affiliates will seek to initiate dialogue and achieve further Global Framework Agreements with companies associated with the Materials Sector; 
 </li>
 <li>Affiliated Trade Unions will adopt new and innovative networking methods between themselves to further enhance Global Trade Union Solidarity; 
 </li>
 <li>Affiliated Trade Unions fully joined the ICEM’s campaign on the abusive use of Contract and Agency Labour in all facets of work; 
 </li>
 <li>Affiliated Trade Unions moved to become more vigilant in monitoring and ensuring responsible behaviour by global companies in cement, glass and ceramics industries regarding health, safety and the environment. Specifically, unions will fully monitor and engage with employers, as well as campaign against the menace of asbestos and silicosis caused by hazardous materials used in these industries; 
 </li>
 <li>ICEM membership within this sector will engage effective workplace measures to educate and raise awareness of the risk of HIV/AIDS infection, and to ensure that meaningful programmes for anti-discrimination of those living with HIV/AIDS be put in place. 
 </li>
 <li>Affiliated Trade Unions will undertake to increase their efforts regarding the all-important Gender Issue of Equal Pay for Work of Equal Value, and to ensure that any and all gender-based discrimination is eliminated from workplaces. </li>
</ul>
It is the determination and commitment of the ICEM-affiliated Trade Unions in the Materials Sector to take sufficient and meaningful action to meet this agenda and produce a full report on the progress of these initiatives at the next World Conference for the Materials Sector. 
 
Adopted 18 November 2005 
Brussels, Belgium 
 
For more information on this conference, including background documents and presentations, click <a href="?id=148" type="internal">here</a>.

ICEM Declaration on the Materials Sector

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Global unions worldwide condemned the government of Iran’s brutal suppression of bus drivers in Tehran and surrounding areas on 15 February. The condemnations came from the Global Union Federations, national unions and the ICFTU, but also were heard strongly from transport and oil unions in Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco and Tunisia. Rail workers and maritime unions in some of those North African and Middle East countries also participated in the Day of Action in support of Iranian bus drivers.
The government’s Intelligence Ministry and its security militia, Basij, has deployed brute force since spring 2005 to put down strikes by drivers who have been seeking unpaid wages. And since December, the repression has become more violent with the government using a variety of means to silence drivers’ protests. 
On 28 January, 30 drivers were seriously injured and up to 1,400 were jailed for demonstrating. A few days later, family members and spouses of the jailed drivers gathered outside Iran’s parliament, Majiles, and were met by security forces. The leader of the Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Co. (Sherkat-e Vahed), Mansour Osanloo, has been held since the government arrested leaders of the union on 22 December.
Because Iranian security teams have used beatings to force drivers out on routes, workers have resorted to a continual “lights on” protest of buses to draw attention to the violent crack-down of workers’ rights by Iran’s authorities. The ICEM sent a strong letter of protest to the government of Iran on the 15 February Day of Action, which can be found at <a href="/index.php?id=24&doc=1658.&la=EN" type="internal">/index.php?id=24&doc=1658.&la=EN</a>

Iranian Bus Drivers Given Global Union Support

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Nigerian affiliate NUPENG held its First Delegates’ Conference in Benin City, Edo state, this month, and took unprecedented action toward peace and stability for the oil and gas sector of the country. 
The union issued a mandate that all refineries and other government assets that currently are up for privatisation need to maintain 10% stakes held by workers. NUPENG called for only “credible and competent” investors to take 51% stakes in enterprises, with 39% holdings held by the Nigerian government. 
The union’s Delegate Assembly also called on oil exporting companies to build new refineries in Africa’s most populous country, and pledged industrial actions between January and June, 2006, to address the issue of casualisation and contract labour. 
Specifically, NUPENG condemned the non-existent screening and auditing of expatriate worker quotas by the government’s Directorate of Petroleum Resources. Such standards exist now in memorandums of agreement. 
Peter Akpatason was re-elected as NUPENG President; Ikechi Pius was re-elected as First Deputy; and Wosu Goodluck won election as Second Deputy. In elections for vice presidents, Osai Eddy was elected for Warri Zone, Okeke Basil elected for Port Harcourt Zone, Bako Joseph won re-election in Kaduna Zone, and Fakumoju K. in Lagos Zone. Elijah Okougbo remains NUPENG’s General Secretary.

NUPENG Promises Industrial Actions over High Contract Labour Use

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Engineering, Printing & Manufacturing Union (EPMU) of New Zealand has re-launched its 5% wage hike campaign last week for workers at Carter Holt Harvey (CHH) operations. The ICEM affiliate had put wage talks on hold last year with the forest products firm after Graeme Hart’s Rank Investments began buying stakes in the Auckland-listed company. 
EPMU has successfully negotiated 5% wage increases at three CHH enterprises, with bargaining at seven sites still outstanding from last year. 
Hart, owner now of 86% of CHH, increased his bid for shares last week by offering NZ$2.75-a-share, twenty-five cents better than his original offer. Hart needs 90% of CHH to de-list the company and take it private.

EPMU Re-boots 5% Wage Campaign at Carter Holt Harvey

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ICEM Serbia-Montenegro affiliate EPS Trade Union has halted strike actions against three electric and mining enterprises of the state-run electric power generation and distribution company. Progressive strike actions had been underway to claim wage arrears and pay hikes for 2006. 
The union and government came to a tentative deal that workers would accept loans for shortfalls in January, February and March, and bargaining would start again in a month’s time. EPS Trade Union had engaged in daily strike actions and other protests since 10 January, in efforts to claim workers’ rightful wages.

EPS Trade Union in Serbia Suspends Strike Actions

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