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Further strike action against state-owned Petrotrin of Trinidad and Tobago occurred last week by ICEM affiliate Oilfield Workers Trade Union (OWTU). Workers struck the company’s Point-a-Pierre refinery on 5-6 June in protest to stalled wage talks, health and safety issues, and the suspension of two employees.
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On 11 May, onshore and offshore OWTU members, with the exception of staff at the 160,000 barrels-per-day refinery, downed tools due to stalled negotiations dating to last year. Workers at the refinery did strike twice in March 2006 in order to hasten a three-year renewal agreement. 
 
Last week’s strike action was halted by the union after management pledged earnest talks to reach a new contract, but OWTU warned industrial actions would continue unless major progress did occur. The OWTU has been seeking meaningful dialogue with the company in order to put into effect a new labour agreement covering the period 2005 to 2008.

Trinidad, Tobago Oil Workers Strike Over Stalled Wage Talks

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The United Steelworkers (USW) achieved new collective agreements at two DuPont chemical plants in recent weeks in the US. The separate contracts are long overdue and contain wage increases for USW members that have been denied to them for the past several years. 
 
At a Louisville, state of Kentucky, fluorochemicals plant where 95 steelworkers are employed, a two-year agreement was put in place on 31 May. Workers there had been without a current agreement for the past four-and-a-half years. The accord calls for an immediate wage increase of 4%, while 3% was won effective in September 2006.
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At a titanium dioxide plant in Edge Moor, state of Delaware, USW members agreed to a three-year contract with DuPont that will provide wage increases of 4%, 3% and 3%. Some 130 workers are covered by this new agreement, which also contains a minimum staffing requirement and removes DuPont’s waiver language on certain health care benefits. 
 
At both locations, DuPont has attempted to unilaterally impose cuts to health care benefits, and has supported rival unions in efforts to overthrow USW as the official bargaining representative

Two DuPont Labour Agreements Fall in Place in US

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Led by ICEM affiliate Engineering, Printing & Manufacturing Union (EPMU), New Zealand’s labour movement began weekly pickets on 2 June against proposed legislation in which employers could fire workers with impunity during the first 90 days of their employment.
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The EPMU established pickets outside the electoral office of bill sponsor Wayne Mapp in Takapuna on that day. Further protests, planned for every Friday morning, will happen in Auckland and at selected targets as seen fit. A mass rally is slated for Whangerei on 21 June, and the campaign to block the amendment to the Employment Relations Act will culminate with a march and rally on Parliament in Auckland on 20 July. 
 
The legislation, if passed, would also remove all grievance rights for workers during their first 90 days of employment. The bill passed a first reading on Parliament with a narrow 63-58 vote on 15 March 2006 when Mapp’s National Party was joined by MPs from four other political parties: New Zealand First, ACT, United Future, and the Maori Party, in which three of four MPs voted against workers’ interests. The governing Labour Party and the Green Party are standing with trade unions in opposing the measure.

New Zealand Labour Launches Protests Against 90-Day Probation Act

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The ICEM’s joint project with affiliate General Union of Petroleum, Mining and Chemical Workers of Palestine (GUPMCWP) to develop leadership of women began 10-12 June in Amman, Jordan. Heavily supported by NOPEF, Norway’s dominant oil union, the seminar was attended by 23 women from GUPMCWP.
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Workshops dealt with collective bargaining and health issues, and were led by ICEM Women’s Officer Carol Bruce and Turid Øygard of NOPEF. ICEM’s two Jordanian affiliates, General Union of Petrol and Chemical Workers Union, and the General Trade Union of Workers in Mining and Metal Industries, cooperated in developing the workshops. 
 
Union-building work with GUPMCWP, as well as work in support of unions in Iraq, has been identified as a priority by the ICEM’s Middle East/North Africa Region, and the initial women’s project with ICEM’s Palestinian affiliate was agreed to in 2005 by the ICEM’s Secretariat and GUPMCWP leadership.
A report of the meeting can be found in <a href="/index.php?id=71&doc=1967&la=AR" type="internal">Arabic here</a> and in <a href="/index.php?id=71&doc=1967&la=EN" type="internal">English here</a>.

ICEM’s Palestinian Women’s Project Begins with Training Workshops

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The European Mine, Chemical, and Energy Workers’ Federation (EMCEF) held its 7th General Assembly in Istanbul, Turkey, 15-16 June under the banner “The Future of European Integration.” Attended by 200 delegates, the assembly notably adopted a motion on trade union rights and freedoms in Turkey that included support of the country in its negotiations with the EU for accession. 
 
In a letter to Turkish social policy ministers and to Turkey’s chief negotiator with the EU, EMCEF noted the “significant progress” in accession talks, but “that from a trade union perspective a lot remains to be done in terms of collective bargaining and trade union rights and freedoms. Full democratization is the only way towards integration.”
<img height="66" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/TurkeyFlag.gif" width="100"/>  
 

The motion on the subject states that EMCEF “supports membership negotiations between Turkey and the EU, (and) should end up with full membership of Turkey with all requirements being fulfilled. Additionally, (EMCEF) calls upon the government of the Republic of Turkey to take radical steps towards securing fundamental rights and freedoms within the framework of trade union rights and freedoms.” 
 
The General Assembly also included a panel and plenary session on “Perspective of European Integration in Light of Global Challenges.” The discussion focussed on the future of EMCEF activities that could strengthen the social dimension of European integration. EMCEF intends to get trade unions at both national and European levels to inject more initiatives on this most important issue.

EMCEF’s General Assembly Addresses Turkey’s Accession, Social Dimensions to Integration

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The second Trade Union Seminar for Repsol-YPF trade unionists took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina on 9-11 October. Repsol-YPF, a Spanish-Argentinean multinational, employs 16,000 workers worldwide and ranks in the top ten of oil and gas companies. 
 
ICEM affiliate Fiteqa, with the active support of CC.OO’s Paz y Solidaridad Foundation (FPS) was again leading this initiative. Trade unionists from Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba met to debate around their common concerns and to create a union network. ICEM was represented at the event by its Latin-American Vice-President and its Energy Officer. 
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The seminar gave participants the ability to compare their industrial, economic, social and political realities as well as to reinforce their unity and solidarity. For Isidor Boix, International Secretary of Fetiqa, “the level of discussions and the commitment shown by all the colleagues who participated constitutes a very sound basis for the future work of the network” 
 
The Repsol-YPF unions have also decided during this meeting to set up a web site to extend and deepen the information resources of the workers they represent. At the end of the sessions, representatives of the union network met representatives of Repsol-YPF to introduce their future work plan. 
 
The next meeting will take place in Peru in October 2007, while the webpage should be launched over the coming months.

Repsol Union Representatives from 9 Countries Meet in Argentina

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ICEM Affiliate Federación de Industrias Químicas y Afines de Comisiones Obreras (Fiteqa) has, together with the Spanish metalworkers union, Federación Estatal Minerometalúrgica, both of which affiliate to CC.OO., published a guide book on how to deal with safety related problems at work. 
 
The guide book follows a change in the law in Spain, which affects both refineries and chemical complexes, and gives workers guidance on how to act in case of an accident. 
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According to the authors, the guide should be a helpful tool to get more companies in the said sectors to accept propositions by Spain’s social partners to create more health and safety committees. The handbook discusses the urgent need to create such committees in all enterprises. 
 
The guide highlights the need for more and better information and communications between the largest companies in the sector. Its full name in Spanish is “Guía para la implantación de la Coordinación de Actividades Empresariales. Desarrollo de la Ley de Prevención de Riesgos Laborales en las Refinerías y complejos petroquímicos de España.”  It can be found <a href="http://www.fiteqa.ccoo.es/salud/Documentos/GuiaImplanta.CoordinacionActividadesEmpres..pdf">here</a>.

Spanish Health/Safety Guide for the Chemical/Metal Sector

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Croatian ICEM affiliate, the Autonomous Trade Union of Energy, Chemical, and Non-Metal Workers’ (EKN) of Croatia, held its Sixth Congress on 18-19 October, and enthusiastically endorsed an agreement to form, with the Croatian Metal Workers’ Union, a Confederation of Metal and Chemical Workers’ Union of Croatia. 
 
The EKN Congress gave a vote of confidence to Ivan Tomac, re-electing him President for the next term. Upon congratulating Tomac on re-election, ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs commended the union in forging the bond with the Metal Workers’ Union by stating, “We see this initiative as a major breakthrough in the process of uniting organized industry workers in your country and the whole region.” 
<img height="212" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0610CroatiaTomac.jpg" width="300"/> 
 
EKN President Ivan Tomac
A special Inaugural Congress of the new confederation was held following the EKN Congress. The creation of this new industrial confederation of workers, now the largest in Croatia, was preceded by three years of negotiations and the signing of a Declaration of Intent in October 2005. Establishing the confederation, which now has its own statutory bodies and president, is seen as a way for the two unions to adjust their respective financial and staff policies with the intent to fully merge the organizations in two years’ time. 
 
The new Confederation holds its doors open to all trade unions in the relevant industries who wish to join it and make it stronger. The ICEM welcomes this initiative as a unification breakthrough in bringing together a labour movement in a part of the world that has been plagued by so much division. 
 
Besides attendance at the Congress by the ICEM and the European Mine, Chemical, and Energy Workers’ Federation (EMCEF), to which EKN is affiliated on the global and European levels, guests from fraternal unions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Slovakia, and Croatia were also in attendance.

Croatia’s Power and Chemical Union Moves to Forge Bonds with Metalworkers

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ICEM affiliate, National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), again called for an absolute zero level of tolerance on health and safety incidences inside South Africa’s mining industry. 
 
That message again had to be delivered following a pair of seismic events, which caused death on 23 October at AngloGold Ashanti’s TauTona gold mine near Carletonville, South Africa. The tremors brought cave-ins and resulted in the deaths of five miners, who were working some 2,700 metres underground in one of the world’s deepest mines. 
The NUM questions why miners are even working in an environment so hazardous. AngloGold’s TauTona mine had already seen the deaths of another five miners, with ten others severely injured, earlier this year in similar rock falls. Tremors struck the mine southwest of Johannesburg in separate occurrences in January and February. In July 2005, two more miners were killed at TauTona when a tremor caused a rock slide. 
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The two 23 October tremors, which struck near a production seam nearly three kilometres inside the earth, occurred 25 minutes apart, and registered magnitudes of 1.9 and 2.3 on the Richter scale. The resulting rock slides also injured two other miners, one seriously. 
 
South African Minerals and Energy Minister Buyelwa Sonjea questioned the logic of miners working so deep in such environments. “In view of an industry-accepted target of zero fatalities, gold mines are the worst performers,” she said, in a statement on the most recent TauTona tragedy. 
 
AngloGold produced 120,000 ounces of gold from TauTona in fiscal quarter ending in June 2006. That figure represents 8.5% of the company’s total global gold production.

Earth Tremors Bring Death in AngloGold’s South African TauTona Mine

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The Seventh National Convention of ICEM affiliate Communications, Energy, Paperworkers (CEP) Union of Canada was held 15-19 October in Vancouver, British Colombia province, and Dave Coles was selected by acclamation as president of the union. 
 
He succeeds Brian Payne, ICEM Vice President, who has served in that capacity since 2000. After 28 years service to the CEP, and before that, ten years as a shop-floor activist in a British Colombia paper mill, Payne retired effective at the close of the convention. 
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New CEP President Dave Coles (at right), with Finnish Paperiliitto President Jouko Ahonen, ICEM's Paper Sector Chairman
Over 1,000 delegates and alternates moved fervently to adopt a resolution that will significantly boost the union’s organising fund. They also debated fiercely the Canadian military’s involvement in Afghanistan, a situation which has left over 70 Canadian soldiers and diplomats dead. 
In a softer but equally passionate testimony, delegates expressed their emotions and thanks to Payne for his leadership at CEP, particularly by forging unity and consensus among the union’s 150,000 members in forest products, oil and gas, media, and telecommunications sectors. Payne’s resolve to protect the interests of CEP members, from defence resources to pattern-bargaining, was lauded. His effort to bring a successful 14-year pay equity battle to closure at Bell Canada telephone was also recognised. 
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Retiring CEP President Brian Payne and his wife Verna
Coles has been CEP’s Western Region Vice President. He began his union career in the early 1970s at a pulp mill in British Columbia and has over 30 years of labour and community activism, including work as a CEP organiser in both Alberta and British Colombia provinces.
“Thanks to the debate and direction provided at this convention,” Coles said at the close of it, “we head into the next two years resolved to build an effective, dynamic union. We will make progress through collective bargaining and rise to new levels of social unionism.” 
 
Gaétan Ménard, a National Representative who began his union career in 1984 at Local 11, Masson, Quebec, was elected CEP Secretary-Treasurer.

Dave Coles Succeeds Retiring Brain Payne as President of Canada’s CEP

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