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<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
Ukrainian trade unions are furious with the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) unlawful interference into domestic policy, following agreement of a US$15 billion crisis loan. The conditions of the loan see workers hit hard, through a raft of social cuts. 
 
Opposition has been lead by the main Ukrainian national labour centre, the Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine (FPU), an ITUC affiliate. A demonstration staged by trade unionists outside the IMF regional office in Kiev, on 17 August, condemned a wage freeze for 4 million public sector workers, increased gas prices, fines for delayed payments for utilities, and a 5-year increase to the retirement age for women from 55 to 60, which will slash opportunities for young professionals seeking first-time employment. Gas price rises will double the average household’s monthly bill. IMF loan conditions also oblige Ukraine to increase the minimum period of employment that qualifies for a state pension from 5 to 15. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1008.ukraine.imf.jpg" width="210" height="142"/>
While the IMF conditionalities demand penalties for overdue payment of utilities bills, they do not address the common problem of overdue payment of wages. 
 
Trade unions demand that the IMF hold joint consultations with the Ukrainian cabinet and trade union representatives, leading to a lifting of the social restrictions, especially the raise in retirement age. 
 
Ukraine’s heavily industrialized economy was hit hard by the global financial crisis. The US$15 billion IMF loan will be paid back over 2.5 years. Ukrainian trade union leaders requested international solidarity and support, stating that the IMF’s intrusion into domestic policy will increase poverty levels in the country and create a permanent dependence on IMF credit.

Ukrainian Trade Unions Protest IMF Interference in Domestic Policy

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
ICEM Serbian affiliate Sindikat Nezavisnost, the Chemical, Non-Metal, Energy, and Mining Industries Union, will decide today if a proposal by the pharmaceutical concern Srbolek AD is good enough to end a 15-day strike by some 70 workers in Belgrade. On Friday, 20 August, a Serbian state mediation agency moderated an exchange of proposals between the union and company regarding this most recent strike over wage arrears. 
 
The strike began on 9 August, and workers and Nezavisnost leaders have been subjected to physical and psychological abuse by managing director Jovica Stefanovic Nini and his hired security team. Workers of the privatized pharmaceutical producer and distributor have not been paid in six months, with social contributions, taxes, statutory severance packages, and retirement earnings also withheld. 
 
A four-day strike in May 2010 resulted in retaliatory action being taken by the managing director against strike leaders. He unilaterally reduced the pay of union leaders by 60% then. Another strike over wage arrears occurred in August 2009. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1008.strike srbolek 3.jpg" width="252" height="189"/>
The ICEM intervened on 11 August in the most recent strike, calling into question the extreme anti-social behavior of management, including overt discrimination against women workers who are pregnant or who have given birth since August 2009. 
 
Following the first day of strike activity on 9 August, the company made a proposal through a state mediator that it would pay one month’s salary if workers halted the strike. Nezavisnost declined to consider the offer. The very next day, another trade union at a plant of Srbolek affiliated with the Sindikat Samostalni Federation of Serbia (SSSS) joined the strike, thus ratcheting up pressure on Stefanovic Nini. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1008.srbol strike 5.jpg" width="252" height="189"/>
But again security of Serbia’s third largest pharmaceutical company undertook brute tactics by prohibiting union leaders from entering the state mediation agency’s offices. 
 
Finally, following near constant negotiations last week, state mediators crafted a set of proposals that appears to satisfy the strikers. Srbolek, for the first time since the outset of the strike, also submitted a proposal on 20 August that could end the strike. It is that proposal which union leaders and strikers will examine today. 
 
The ICEM will continue to monitor the dispute and even if proposals are accepted to end the current strike, the Geneva-based Global Union Federation will follow future labour-management developments between Srbolek and trade unions.

Wage Arrears Again Fuel Bitter Serbian Pharmaceutical Strike

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the US, the United Steelworkers’ (USW) Paper Sector Bargaining Conference was held from 17-19 August, with some 500 local union leaders further refining a common negotiations agenda aimed at synchronizing working terms and conditions for 100,000 unionised paperworkers in North American. 
 
The conference also served as another springboard for Workers Uniting, the joint cooperative organization formed by the USW and Unite the Unite of the UK that is a registered trade union in four countries. Ten shop-floor trade union leaders from paper and printing plants in the UK attended, as did pulp and paper union leaders from Australia, Canada, Finland, Sweden, and South Africa. 
 
The conference took a hard look at management operated behavioral-based safety programmes compared to the preferable process safety alternatives, and the USW thoroughly analysed a comprehensive safety and health survey it did a year ago from among local unions of some 30 pulp and paper companies. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1008.usw.paper.1.jpg" width="221" height="154"/>
Linda Pollock, a shop-floor leader at HarperCollins book publishing in the UK and Unite member, addresses the USW paper conference 
But the main focus at the bi-annual conference was to shape common bargaining agenda, a process the union’s pulp and paper leadership has honed in recent years in order to regain bargaining clout after decades of mill-by-mill bargaining in the US pulp and paper sector. Delegates did that last week through some 30 break-out sessions that brought local branches of the same company together. 
 
In one, the MeadWestvaco council of trade unions, USW trade unionists elected Iain Eid, a Unite activist from a MeadWestvaco packaging plant in the UK, as spokesperson, further cementing the trans-Atlantic Workers Uniting bond. 
 
USW Executive Vice President and ICEM Executive Committee Member Jon Geenen, who heads this sector for the union, opened the conference by reporting that since 2007, due to dire economic circumstances that have caused mill shutdowns, bankruptcies, and coupled with production offshoring in search of cheaper labour, the USW’s largest industrial sector has lost 100,000 members, and dropped from holding 846 collective agreements to 750. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1008.usw.paper.2.jpg" width="218" height="138"/>
The global panel included Simon Mofokeng (right) of South Africa, who told of the victimization of union activists in his country by Sappi, and Fred Wilson (center) of CEP in Canada, who told how his union retained pattern bargaining in eastern Canada last spring
Despite this, the USW paper sector has achieved 17 master agreements in which partial framework terms are common within a company, and successfully negotiated successorship language for 50,000 workers. In the absence of adequate US labour law, this means that in the event of an asset sale of a mill or takeover of a company, the new employer must honour the collective agreement and retain the unionized workforce. 
 
Expanding successorship language in all collective agreements of the sector was one of 13 bargaining priorities formulated at the conference. Others include strengthening health and safety language based on recommendations made from the health and safety survey, called “Papered Over: Safety and Health in US Paper Mills,” contract term lengths of three years unless other circumstances prevail, and holding the line on 80/20 health insurance coverage, meaning employers pay 80% of health care premiums under the privatized US health care system. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1008.usw.paper.cfmeu.jpg" width="250" height="171"/>
Early this year, members of USW Local 1050 in Michigan at a Pratt/Visy paper plant wrote to workers at the Tumut mill of Visy in New South Wales, Australia, encouraging them to join the CFMEU. Alex Millar (left) presented the USW paper converting unit a flag signed by Australian paperworkers at Tumut who favour unionization. At center, USW District Two Assistant Director Art Kroll and Pratt/Visy unit chairman Mike Prins. At right, USW District Two Director Mike Bolton 
Other priorities relate to maintenance of defined benefit retirement plans, maintaining current vacation schemes, and addressing adequate staffing levels, a huge threat to safety in industrial settings where employers have been reluctant to re-hire workers when recovery and increased production begins. 
 
The conference heard from USW President Leo Gerard who told trade union leaders that America was at a crossroads in upcoming national mid-term elections. He said the US either continues on a path of people-friendly government initiatives now underway by President Barack Obama and Democrats, or a return to the regressive social policies of the Bush era. 
 
One panel during the conference featured union leaders from several paper-producing countries and their perspectives on future growth or decline, and trade union matters in their respective countries. That panel consisted of Jouko Ahonen, President of Paperiliitto of Finland; Christer Larsson, an economist for Pappers Union of Sweden; Fred Wilson, Executive Assistant to the President, Communications, Energy, Paperworkers (CEP) Union of Canada; Alex Millar, Federal Secretary of the Paperworkers Branch of Australia’s Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union (CFMEU); Simon Mofokeng, General Secretary of South Africa’s Chemical, Energy, Paper, Printing, Wood and Allied Workers’ Union (CEPPWAWU) of South Africa; and Peter Ellis, National Officer of the GMB.

USW’s Papermaking Sector Advancing Common Agenda for 100,000 Workers

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
In what has been described as a move to win back support from France’s right-wing, President Nicholas Sarkozy is pushing adoption of new legislation to push back the retirement age, and increase public sector workers’ pension contributions in France. Trade unions plan a national protest strike on 7 September. 
 
The National Assembly’s social affairs committee voted in favour of the Bill on 22 July, enabling it to go to Plenary debate in France’s lower house on 7 September, and to the Senate in October. The Bill would raise the legal retirement age from 60 to 62 in the year 2018, and increase the number of years of contributions to 41.5 before workers receive a full pension. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/FranceFCE-CFDT-NEW100.jpg" width="100" height="93"/>
Sarkozy’s low opinion poll ratings were recently compounded by claims of his and UMP party former chief fundraiser Eric Woerth’s financial misconduct, accepting illegal political cash from L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt. With the President seeking re-election in 2012, defeat of his pension reform bill would conserve workers’ conditions, but also strike a significant blow to Sarkozy’s right-wing UMP party’s election chances. 
 
The mass mobilization planned by France’s trade unions will coincide with the Plenary Session in the lower house, debating the pension bill. The action will seek to fight the proposed pension reforms, and also defend jobs and demand government action for economic recovery. 
 
ICEM French affiliated union FCE-CFDT describes the pension reform and other government austerity measures as “carriers of social injustice”, adding that it is unacceptable that all the financial burden of the economic downturn is passed onto employees in both the public and private sector.

French Trade Unions to Strike in Protest of Sarkozy’s Cuts to Pensions

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
European trade unions, led by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), will stage a mobilization in central Brussels on 29 September protesting job loss and resulting service cuts due to austerity measures being imposed by governments. The date will coincide with a meeting of Europe’s Finance Ministers in Europe’s capital. 
 
In addition, Spanish trade union federations UGT and CC.OO have called a one-day strike across Spain on 29 September in protest to massive public-sector cuts and attacks on pension formulas and social services by the ruling Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE). 
 
The ETUC’s Day of Action, entitled “No to Austerity, Priority for Jobs and Growth,” will manifest against proposed €200 billion in overall cuts, which could result in 200,000 further job losses. The manifestation will take the side, for example, of Romanian trade unions which have futilely resisted pay cuts by as much as 25% on state workers. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1008.no.to.austerity.banner.jpg" width="174" height="249"/>
The Day of Action is to resist European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet’s call for an end to economic stimulus programmes and rigorous imposition of austerity measures across Europe. European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) General Secretary Carola Fischbach-Pyttel warned that “as governments swing the austerity axe, they risk chopping off any green shoots of recovery, leaving workers, pensioners, and communities to face the prospect of an even longer recession.” 
 
The ICEM calls on its European affiliated trade unions to heed the ETUC’s call and manifest on 29 September against the socially destructive austerity measures. In Brussels, some 25,000 trade unionists are expected to assemble that day at Gare Du Midi, the city’s south railway station, at 11h30 and march to Parc du Cinquantenaire where a rally will be held beginning at 15h.

Trade Unions in Europe Plan 29 September Manifestation to Resist Austerity Measures

The Global Union Federation representing workers in the food, agriculture, and services sector, the International Union of Food and Allied Workers’ Association (IUF), has written to John Ruggie, UN Special Representative on Business and Human Rights, requesting that the relationship between precarious work and the effective realisation of human rights be incorporated into his investigations and recommendations as a matter of priority. 
 
In June 2008, Ruggie proposed a policy framework which was unanimously welcomed by the Human Rights Council. The "Protect, Respect, Remedy" framework is made up of three pillars: the state duty to protect against human rights abuses by third parties, including business; the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, by avoiding infringing on the rights of others; and greater access by victims to effective remedy, judicial and non-judicial. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/John.Ruggie.UN.png" width="145" height="73"/>
John Ruggie 
In preparing to make operational the framework, Ruggie is currently consulting with a wide range of actors, including through an online consultation forum, that can be found <a href="http://www.srsgconsultation.org">here</a>, the forum for which the IUF used for its submission. 
 
In that submission, the IUF argues that a meaningful investigation of the relationship between business and human rights must address how the degeneration of traditional employment relationships has impacted on workers’ human rights. Non-traditional forms of working arrangements, such as agency work, contract work and bogus self-employment, are being used to undermine trade union organising and bargaining. Says the IUF, this is a “fundamental human rights issue demanding a strong response rooted in a comprehensive human rights framework.” 
 
The IUF draw attention to the ILO’s 2008 report on industrial relations at Coca-Cola’s Colombia bottlers, which found that the company was systematically denying and restricting the ability to join a union by outsourcing many core jobs. In order to redress this and ensure that workers are capable of fully exercising their rights the global union calls for urgent, systematic action by governments and business to restrict the use of precarious work.

IUF Urges UN Special Representative to Probe Precarious Work 

Lacking job security and decent working conditions creates a great deal of stress, particularly in people who are struggling to support a family. Medical researchers discovered, in the 1930s, that stress by itself could produce physical effects. Since then, there has been an ongoing effort to better understand the stress response. 
 
The strict scientific definition of stress is "any stimulus, or group of stimuli, that provokes a physiological or psychological response." A more useful definition of stress in the work context might be "conditions that exceed a person's normal coping capacity." In occupational health, we are particularly concerned with the stressful effects on workers of conditions in the workplace. 
 
What are the negative effects of excessive stress on health - and by health, we mean all aspects of physical, mental, and social well-being? 
 
The symptoms of stress are generally thought to arise from the "fight or flight response." In our evolutionary history, human beings were adapted to respond to a threat by preparing to either fight, give chase, or run away. The body instinctively reacts in certain ways designed to prepare itself for a sudden, short-term, all-out effort to survive. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1005.cal.stress.png" width="126" height="95"/>
At first, the sense heightens, blood pressure goes up, heart rate accelerates, respiration increases, blood flow to the muscles is increase, muscles tense, and the digestive system shuts down. Your body temperature may change, provoking sweating. In our evolutionary past, these responses prepared you mentally and physically to meet a threat that would be resolved, for better or for worse, within a few minutes. 
 
The problem in modern terms is that our bodies seem unable to distinguish between the "threat" posed by a cave-bear, a bullying boss, or perpetual fear of job loss. The fight-or-flight response, maintained or repeated too often, results in chronic or long-term damage. These can include hypertension and cardiovascular disease, ulcers, colitis, compromised immune systems, headaches, and psychological changes. 
 
To further complicate things, different people respond to chronic stress in different ways and with different symptoms. Faced with the same workplace stressors, Jane may experience diseases of her digestive system while John may develop high blood pressure. These inconsistent symptoms have made it very difficult to get stress symptoms recognized as a legitimate occupational disease. 
 
All working people experience some degree of career stress; but workers who toiled under Contract and Agency Labour (CAL), who lack even minimal job security and often work for lower wages and in poorer conditions than their full-time counterparts, experience much more. Career stress should be thought of as adding to all the other stresses caused by every aspect of a person's life. 
 
To control stress in the workplace, the same hierarchy of controls that are considered in the control of any other hazard should be used. Control the hazard at the source, if possible; failing that, control the hazard before it reaches the worker (along the exposure path); and as a last resort, control the hazard at the worker. 
 
CAL workers have less scope to seek these controls. They may be subjected to heavy work demands, a poor workplace environment, harassment or bullying, shift work, role uncertainty, a lack of training, unrealistic expectations, lack of input or control over the work, poor ergonomic factors, a high degree of scrutiny or monitoring, and of course job insecurity. Stress at work can have a synergistic effect on stress away from work, capable both of exacerbating and being exacerbated by: family problems, financial problems, sleep and fatigue problems, financial problems, and a feeling of powerlessness and low self worth. 
 
Unlike full-time workers, who often experience a level of loyalty to their employer and their work, CAL workers can feel less commitment. In the long term, this can increase the risk of burn-out. Job performance will come to consist of doing just enough to get by, and this can spill over into personal life as the burned out worker fails to look after their own health, relationships, and families. 
 
Stress is not a trivial condition that can be dealt with simply by willing it away. It is a serious problem, and a proven cause of a wide range of medical conditions 
 
Control of the hazard at the source, would in this case mean the conversion of contract and agency jobs to secure, decent work. 
 
Contract and Agency Labour can and does make workers sick.

Contract and Agency Labour … and Stress 

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBriefAlert.jpg" width="120" height="59"/>
The International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine, and General Workers’ Union (ICEM), the dominant global trade union federation for the mining industry, endorses a letter by its Liberian union affiliate to President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf protesting proposed rail passage through the West African nation by Brazilian-based Vale SA. 
 
Recently, Vale purchased a 51% stake from BSG Resources of iron ore blocks near Simandou in eastern Guinea. The mining house intends to create a rail and logistics corridor from Guinea through Liberia to the Atlantic Ocean coast. 
 
In the letter, dated 13 May, the Forestry, Logging, and Industry Workers of Liberia (FLIWUL) calls on President Johnson-Sirleaf to fully examine Vale’s global social record before her government grants the rail concession. Among several irresponsible social acts, Vale has a forced a bitter strike – now in its eleventh month – on 3,500 nickel and copper miners in Canada. 
 
“We are aware of many serious issues surrounding Vale and its mistreatment of workers and communities where it operates around the world,” writes FLIWUL Secretary-General David D. Sackoh. 
 
“Organizations in Mozambique, Brazil, Canada, Peru, Chile, Germany, Italy, and New Caledonia have declared that Vale ‘infringes human rights, exploits both male and female workers, imposes precarious working conditions, destroys nature and disrespects traditional communities.’ It appears that every place where Vale operates, communities are displaced, the environment is harmed and workers’ rights are not respected. 

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Liberia.png" width="250" height="115"/>
“We are disturbed at the treatment that Vale has given to its workforce in Canada. The company provoked a strike through its demands for deep concessions from its workers despite the fact that the company has made billions of dollars in profit in recent years. 
 
“Madame President, following many years of civil war and turmoil the Liberian people finally enjoy peace and has a promising future under your leadership. This behemoth Vale with its suspect actions could potentially destroy our fragile economy for the benefit of a greedy few. As key stakeholder in the infrastructural and economic development of Liberia, FLIWUL wishes to urge the government to carefully study the situation and ensure that transitional companies investing in Liberia do so responsibly.” 
 
ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda soundly endorsed the letter, and said the Geneva-based federation will also raise Vale’s investment in Guinea with trade unions there, and with the government of Guinea. “We cannot accede to Vale’s investment agenda anywhere while the company brings pain and suffering on workers,” said Warda. “The atrocities that Vale is inflicting on people and their communities in Ontario and Labrador in Canada must stop and we give sound warning that we will follow this mining company everywhere and repeat FLIWUL’s message.” 
 
The ICEM is a global union federation consisting of 467 trade unions in 132 countries, and represents 20 million workers worldwide. 
 
For further information, contact ICEM Information Officer Dick Blin, <a href="mailto:dick.blin@icem.org">dick.blin@icem.org</a>, +41 79 734 8994 (mobile) +41 22 304 1842 (direct line).

ICEM Commends Liberian Affiliate for Opposing Vale Investment

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
Strike actions in April and a flurry of trade union activities over the past two weeks have succeeded in bringing formal recognition to the ICEM affiliate, Metallurgical, Mining, and Chemical Industry Workers’ Trade Union of Georgia. Some 5,800 workers at the Zestafoni Ferroalloys Plant and the Georgian Manganese mines, some 40 kilometres from Zestafoni in Chiatura, now have a free and democratic trade union to call their own. 
 
That was reinforced on 13 May after the union, backed by the Georgian Trade Unions Confederation (GTUC), and top managers met for a second conciliation commission session and made headway towards resolving a host of demands put forward by workers. 
 
Miners and metalworkers were buoyed massively when, ten days after a three-day strike ended on 25 April that got management’s rapt attention, ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda and Chemicals and Rubber Officer Kemal Özkan travelled to western Georgian to meet with workers. 

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1005.georgia.2.JPG" width="300" height="225"/>
(LtoR) Irakli Petriashvili, President of GTUC, Manfred Warda, GTUC interpreter, Kemal Özkan
Bringing pledges of solidarity from the ICEM and the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF), Warda told Georgian workers they were not alone. And speaking before regional news media and to workers directly, Warda assured all that the combined strength of the two federations was ready and willing to take this fight beyond central Asia if that was needed. 
 
The message underscored a resolve borne through several months of struggle, culminating in a series of April incidents, including grievous intimidation tricks (see prior ICEM report here) by management that served only to bring more staff into the Metallurgical, Mining, and Chemical Workers’ fold. 
 
Initially in last week’s second conciliation session, managers and their attorneys sought involvement of an existing but dying “yellow” union in the talks. But the seven union members of the joint, bilateral commission threatened to walk out and lead renewed strike actions. The union and GTUC representatives then showed managers a large number of power-of-attorney statements by workers that expressed their allegiance to the Metallurgical, Mining, and Chemical Workers’ Union. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1005.georgia.3.JPG" width="300" height="142"/>
Metallurgical, Mining, and Chemical Workers’ Union Members
Recognition was achieved. The numerous petitions that workers demand to improve their working lives were then open for discussion. Foremost among them were wages. In the hours leading up to the talks, the ICEM and IMF scrambled to gather and succeeded in delivering wage rates from associated ferroalloy plants in Ukraine, owned by the metals arm of PrivatBank. 
 
Miners at the Georgian Manganese complex are paid an average monthly wage of GEL (lari) 450, or US$238, €192. Metalworkers at the ferroalloy plant in Zestafoni earn a monthly average of GEL 562, or US$298, €240. With both sides having already agreed to 1 May as the effective date for salary adjustments, management proposed a 15% increase for shift workers and 8% for day workers. 
 
This is unsatisfactory to the union side of the commission. But they are confident that further negotiations today and tomorrow, 17-18 May, and again on 20 May, will bring the long overdue percentage increases higher. The union did get a commitment at the 13 May set of talks that the enterprises will begin to comply with Georgia labour law regarding sick leave payments, including retroactive compensation for those workers who have been denied such pay. 

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1005.georgia.5.JPG" width="205" height="154"/>
“It is a big step forward,” said Gocha Aleksandria, Vice President of the GTUC, who is a member of the 14-member conciliation commission. “The administration now accepts our union, but the hardest part is still ahead. We intend to achieve the obvious, meaningful, and tangible results for our members and that is permanent labour contracts that address all issues.” 
 
Some of those issues include raising the number of yearly paid leave days from 30 (metal) and 32 (mining) to 35; creation of a joint contributory pension fund to supplement a miserly state pension; better safety and health conditions; and an upgrade to medical facilities. 
 
Even prior to the first commission negotiations, on 7 May, management reacted to workers’ militancy and ICEM’s mission statement of that week by agreeing to permanent work contracts, as well as reinstatement of two union leaders who were discharged for strike activities. (At the 13 May session, management agreed to pay the two their full April salaries.) 
 
Another accomplishment in the recent bargaining is that union leaders will bring their demands directly to Georgian shareholders of the enterprises. The complex ownership of the ferroalloy plant and manganese mines has stock ownership by privately-held Stemcor Holdings of the UK. Shares are also traded publicly on the Georgian bourse with Georgia entrepreneurs and the Ukrainian oligarch Gennadiy Boholyubov and his manganese empire that is tied to PrivatBank holding vast sums. 
 
For now, 3,600 miners and 2,200 metalworkers have a free and democratic union they can call their own – the Metallurgical, Mining, and Chemical Industry Workers’ Trade Union of Imereti Region. But as Aleksandria states, the journey now begins in earnest: erstwhile dialogue to gain the wage levels, benefits and work conditions that they justly deserve.

Free Trade Union Recognised for Miners, Metalworkers of Georgia

<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39" alt=""/>
The horrid twin explosions inside mine shafts in Russia’s Kuzbass basin on 8-9 May that killed 90 underscored the need for more countries to ratify ILO Convention 176, the Safety and Health in Mines Convention. Since Convention 176 was adopted in 1995, only 24 nations have ratified it. 
 
In Moscow last week, while rescue efforts at the Raspadskaya Coal Co. mine were underway 3,500 kilometres to the east, both ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda and Russian Independent Coal Employees’ Union (ROSUGLEPROF) President Ivan Mokhnachuk went on BBC World Service Radio to plead for Russia and other resource-rich countries to take up the important call for ratification of Convention 176. 

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0703Ivan.jpg" width="140" height="164"/>
ROSUGLEPROF President Ivan Mokhnachuk
ROSUGLEPROF represents workers at Raspadskaya, a mine jointly owned by Russia’s second largest steel and metals group, the Evraz Group, and Cypress-based Corber Enterprises Ltd. A union vice president made his way to the mine immediately following the tragedy. 
 
But it is still not clear if ROSUGLEPROF will be allowed to participate in an investigation that hopefully will lead to the cause of the blasts. At the end of last week, the government halted investigation efforts because mine shafts are still too dangerous. 
 
It is still too early to speculate about cause. What is known is that the mine in the Kemerovo region of western Siberia does have some of the best methane gas detection and ventilation equipment available. And that the first blast, occurring just before midnight local time on 8 May, killed at least 50 miners. The second explosion, four hours later, killed other miners as well as all 19 rescue workers who were sent in. 

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ilo_small.jpg" width="175" height="247"/>
What is not known is did a negligent Russian pay system contribute? That system sets an extremely low flat-rate monthly wage, with the vast share of all mining salaries based on production. Volume, productivity, and profits drive wages higher. This means that detection equipment, safety procedures, and other protection devices are oftentimes disabled or ignored in order to boost monthly pay. 
 
That was the case on 19 March 2007 when 110 miners died at the nearby Ulyanovskaya mine, owned by another mining subsidiary of Evraz. It was the worst mining tragedy in 60 years in Russia and the former Soviet Union. The Raspadskaya disaster of eight days ago stands as the second worst. 
 
ILO Convention 176 improves mine safety and health by forcing improved national mining laws. But Convention 176 does something else; it places responsibility on employers to not only correct hazards, but remedy the cause of the hazards themselves. In Russia, that could well be construed to mean corrective laws to fix a faulty pay system in coal mining.

Russian Mine Disaster Restates Immediacy for ILO Convention 176

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