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Some 1,600 American trade union and environmental leaders met in Washington, D.C., last week in a historic, three-day BlueGreen Alliance conference that concluded on 10 February with visits to US legislators urging a green industrial future for America. 
 
The BlueGreen Alliance Foundation, formed in 2006 between the United Steelworkers (USW) and the Sierra Club, has now grown to include eight US unions, several environmental organisations, and a handful of trade groups. 
 
The 2011 “Good Jobs, Green Jobs National Conference” featured US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson as keynote speaker, and consisted of many workshops, including one entitled “11 Workers Killed and the Worst Environmental Disaster Ever; How Do We Respond to the Deepwater Horizon Explosion?” 
<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1102.good jobs green jobs.jpg" width="246" height="71" alt=""/>
A familiar chord throughout the conference was how to compete against trading nations such as China and Germany that have developed better industrial policies concerning green technologies. Participants took that question, demanding legislative solutions, to lawmakers on Capitol Hill in Washington. 
 
USW President Leo Gerard opened the conference by urging delegates to push leaders of both US political parties to act in the long-term interests of the US. Another pair of themes weaved throughout the conference is that clean energy does create jobs, and good jobs and achievement of a safe environment are mutually inclusive. 
 
BlueGreen Alliance Executive Director Dave Foster said the participants at last week’s conference, who represent 8.5 million American workers, “are willing to answer President Obama's call to out-build, out-educate, and out-innovate to win the future. 
 
“Congress,” he added, “must (now) get moving on critical policies that build a healthy and prosperous America.”

USW-led BlueGreen Alliance Champions Job Growth in America

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The ICEM applauds the unity and successful coordination of Colombian trade unions, in the launch of a new daily radio programme for workers, called "Contacto Social." Included in the grouping of 12 unions were ICEM affiliates Sintraelecol and USO. The process was supported locally by ICEM’s country coordinator Carlos Bustos. 
 
The daily programme has now been broadcasting since 1 February, Monday to Friday, in the areas around Bogotá, Cundinamarca, Boyacá, Meta, and Tolima, and is also available globally online. The organizers of the project plan to expand its reach in the future and become a major media tool in Colombia, communicating views to workers, and supplying an outlet to those whose voices cannot otherwise be heard. 
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Trade unionists and supporters are encouraged to call and join the on-air debate at +57 4176970 
 
One story that was reported today on "Contacto Social" is the Colombian national Labour center CUT organising a workers' picket at the office of the Vice President, ahead of a high-level meeting with the ILO. 
Unions in the South American country demand that Colombia be re-added to the list of countries evaluated by the ILO's Committee of Experts. CUT President Tarsicio Mora decried the continuing dangers facing trade unionists in Colombia, where 46 were murdered in 2010 and three so far this year. There are currently over 40 labour disputes ongoing, many caused by the erosion of labour rights and working conditions by employers. 
 
Listen to the <a href="http://www.icemcolombia.com/index2.php?option=com_radio">daily radio programme</a> of Colombian workers here.  
See more on the <a href="http://www.icemcolombia.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=frontpage&Itemid=1">ICEM Colombia website</a>.

Trade Unions Coordinate Launch of Daily Radio in Colombia

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ICEM’s two mine union affiliates in Ukraine played crucial roles in the ratification 15 February of ILO Convention 176 by the country’s Parliament, the Verkhovna Rada. <a href="/en/209-ILO " type="internal">Convention 176, the Safety and Health in Mines Convention</a>, is a major priority for the ICEM. 
 
Ukraine became the 25th country to ratify Convention 176 since 1995 and that was due mainly to the efforts of the Coal Industry Workers’ Union of Ukraine (PRUPU) and the Independent Trade Union of Miners of Ukraine. Leaders of both unions, Victor Turmanov and Mikhail Volynets, are members of the Rada. 
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PRUPU's Victor Turmanov
Turmanov said the effort began in earnest in 2008 when the unions and Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine (FPU) Chairman Vasyl Khara began meeting with federal coal industry officials, as well as with managing directors of mining enterprises. Khara was chairman of the Donetsk Region Council of Trade Unions. He is also an MP. 
 
A major barrier was broken when senior leaders of the Donetsk region’s coal to electric energy company, DTEK, agreed to support ratification, after Coal Industry Minister Viktor Poltavets –a one-time mining engineer at Sverdlov Anthracite – agreed to the global Convention. 
 
“We took an important step in ratification because it will provide a more holistic approach to mine health and safety in Ukraine,” said Turmanov. “This will strengthen protection for miners, toughen the responsibilities placed on employers, and finally place national precedence on mine safety issues.” 
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Mikhail Volynets, Independent Trade Union of Miners
Volynets said most Ukrainian mines have antiquated equipment and use old technologies, and he said implementation of Article 7 of Convention 176 will be important in Ukraine. Article 7’s nine provisions refer to an employer’s responsibility to minimize all risks in mining, including such standards that two exits of separate egress must come from underground mines. 
 
Volynets said Ukraine’s coal mining industry is the world’s second most hazardous behind China, and Ukraine is home to thousands of illegal mines. “It is critically important for Ukrainian unions, with ICEM support, to address the issue of illegal mines in ILO committees,” said Volynets. 
 
“But, in fact, every mine whether state-owned or private has its own violations or infractions of safe mining and that should get solved in implementing Convention 176 here.” 
 
Convention 176 will take full effect in 12 months in Ukraine, with the expectation that the country’s national laws on mine safety will get updated to comply with global standards. 
 
The Convention spells out responsibilities for government, employers, and workers and their trade unions, and specifically gives miners the right to report hazards, dangerous conditions and accidents, as well as the right to refuse unsafe work. 
 
For employers, Convention 176 places responsibility on them to not only remove workplace hazards, but remove the causes of those hazards. The Convention also mandates that employers provide adequate safety training programmes to workers and ensure a regular routine of occupational health surveillance of miners. 
 
Of vital importance, the Convention gives workers and their trade unions participation in inspections and accident investigations, and allows workers to select their own safety and health representatives in full partnership with employers and governmental regulatory bodies. 
 
Ukraine is the first major mining country to ratify Convention 176 since Peru ratified it in June 2007.

Ukrainian Mine Unions Ratify ILO Convention 176 on Mine Safety

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The International Textile, Garment, Leather Workers’ Federation (ITGLWF) congratulated its regional Asia structure TWARO and Cambodian affiliate C.CADWU for successfully restoring the jobs of 19 trade union leaders and 142 other workers at garment sweatshops of Goldfame Enterprises. 
 
The ITGLWF reports that its Cambodian independent trade union affiliate C.CADWA signed a Memorandum of Agreement with Goldfame that resolves outstanding issues following a general strike by Cambodian garment workers in September 2010. 
 
In an agreement aimed at promoting workplace cooperation in industrial relations, Hong Kong-based Goldfame agreed to reinstate the 19 leaders and 142 other union members at a meeting hosted by the ILO, witnessed by the ITGLWF, TWARO, and C.CADWU, as well as by Goldfame buyers Inditex and H&M. 
 
Efforts in Cambodia will continue, the ITGLWF states, to persuade other employers to follow Goldfame’s lead and restore the jobs of workers who were discriminatively sacked during the wave of September 2010 mass strikes. The ITGLWF states that another 63 trade union leaders and 77 supporters in 14 factories deserve their dignified return to work.

ITGLWF Commends Goldfame Job Recalls in Cambodia

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Paperworkers belonging to ICEM affiliates FIA-UGT and FSC-CCOO in Spain effectively shut the nation’s paper and paperboard industry on 23 February. And they will do again on arch if the paper employers’ association (Aspapel) does not this week make major revisions to its one-sided 2010-2012 bargaining agenda. 
 
The two unions reported close to 100% strike turn-out in nearly all the selected mills and paper plants in nine regions. 
 
Due solely to Aspapel’s year-long failure to compromise on a long-lapsed national collective agreement, Spanish paper plants last week lost 24 hours of production and face that again this week. Multiple plants of Torraspapel, SAICA, SCA, SmurfitKappa, Europac, Newark Group lost production, as did single plants of Holmen, Ibertissue, Kimberly Clark, Sonoco’s Papertech, and Gomà-Camps. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1102.p&p.Spain.jpg" width="340" height="224"/>
Paperworkers Strike at Torraspapel’s Almazá-Soria Region Mill
Central staff of SAICA joined the 24-hour strike last week. At three of four of Barcelona-based Torraspapel’s paperboard plants, strike participation was 100%. At the fourth, it was 60%. SCA tissue and paperboard mills at LaRiba, Valls, and Mediona were affected. The ICEM took hold of global solidarity, and that <a href="/en/19-Pulp-Paper/4264-Pledge-Support-to-Paperworkers’-Strike-Actions-in-Spain" type="internal">Solidarity Call</a> on February 23 can be found here. 
 
Spanish paperworkers have grown angry over Aspapel’s unwillingness to bend from sweeping flexibility changes and downward wage structure revisions. The dispute is far less on salaries – the two sides are close on that – than it is on imposing adverse salary structures that, in effect, place the burden of a slumping Spanish economy, in part, on paperworkers. In Spain’s paper sector right now, harsh revision of the consumer price index (CPI) calculation is the same as the race to the bottom. 
 
Some 17,500 paperworkers are affected by industry intransigence in meeting a 2010 national labour agreement. 
 
On a different issue inside the Spanish paper industry, a roof collapse which spewed concrete over paper-making machinery caused shutdown of the former Papelera de Besaya mill in Torrelavega, Cantabria. Fortunately, no one was killed or injured in the 18 February mishap. The mill had been operating since November 2010, following Catabria government takeover of a bankrupt paper enterprise.

Spain’s Paperworkers Shut Industry; Will Strike Again 3 March

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ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda and Asia-Pacific Regional Contact Person Phee Jungsun reached out last week to New Zealand trade union affiliates in the immediate aftermath of the 22 February earthquake. The 6.3 magnitude quake has claimed the lives of 147 people, with another 200 persons missing and feared dead. 
 
National Distribution Union (NDU) General Secretary Robert Reid said the building his union’s offices are housed and NDU partly owns, the Christchurch Trade Union Centre on Armagh Street, was badly damaged from the quake. Return to work there is uncertain. The NDU’s Christchurch offices are on the fourth floor of the labour building. 
 
“All NDU staff and we think all our members in Christchurch are OK, although many have damage to their homes,” he added. 
<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Robert_Reid NDU New Zealand.jpg" width="196" height="200" alt=""/>
NDU General Secretary Robert Reid
National Secretary Andrew Little of the Engineering, Printing, and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) said, “EPMU personnel are unscathed but we are still ascertaining the impact on our members and their workplaces.” 
 
Little said Christchurch, New Zealand’s second largest city, suffered “a lot of destruction and it will take a long time for the city to recover.” He added: “The shake was a very violent one.” 
 
Some 600 search and rescue teams are at work in Christchurch and the estimated damages range from NZ$4 billion (US$3 billion) to NZ$16 billion (US$12 billion.) 
 
The 22 February earthquake is the second in less than six months in New Zealand. In September, a 7.1 quake hit some 40 kilometres from Christchurch, but caused less damage because it occurred in a less populated and rural area. Several Kiwi cities sit atop a series of faults connected to Alpine Fault, a subterranean mass where the Pacific and Indo-Australian tectonic plates slide across one another.

NDU Christchurch Offices Damaged in New Zealand Earthquake

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An updated version of the extensive presentation on “CAL and the ICEM CAL Campaign” has now been made available on the ICEM site. This PowerPoint presentation, which can be used by anyone, contains not only a considerable number of key statistics on Contract and Agency Labour and other forms of precarious work, including the ICEM’s own statistics, but also contains a wide range of “best practice examples,” highlighting what unions around the world have done quite successfully to counter the problem. 
 
A full-length version of the presentation in English can be found <a href="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/10-12-02%20Web-site%20version%20CAL%20ICEM%20PPT.ppt" type="internal">here</a>. 
 
The Spanish version of the presentation can be found <a href="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/CAL/10-12-08%20Spanish%20CAL%20presentation.PPT" type="internal">here</a>.

CAL Facts and Figures Overview, now also in Spanish

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The ICEM tracks climate negotiations because of their profound implications for all workers, but especially industrial workers in energy-producing and energy-intensive industries. The Global Union Federation supports a fair, ambitious, and legally-binding climate treaty, but insists that decision-makers consider the social implications. 
 
Existing jobs must be made more sustainable, and new, or “green jobs,” can be created, but they must not be “mcjobs.” They must provide decent work. This implies a need for national industrial strategies. Strong social programmes must back specific “Just Transition” provisions. 
 
Lastly, the world must not forget that fundamental structural changes in our economy are needed as the financial crisis demonstrated that the same kind of short-sighted thinking that has jeopardized the environment, equally has jeopardized economic stability. 
 
After the failure that was COP-15 in Copenhagen in 2009, COP-16 in Cancún, Mexico, opened to low expectations. Many felt that the best that could be hoped for was to put the process back on track, build some trust, and aim for real decisions at COP-17 in 2011. 
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ICEM’s Brian Kohler speaking at plenary session of Ad-hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action
At COP-15, before the talks collapsed and the so-called “Copenhagen Accord” emerged from secret backroom talks, trade unions had succeeded in winning the insertion of a paragraph in the “Shared Vision” portion of the Long-term Cooperative Action draft, covering a range of issues including adaptation, mitigation, financing, research and development, technology transfer, training and education, and Just Transition. This paragraph came to be known as the “Just Transition and Decent Work” paragraph. 
 
For reasons unknown, the Chair of the Ad-hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA) removed this paragraph from the document under discussion, and labour was faced with a fight to get it back. 
 
The Just Transition language agreed that “addressing climate change requires a paradigm shift towards building a low-emission society that offers substantial opportunities and ensures continued high growth and sustainable development, based on innovative technologies and more sustainable production and consumption and lifestyles, while ensuring a just transition of the workforce that creates decent work and quality jobs.” 
 
Related stakeholder language that was also missing recognized the need for civil society to participate in decisions that affect their lives, workplaces, and communities. 
 
Recovering this language became a priority of the trade union delegation to COP-16. ICEM Health, Safety, Sustainability Officer Brian Kohler addressed the opening plenary of the AWG-LCA on behalf of trade unions, and emphasized the need for this language. 
 
Throughout the two weeks of COP-16, coordinated by the International Trade Union Confederation’s (ITUC) Anabella Rosemberg, every trade union delegate made efforts to contact members of the negotiating teams to stress the need for this paragraph. Kohler himself spoke to negotiators from Europe, Japan, and the assistant to the Chair of the AWG-LCA, among others. This all-out effort finally paid off: at the last minute, on the last day, it was announced that the text had made it back into the “Shared Vision.” 
 
The final report of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific and Technical Advice, on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) eligibility as a Clean Development Mechanism (part of the Kyoto Protocol track), presented two options on CCS for consideration by the Parties. In the end, the Parties adopted the more favourable of the two options. Therefore, CCS will be an eligible project activity under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), provided it complies with fairly stringent risk and safety assessments. This is a positive development for supporters of CCS, including ICEM and many of its affiliates. 
 
As for protecting the earth from disastrous climate change, much remains to be done. Developed countries must be more ambitious in their emissions reduction targets, and although progress was made on the subject of funding, the poorest nations of the world have yet to see a fully adequate finance plan for mitigation and adaptation. 
 
On balance, however, COP-16 did represent a small step forward, and raises hope that at COP-17 next year, a more effective “fair, ambitious, and binding” climate treaty may be reached. 
 
The full list of agreements reached at COP-16 can be read <a href="http://unfccc.int/2860.php ">here</a>.

COP-16: Modest Trade Union Successes Inside Big Picture

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The Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI) has launched an international campaign calling on the Swedish furniture multi-national IKEA and its wholly-owned Swedwood subsidiary to uphold commitments on trade union and worker rights throughout its supply chain. The campaign comes in response to Swedwood and its appalling labour practices at a US factory in Danville, Virginia. 
 
Swedwood is the primary wood manufacturer for IKEA. 
 
In behaviour which has brought comparisons to Walmart, local management in Danville has blocked trade unions access to its 275 factory workers since commencing operations at the site in 2006. The Virginia Occupational Safety and Health Administration in October found Swedwood guilty of numerous unsafe work practices and improper record keeping, hiding the true numbers of serious accidents of workers. 
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Other abuses occurring at Swedwood in the US factory include forced overtime without advance notice, workers forced to work 30 days consecutively, managers manipulating work schedules to cut overtime, workers not allowed bathroom breaks, and most importantly, workers denied their right to trade union representation, and forced to work in an unsafe environment. 
 
BWI has always regarded dialogue in its Global Framework Agreement with IKEA as a model. In that agreement, BWI’s first ever, IKEA clearly commits to follow the ILO core labour standards throughout its global operations. Since signing the agreement in 1998, those commitments have been respected in Poland, Russia, and elsewhere, and the Gene3va-based Global Union Federation (GUF) insists that local managers in Danville must be forced to open its doors to the BWI North American affiliate, the International Association of Machinists (IAM). 
 
BWI took the campaign to an IKEA outlet in Vernier, Geneva, on 7 December. Trade union leaders from over 25 countries conducted the protest and sent a clear message to IKEA that they were united against workers’ rights abuses in Danville, USA. See video footage of the campaign <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxrfPUe-2Kc">here</a>. 
 
The GUF is calling on supporters to send a Christmas card to IKEA CEO Mikael Ohlsson, demanding an end to labour rights abuses in Danville. The card states that IKEA’s customers should be assured “that the furnishing products they buy from your stores have been made by workers whose human rights are fully respected.” Click <a href="http://www.goiam.org/ikea/">here</a> to send your Christmas message to IKEA.

BWI Launces Holiday Campaign Against IKEA’s Swedwood on Abusing Trade Union Rights

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In Moscow, the Fifth Congress of the All-Russian Elektroprofsoyuz finished its work last week. Formed 20 years ago, the ICEM affiliated union remains as one of the most important Russian trade unions over the years, protecting the interests of working people. 
 
Throughout its existence, Elektroprofsoyuz has consistently directed its efforts to preserve and strengthen trade union structures, increase employee participation in the management of organizations through creation and dissemination of social partnerships in order to increase the social responsibility of businesses. 
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The activities of the union that have been directed at protecting the interests of members of the trade union in the framework of cooperation with state authorities have been significant, as well as the adoption and subsequent implementation of the guidelines of the trade union for the development of social partnerships, which have been very important. 
 
Over the years, everyone working in the power industry, in electrical engineering, and in the peat industry has seen real wage increases. The strengthening of trade union control over state occupational health and safety has led to a marked reduction of occupational injuries. Over the last five-year Congress period, Elektroprofsoyuz has given special impetus to the work of young workers. 
 
Today, the All-Russian Elektroprofsoyuz union has 672,824 members. The average monthly salary for them in the power industry is about 32,590 rubles, or US$1,051. 
 
At last week’s Congress, Valery Vahrushkin was elected president of the union for the next five years.

Elektroprofsoyuz Union Holds Fifth Congress in Moscow

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