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<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBriefAlert.jpg" width="120" height="59"/>
Tomorrow, 8 March, marks the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day (IWD). It is also 16 days before the ICEM’s largest Women’s Conference ever, when 160 participants from 40 countries convene in Sevilla, Spain. 
 
(There is still time to register and attend the ICEM Women’s Conference from 23-25 March. Please refer to the <a href="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/En%20Draft%20Agenda_Nove2010%201.pdf" type="internal">invitation</a>, <a href="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/EN%20Women%20Attendance%20Form-March%202011.doc" type="internal">registration form</a>, and <a href="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/En%20Draft%20Agenda_Nove2010%201.pdf" type="internal">tentative agenda</a>. The cover art for this article is courtesy of ICEM German affiliate IGBCE, which has as theme this year, “Lay Tomorrow’s Foundation Today.”) 
 
Some ICEM affiliates have already held IWD events. In Thailand, ICEM-affiliated unions joined other civil society groups in a 6-7 March symposium at Thammasat University in Bangkok. A key point made was that hundreds of thousands of Thai women work longer than eight hours per day at low wages and without social benefits.
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1103.women thai aranya.jpg" width="140" height="215"/>
ICEM Thai Project Coordinator Aranya Pakapath and GOPTU’s Araya Kaewpradap
Araya Kaewpradap of the Government Pharmaceutical Organisation Labour Union (GOPTU) said at the symposium that the majority of Thai women are employed under short-term, fixed contracts, although in reality most have worked 20 or more years in such jobs. She said women are discriminated from entitlements, upward wage adjustments, social benefits, maternity protection, and they do not have access to the national social security scheme. 
 
The importance of Thailand ratifying ILO Convention 183 on Maternity Protection was also brought out at the symposium, which was televised throughout the country. Symposium participants and thousands of others will march tomorrow from Democracy Monument to the Government House in Bangkok to mark IWD.
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1103.women thailand.jpg" width="320" height="141"/>
IWD Thai Symposium at Thammasat University 
In Spain, ICEM’s two affiliated trade union federations, UGT and CC.OO, which will jointly co-host the Sevilla Women’s Conference in two weeks time, issued a common IWD statement that is critical of Spain’s government for labour revisions, “which, far from creating employment, is contributing once again to the dismantling of too few labour guarantees.” 
 
The statement also said: “The elimination of the Ministry of Equality (now part of the Ministry of Health) means a step backwards on gender polices and a violation of the commitments of equality made at European and international levels that instruct governments to treat equality themes at high levels of responsibility.” 
<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/SPAIN.CC.OO.gif" width="150" height="52" alt=""/>   <img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/SPAIN.UGT.gif" width="90" height="90" alt=""/>
Across the world, a great number of “bridge walks” will occur tomorrow and throughout the rest of the week. The bridge walks, developed last year by programme directors for Women International in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), symbolise awareness toward women facing crises in war-torn countries. 
 
That is sadly reflected now in many countries of North Africa and the Middle East. And it was also on vivid display on Saturday, 5 March, when Israeli border police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at Palestinian women, who were holding an IWD manifestation at the Qalandiya border crossing north of Jerusalem. 
 
IWD is meant to be a global day to celebrate the economic, political, and social achievements of women past, present, and future, regardless of national, ethnic, or social divisions. In 1910, Clara Zetkin of Germany’s Social Democratic Party tabled the idea at the Second International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen, Denmark. 
 
A year later, on 19 March, IWD was officially recognised by Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland. In 1913, IWD was moved to 8 March. Today, it is an official holiday in 25 countries: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Georgia, Guinea-Bissau, Kazakhstan, Kyrgzstan, Laos, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Nepal, Russia, Tajikistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Zambia. 
 
In the US, March is Women’s History Month and it will take on special significance this month. It was in New York City, on 25 March 1911, when 146 mostly girls and young women, ages 14 to 23, perished in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. The seamstresses were unable to escape the burning building after owners had locked stairwells and exits. US trade unions will commemorate this horrible affront to working women in several different events across the month of March. 
 
ICEM affiliates are encouraged to report their IWD actions and activities to <a href="mailto:carol.bruce@icem.org">Carol Bruce</a>, ICEM’s Women’s Officer.

100th Anniversary of International Women’s Day!

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
An <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4103-Two-Dead-in-Dynamite-Blast-Near-Chile-s-San-José-Mine-Rescue-Site" type="internal">ICEM report</a> from November 2010 told how inexperienced miners with no training detonated explosives on their first day of work inside the Los Reyes copper mine in northern Chile, killing 2. The incident happened only three weeks after the fabled rescue of 33 copper miners and only 70 kilometres from the San José mine in Chile’s Region II. 
 
Now some rather startling facts have surfaced courtesy of an expose on Chile’s mine safety practices in the newspaper El Mercurio. As reported originally, the owner of the company, a Mexican national named Germán Zayas Bazán, fled Chile and within six hours of the 8 November explosion landed in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on a flight from Chile. 
 
Germán Bazán was in Chile on a tourist visit. His whereabouts now are unknown and there has been no attempt to extradite him by Chile’s government, reportedly because the mine accident is still under investigation. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMminingsector.JPG" width="120" height="120"/>
What is known is that on 15 September 2010, the Los Reyes mine was ordered by the National Service of Geology and Mining (SERNAGEOMIN) inactive. But Bazán somehow managed to get local authorities to reverse the order. At the same time, Bazán was openly advertising in Copiapó and elsewhere, seeking people to work long shifts for high pay, no qualifications required. 
 
The deadly incident happened on the first day of work for three workers, ages 37, 26, and 21, were inside the mine. None had license to handle dynamite, they were without hard hats and mining lights, and the mine was without a fixed telephone line. El Mercurio reported that after the blast, Bazán drove the 21-year-old worker – who lost an eye from an exploding stone – to a hospital and then fled to the Copiapó airport. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Chile.png" width="200" height="92"/>
In new light of safety ills that beset Chile’s mine industry, the SERNAGEOMIN inspector charged with overseeing the mine’s official closure was sacked and the regional director then resigned. Sill in question is how Bazán managed to acquire a deal to sell copper and other metals to Empresa Nacional de Mineria (Enami), a state-owned firm that processes and sells metals. 
 
Separately from Los Reyes, SERNAGEOMIN has acknowledged that only 7%, or 27 of 394 small-scale mines in Region II are operating legally. Currently there is legislation drafted in Chile to reform SERNAGEOMIN. Part of the bill would institute a mining regulator that would be charged with overseeing exploration and mine development plans. The new regulator will have oversight on mine safety too. 
 
In January, the Chile Mining and Energy Ministry did approve a 62% increase in the agency’s funding, which is expected to raise the number of mine safety inspectors across the country from 18 to 45. But with over 4,000 mining operations, that number is far too low and it is still too early to judge the effect revisions in the proposed legislation will have.

2010 Chile Copper Mine Blast Reveals Regulation Gaps

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBriefAlert.jpg" width="100" height="49"/>
The ICEM Secretariat was stricken with grief on 4 April upon learning of the death of Liv Undheim, former Vice President of Norwegian trade union affiliate IndustriEnergi (IE). Liv Undheim died at 07h00 that morning in an Oslo hospital after a period of illness. She was 61. 
 
She was an ICEM Vice President, representing the Nordic region, and had served on ICEM statutory bodies for the past 20 years, dating to her tenure as an officer of Norsk Kjemisk Forbund, the Norwegian Chemical Workers’ Association. She was the driving force inside ICEM in the development of gender equality and women’s activities. 
 
In a letter to IE President Leif Sande, General Secretary Manfred Warda said her advocacy in this regard made the ICEM a leading Global Union Federation on gender issues. 
 
She began working in an industrial setting in the late 1960s at Figgjo AS, a ceramics and pottery manufacturer near Stavanger. She then became a federal secretary of the Chemical Workers’ Association and served in that capacity for nine years before being elected organisation secretary of the Norwegian Federation of Trade Unions (LO). In that capacity in 1997, she also became deputy minister with responsibility for energy issues. 
 
In 2001, she became Vice President of the Chemical Workers’ Association and in 2006, upon the merger of that union with the Norwegian Oil and Petrochemicals Workers’ Federation (NOPEF), she was elected Vice President of IE. She retired in October 2010 but retained the exemplary role she always performed as IE’s head of international affairs.
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/NorwayIE.jpg" width="112" height="150"/>
She also had served on a number of boards and public bodies, including the research institute FAFO, Norway’s Labour Directorate, the Labour Inspection Authority, and many others. 
 
She was diagnosed with cancer several months ago and in February 2011 was stricken and hospitalised with pneumonia, which prevented cancer treatment. The ICEM’s Warda said she always delivered a great deal of energy and passion to global trade union work, and “we held hope that this same energy and passion would allow her to overcome this illness.” 
 
He added: “Her passing at the age of 61 is a sad moment for us here. The extraordinary work she performed for the ICEM – and for all trade unions – will carry on in her honour. We pledge to re-dedicate the many workers’ issues that she championed in her memory.” 
 
In a statement this week from Oslo, IE President Sande said, “Following her long and devoted service to the labour union movement we all felt with all our hearts that Liv had deserved a long and pleasant retirement together with her dear Elisabeth. The holiday to Thailand was booked and she was looking forward to spending her time reading, travelling and generally enjoying life. Instead she was struck down with cancer, having to spend her last days in a hospital. It seems so unfair. She will be deeply missed.”
Liv Undheim's funeral will be 14 April in Oslo. Following, a memorial and commemoration of her life will be held at IE's offices there.

ICEM Mourns Death of Presidium Member Liv Undheim

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In Namibia recently, a collective agreement signed between ICEM affiliate Mine Workers’ Union of Namibia (MUN) and Namdeb Diamond Corp., the DeBeers, Namibian state joint mining venture, had the rubber stamp of a High Court order. That unusual attribute came because a month-long strike/lockout of 1,600 miners developed into a highly charged and fractious split between labour and management that had Namibia’s top political leaders nervous. 
 
The agreement ending the strike, which began 16 August, and the lockout, beginning 20 August, came 11 days ago and was overseen by the country’s Minister of Presidential Affairs. The next day, High Court Judge Dave Smuts made the agreement a court order. 
 
The agreement calls for the two sides to “dedicate themselves in good faith to rebuild relationships.” It calls for empowering a tripartite commission to investigate and resolve the many issues that surfaced in the hostile dispute, and the accord signed at government house in Windhoek also positively resolves the central issue behind the dispute: housing pay when a mine’s resources are spent and workers are transferred. 
<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/NamibiaFlag.gif" width="160" height="106" alt=""/>
The dispute started when Namdeb mothballed the remote Bogenfels mine and denied workers their housing and utility allowances in transferring them to new sites. That occurred earlier this year for a small number of the 1,600 union miners, about 125, and the dispute festered with both sides hardening until industrial action started in August. 
 
When MUN decided to conduct a strike vote, Namdeb yelled foul, saying the vote should not be open to all 1,600. That angered MUN which saw it as an overt intervention into the union’s affairs. Then during talks to resolve the strike/lockout, the company angered miners with a counter-offer granting the housing and utility allowances, but then demanded that miners pay rent in their new locales 
 
The recent peace agreement restores to the 125 transferred workers their housing and utility entitlements, and they will not have to pay rent at their new worksites. The accord guarantees no regressions to a 2009 Work Conditions Agreement. The Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, which worked staunchly over the past six weeks to resolve the dispute, will coordinate the reconciliation commission. 
 
MUN called attention during to the strike the inequity in opportunities between Namibian citizens and expatriates. The union also singled out a top boss for unfairly denying Namibians jobs because he insists on using polygraph tests on applicants. And MUN has accused this same boss of safety neglect in implementing cost curtailments. Namdeb’s largest operation at Oranjemund has seen two years this year. 
 
Diamond output by Namdeb fell off by 30,000 carats of gems during the dispute. Diamond production accounts for almost 10% of Namibia’s GDP and 40% of foreign exchange funds. 
 
Meanwhile, a MUN branch took strike action 23 September against Rössing Uranium Ltd., 69% owned by Rio Tinto. The 950 uranium miners of the Arandis branch passed a strike authorisation vote 19 September and this is the second strike in three months against Rössing over inequitable bonus pay-outs between managers and workers. With Rio Tinto the lead company, the remainder of Rössing is owned by the Namibian government and South Africa’s Development Corp.

Namibia’s Mineworkers’ Union, Namdeb Reach for Olive Branch

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
International pressure – both inside and out of Georgia – caused a change of course last week by police and political authorities in the aftermath of the belligerent 15 September strike-breaking at Euroasian Steels in Kutaisi. Not only were over 30 sacked workers offered their jobs back, but police questioned the Indian managing director and two aides at Euroasian, also known as Hercules Steel, on 29 September. 
 
The next day the top boss was sacked. An ongoing police investigation is underway over his conduct inside the steel mill. 
 
In the midst of this positive reversal, the ICEM, however, took deep exception to remarks made last week by the Georgian business ombudsman, George Pertaia. On 6 October, Pertaia said the September strike by workers was manipulated and instigated by ICEM affiliate Metallurgical, Mining, and Chemical Workers’ Trade Union “to justify its existence.” 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1110.georgia.jpg" width="125" height="166"/>
Polish Solidarnoşç Union Members and ICEM Meet with Hercules Steel Workers, 28 September
Pertaia said that workers at Hercules have individual contracts and had no right to strike. “If the contract is signed, and you have already agreed with certain conditions, then you have no right to refuse those conditions,” he said. 
 
The ICEM reminds Pertaia that global labour standards do exist, including the right to join a union and to bargain collectively. Considering that Euroasian Steels, or Hercules, has no wage schedule in place, no health and safety plan, it pays no overtime, and workers are forced to work mandatory and long work days, industrial action was justified. 
 
The ICEM also invites Mr. Pertaia to examine the working conditions of 130 Indian workers employed at Hercules. They live eight to a room in a dormitory adjacent to the mill, their passports were being head by the managing director, Raji Kumar Sureika, their salaries are sent back to India, and they are given a miniscule stipend to support themselves off the job. 
 
In fact, it is believed that the managing director was sacked and is under police investigation because of treatment of the Indian workers. 
 
On 18 September, three strike leaders – Emilo Gumberidze, Irakli Iobidze, and Malkhaz Gogiava – were rounded up and jailed by police on bogus charges. They were given ten day jail sentences. (A <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4673-Georgian-Trade-Union-Leaders-Jailed-for-Passing-Drug-Test" type="internal">prior ICEM article</a> is here.)  
 
Upon release from the Kutaisi jail on 28 September, the three immediately called Metallurgical, Mining, and Chemical Workers’ Union President Tamazi Dolaberidze and pledged their continued support to the union. On 30 September, the new acting managing director of Hercules personally called each of the three to offer them their jobs back. The reversal gave Hercules metalworkers renewed momentum following the strike’s crushing and that registered both with Georgian workers and with Indian workers. 
 
Several points of global and internal civil pressure caused deep embarrassment to the Georgian government. There was high-level diplomatic pressure involved, especially after an international delegation that included the ICEM and top leaders from Poland’s Solidarnoşç union exposed the fact that the Indian workers at Hercules might just be treated worse than Georgian workers. 
 
The strike last month by 200 Hercules metalworkers was sparked after the Metallurgical, Mining, Chemical Union gained written support from a majority of the Georgian workers and then requested labour-management dialogue. After several weeks, the request was ignored and the strike started, including hunger strikes by four workers in front of the mill.

ICEM Rebuts Georgian Business Ombudsman for Remarks over Steel Mill Dispute

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Former ICEM Sub-Sahara Africa Regional Organisation (SSARO) Chairman Rayford Mbulu was named on 1 October to be Deputy Minister for Labour, Sport, Youth and Gender in Zambia. He enters the new government of Michael Sata and the Patriotic Front Party (PF), which won Zambian elections on 23 September. 
 
Mbulu takes the government posting along with the head of the reconstituted Labour Ministry, Fackson Shamenda, former President of the Zambia Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) and once the African Regional Secretary of Global Union Federation Uni. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0707ICEMAFConf1.jpg" width="180" height="169"/>
Rayford Mbulu
Mbulu is past President of the Mineworkers’ Union of Zambia (MUZ), a position he was elected to in 2005 after serving as MUZ Deputy General Secretary in 2004. He left the MUZ late last year after challenging for the presidency of ZCTU. On the day of the election, he was disqualified by the Labour Minister under the previous Movement for Multiparty Democracy Party after his mining employer, state-owned Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM), terminated his employment. 
 
Mbulu worked for many years at ZCCM’s Nkana Division. He served as ICEM’s SSARO Chairman from 2007 until his resignation in March 2011. Mbulu also becomes a Member of Zambia’s Parliament from the Kalululushi constituency in the Copperbelt. 
 
On his swearing-in, Labour, Sports, Culture and Gender Minister Shamenda said the PF leadership would work to raise the minimum wage, reduce casualisation of employment, and strive to get better working conditions for all Zambians. President Sata reduced the number of government ministries from 23 to 19, combining some ministries including Sports, Culture and Gender with Labour.

Rayford Mbulu Named Deputy Labour Minister in Zambia

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
Contract workers in the oilfields of Colombia are fighting for fair conditions and union rights with multinational sub-contractors and state-run Ecopetrol in eastern departments of the country. ICEM’s militant affiliate Unión Sindical Obrera (USO) is leading the fight on behalf of exploited contract workers and has recruited over 4,000 workers since July. 
 
A solidarity caravan sets off today from capital Bogotá to a major rally at the Campo Rubiales oil sites. Tomorrow the caravan will hold a forum in Puerto Gaitán with discussions to cover trade union rights across the sector in Colombia and the history of the current struggle. The caravan will then spend 12 October visiting various oil fields of Puerto Gaitán. On 14 October, the alliance of national and international trade union groups will return to Bogotá and hold a large action in the capital, bringing attention to the campaign. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Colombia.USO.jpg" width="120" height="130"/>
Contract workers cut oil production by 25% by blockading major roads in Puerto Gaitán 18-21 September and forced Colombia’s Interior Minister to the table. 
 
The grievances aired by staff of oil service subcontractors include poverty wages, sub-standard housing, poor sanitation, poor transport, degrading treatment, all imposed on a workforce precariously employed on fixed-term contracts for two-to-three years. Conditions in workstations in the oilfields around Puerto Gaitán are described as similar to concentration camps. 
 
The campaign has achieved recent improvement from Pacific Rubiales, the company agreed to fill 100% unskilled positions with local people, to build 3,000 housing units, and donate US$1million to a local hospital. 
 
Significantly workers and local communities have been united in protest to great effect, targeting specifically the environmental degradation taking place, high local unemployment with many jobs not filled by area residents, and a lack of social investment in local health and education. 
 
Guilty companies include Canadian-based Pacific Rubiales and Petrominerales, Cepcolsa, a subsidiary of Spanish-based CEPSA, and 90% state-owned Ecopetrol itself. Pacific Rubiales is funding a large disinformation campaign labeling USO trade unionists as "armed criminals, forcing work stoppages." 
 
Canada’s Communications, Energy, Paperworkers (CEP) Union and USO have formed a united front, adding leverage against the Canadian-based multinationals.

Colombian Oil Workers Continue Battle for Rights, Solidarity Caravan 10-14 October

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Under strong intimidation and threats, 6,500 workers at the government-owned Mahshahr Bandar Imam Petrochemical complex, in the South-West of Iran, took strike action on 28 September, demanding an end to management’s use of subcontracting firms at the plant. Workers’ rights are continuously undermined by intermediary companies, in a familiar pattern seen around the world. Workers are not directly employed by the factory where they work, and so are unable to bargain collectively with management, forced to work in substandard conditions with low wages and allowances, all based on precariously temporary contracts. 
 
Workers at the Tabriz petrochemical company at the plant conducted an 11-day strike in March this year on the same demands. That strike was suspended after an empty government promise to respond to workers’ demands within three months. While CAL workers do not receive their production and efficiency bonuses, their contract agency collects those benefits. Despite of management threats and arrests of union activists, the union is committed to continuing the action until their demand is met. 
 
On paper, the management has supposedly committed itself to eliminating the subcontracting firms for some time but its actual implementation in most facilities is yet to happen. 
 
The Free Union of Iranian Workers reports that on the seventh day of the strike, three oil workers were summoned to the security office and immediately put under arrest. These were Mansour Abbasi, a worker with the Khawrazmi subcontracting company and a workers’ representative; Mohammad Bagher Bagheri, worker at Fars Industries contracting company and a workers’ representative; and Jasem Bandarani, another worker at the Khawrazmi subcontracting company. The arrests followed protest rallies near the main offices of the petrochemical complex which included marches and chants. The three arrested workers have since been released. 
 
Reports suggest over 70% of Iranian workers are employed on temporary contracts, with no job security. Many other shocking abuses are reported, from poverty wages often beneath the low minimum wage, non-payment of salaries for up to 18 months, extremely dangerous working conditions, and little to no legislative protections.

Iranian Petrochemical Workers Strike, Demanding Elimination of Subcontractors

<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39" alt=""/>
Seventeen Chinese miners died last week at the Anping coal mine in southwest Guizhou province, as a new wave of coal mine explosions, cave-ins, and floods hit the country’s mining industry. The latest happened at the Anping mine in the Lihua township of Libo county, when an early morning methane gas blast happened on 4 October. 
 
There were 28 miners in pits at the time of the blast. Thirteen died instantly, while rescue efforts pulled 15 from the mine. Four died in a hospital within a day following the explosion. The mine is owned by privately-held Liuzhou Zhengling Group Ltd., a machine tool manufacturer based in the autonomous Guangxi Zhuang region. 
<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Mine Entrance.jpg" width="221" height="160" alt=""/>
The mine only started trial production in June and initial conclusions found that safety rules had been breached and inadequate measures were practiced that failed to relieve the build-up of methane gas. 
 
On 25 September, at least five miners died when a shaft collapsed at a mine in Yunnan province owned by the partially stated-owned Yunwei Group of Yunnan Coal Chemical Group Ltd. The cave-in happened at a colliery near the city of Qujing. Twenty-three miners were working at the time of the collapse, with 16 escaping and only two of the seven who were trapped managed to be rescued. 
 
And on 16 September, ten miners died in flooding at a mine in Shanxi province owned by the China National Coal Group. Official Chinese statistics for the first seven months of 2011 reveal 1,083 mine deaths. The Chinese state said there were 2,433 fatalities in 2010 and 2,631 in 2009, although the real number of mine deaths is thought to be many times more because thousands of mine deaths go unreported in China.

Coal Mine Accidents Raise Death Toll in China’s Collieries

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ICEM Austrian affiliate PRO-GE and GPA djp, the Salaried Employees, Print, Journalism, Paper Union, sent stern warning last week to metal and industrial employers on 2011 wage packages. After second round bargaining failed on 12 October to close pay differences, workers surprised the industry by launching one-to-three hour warning strikes the very next day. 
Some 300 Austrian employers witnessed workers’ reaction last Thursday to the bosses’ proposal of a miserly half-percent above the 3.1% offer tabled in the opening round on 4 October. The strikes escalated on 14 October when the unions targeted 60 employers for 24-hour work stoppages. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1110.pro ge.jpg" width="160" height="160"/>
PRO-GE and GPA djp are negotiating on behalf of 170,000 metal, mining, and energy workers in Austria. Workers and their unions are steadfast that 5.5% is due them on 1 November. Their rationale is that productivity gains combined with healthy balance sheets and a September inflation rate of 3.6% warrants nothing less than the 5.5%. 
“We know that the money is there,” said PRO-GE Chief Negotiator Rainer Wimmer. 
PRO-GE and GPA djp have laid down a precision perfect strategy of rapid mobilization keyed on bargaining developments, or non-developments as was the case last week. The unions held hundreds of meetings with workers inside companies from 5-7 October after first round talks went nowhere, and then they held 400 mobilization meetings on 10-11 October in preparation for the 12 October second round. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1110.pro ge reiner.jpg" width="105" height="160"/>
Rainer Wimmer
Going into Friday’s escalated industrial actions, leaders of the two unions offered to continue talks over the weekend but a shell-shocked employers’ association representative would only say that 20 October is the next scheduled bargaining date. That means more job actions are likely to occur early this week, with the ICEM learning that the number of enterprises in which workers chose strike actions last week grew exponentially. 
Industrial workers realize that a 5.5% wage increase is fair compensation for inflation and a fair share of the expected 2011 economic growth of 3% that has been brought on by industrial productivity. In 2009, during the height of the financial crisis, metal/industrial negotiations produced a 1.45% salary increase, while in 2010 that increase was 2.45%. Now, Austria is posting strong export numbers and purchasing power during the first half of 2011 is on the climb. 
In a joint statement, Wimmer and GPA djp Deputy Federal Director Karl Proyer said, “The fact that sustainable wage and salary increases are economically viable means that we can further support and strengthen purchasing power, thus boost the economy of Austria.” 
Just some of the workplaces where 24-hour stoppages took place on Friday include the engine-maker MAN in Steyr, Opel assembly at Aspern Airfield, Opel powertrain at Donaustadt, Schindler-Aufzüge in Vienna, Doppelmayr chair lifts in Wolfurt, Bosch in Hallein, Magna car parts in Steyr, Andritz AG in Graz, and Salinen AG salt mines in Ebensee.

Wage Shame Drives Austrian Metalworkers into Warning Strikes

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