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	The ICEM is following with concern the implementation process of the new Industrial Relations law in Pakistan, a process which should include trade unions. Writing to Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani on 13 March, the day before the Industrial Relations Bill went before the National Assembly, ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda urged against further delays to the process

	“The five ICEM affiliated trade unions in Pakistan have the support of an influential network of trade unions in 132 countries. These unions and all workers in Pakistan are entitled to proper legislation protecting their basic human and labour rights, legislation that provides proper industrial dispute adjudicating mechanisms, and most importantly the right for trade unions to exist,” stated Warda. (See the full <a href="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/27.ICEM%20Pakistan%20Labour%20Legislation.pdf" type="internal">ICEM letter</a> here.)

	The urgency was due to the pending expiration of the promulgated Industrial Relations Ordinance 2011 on 17 March. In a legal vacuum following earlier expirations of labour legislations, labour issues were devolved to the provinces by the subsequent 18th Amendment to the Constitution. A 2 June 2011 ruling by the country’s Supreme Court abolished the role of the National Industrial Relations Commission (NIRC) because the relevant federal legislation no longer existed.

	 <img alt="" height="185" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1010.pakistan.jpg" width="246" /> 

	Leaders of ICEM's Pakistan Affiliates

	The legal existence of trade unions in Pakistan was thus threatened. Encouragingly, the new bill was passed by the National Assembly on 14 March without amendment, as it was by the Senate on 7 March. The Pakistani government announced the new legislation as a landmark achievement that will promote harmonious employer-employee relations and protect the rights of the labour community. Politicians across political parties agreed that mature systems of industrial relations in Pakistan will contribute to industrial and economic growth.

	The ICEM hopes that the new law will effectively rationalise the labour law in Islamabad and at the trans-provincial level with regards to formation of trade unions, trade union federations, and to regulate employer-worker relations.

	A key stipulation of the bill instructs the government to constitute a NIRC with the power to adjudicate and rule on industrial disputes in the capital and at the trans-provincial level, also on industrial disputes of national importance. Local level industrial relations will remain covered by provincial labour governance.

	Elsewhere in Pakistan, yesterday, 20 March, the Labour Appellant Tribunal dismissed appeals of local Syngenta management and ruled in favour of the ICEM-affiliated Pakistan Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Union (PCEM) in declaring all 50 workers of a factory as permanent employees of Syngenta Pakistan. The ICEM salutes the PCEM in its victory in regularising these workers to permanent employee status.

	Shockingly, the Swiss-based agrichemicals multinational Syngenta has ignored past court rulings in favour of the contract workers’ right to full time employment. The Syngenta Employees Union Pakistan, belonging to PCEM, has faced serious violations, including unjustified dismissals of its leaders. See last year’s <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4219-ICEM-Fights-for-Reinstatement-of-Union-Leader-in-Pakistan-" type="internal">ICEM report</a> here.

Pakistan Enacts New Labour Legislation with Pressure from Unions

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	In an astonishing development, the Bavet town governor in Cambodia has admitted to shooting three young women who were striking last month at a shoe factory in Svey Rieng province, but he was only questioned and then released.

	Chhouk Bandith appeared before a provincial prosecutor on 16 March and said he fired shots on 20 February into a crowd of thousands of mostly women strikers at the KaoWay Sports Ltd. footwear factory. But despite the confession, no arrest warrant was issued and he was allowed to go free. (See previous <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4926-Cambodian-Public-Official-Accused-in-Shooting-of-Footwear-Strikers" type="internal">ICEM report</a> on story.)

	When questioned by the Cambodian press in what has now become a serious stain on Cambodia’s judicial system, the Svey Rieng prosecutor said it was his right not to order the arrest of Chhouk Bandith. He also called the incident unimportant.

	 <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1202-choukk-bandith.jpg" style="width: 130px; height: 160px" width="390" /> 

	Chhouk Bandith

	A majority of 6,000 workers at KaoWay, a supplier of shoes for the German company Puma, were in their second wave of strike action when Bandith exited the factory and fired a high-powered weapon equipped with a silencer at them. The shooting was caught on the factory’s security cameras before he fled in a car accompanied by a bodyguard and a uniformed police officer.

	The three women, ages 23, 21 and 18, were seriously injured with one – Buot Chinda – near death. She has recovered and after filing a criminal complaint against Bandith, is now in hiding. Reportedly, the three were offered sums of money for their silence ranging from US$500 to US$1,000. None have accepted the bribes.

	Because of the shootings, Chhouk Bandith was terminated from his duties as town governor on 6 March by a special decree from Prime Minister Hun Sen.

	Led by the union representing the striking workers, the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers’ Democratic Union (C.CAWDU), an affiliate of the International Textile, Garment, Leather Workers’ Federation (ITGLWF), some 27 civil society groups issued a joint statement urging “this case become an example of rule of law, not another reflection of impunity.”

	The statement continued: “Recognizing that the Minister of Interior Sar Kheng has identified the suspect of the shooting as being Bavet town governor, Chhouk Bandith, we strongly urge the Royal Government of Cambodia to make the suspect’s arrest an utmost priority. We also urge a proper trial and judgement in accordance with the law.

	“We remind the Royal Government of its obligation to ensure that human rights throughout Cambodia be respected. We also remind the Royal Government of its obligation to ensure that every Khmer citizen shall be equal before the law, regardless of rank, title or association.”

Cambodian Governor Confesses to Shooting Strikers, but No Arrest Made

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	A merger of labour federations in Swaziland has set the stage for a struggle toward democracy and independent political parties in the country. On 10-13 March, the Trade Union Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA) convened its first Congress and priority number one is to establish a multi-party political system, or to boycott sham elections next year.

	TUCOSWA, formulated last year, was officially launched at its Congress in Matsapha and its first order of business was to demand registration and participation of political parties in Africa’s last absolute monarchy, run by despotic King Mswati III.

	The new labour federation amalgamates the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU), the Swaziland Federation of Labour (SFL), as well as the most powerful single trade union, the Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT). The 50,000-member federation vowed that there will either be open and fair Parliamentary elections next year, or Mswati would face a boycott of next year’s elections.

	 <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Swaziland.png" style="width: 200px; height: 92px;" width="390" /> 

	Political parties have been banned in Swaziland since 1973 and Mswati and his cronies have mismanaged the economy so severely that public sector salaries have gone unpaid. At this month’s founding Congress, TUCOSWA announced it would embark on a nationwide education campaign, and as part of that, major protests likely to occur in April and May.

	Such manifestations will no doubt be met forcefully by Swazi police loyal to Mswati. In fact, at a meeting in Lubombo in January by leaders of TUCOSWA to discuss the monarch’s introduction of a value added tax, police broke it up after the unionists refused a demand to call off the meeting.

	“Workers are more prepared now to go to grassroots levels and into the communities to shed light on what the government should be doing,” said TUCOSWA President Barnes Dlamini.

	TUCOSWA General-Secretary Vincent Ncongwane used his speech at the end of this initial Congress to rally civil society – including faith-based groups and cultural entities – to frustrate next year’s scheduled electoral farce.

	In Swaziland, Mswati operates with what is called a tinkhundla regime, an undemocratic system whereby all power is vested in him with administrative matters put in the hands of tribal chiefs dependent on his patronage. The Swazi Parliament has few powers, with Mswati making appointments to many of the seats in the House of Assembly and Senate.

Merged Swaziland Labour Federation to Advance Cause of Democracy

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	Indonesia’s largest coal producer, PT Kaltim Prima Coal (KPC), through its mine services contractor Thiess Pty. Ltd. of Australia, has brutally attacked members of two ICEM-affiliated mine unions through police and military force. The dispute dates to the fourth quarter of 2011 when miners working for KPC, part of Indonesia’s Bumi Resources, first took strike action when it became obvious that neither Thiess nor KPC intended to grant a renewal collective agreement.

	But the dispute at KPC’s Sangatta mine in Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo turned violent on 24 March when 400 striking workers gathered at the coal company’s office in East Kutai district on the counsel of a local citizens group to offer themselves back to work following a second strike dating to last November.

	They were immediately attacked by a regional military brigade serving the interests of Thiess and KPC. Twenty miners were severely beaten and hospitalised. Another 12 were immediately detained and throughout the night of 24 March and into the next day, police and military rounded up another four union leaders and jailed them.

	By this weekend, most of the unionists had been released but police and regional military are still holding two union leaders, the Vice President of the local branch of ICEM affiliate Chemical, Energy, Mines, Oil & Gas Workers’ Union of FSP-KEP, Sumardi, and the Secretary, Maxi.

	The leader of FSP-KEP, D. Patombong Sjaiful, called the situation now “critical” and pleaded that global trade union attention is given this grievous repression by brute force. In the second time in a fortnight, Jakarta-based FSP-KEP today dispatched a mission to east Kalimantan province, this time to win the freedom of the two remaining unionists.

	The other ICEM-affiliated organisation with membership at KPC is the regional mining and energy union FPE, part of the Indonesian confederation SBSI. Some 2,200 miners work at KPC’s two open-cast thermal coal mines of Sangatta. FSP-KEP has some 1,400 members, while FPE has 200. KPC also consists of five smaller mines at the nearby Bengalon mine.

	The dispute began following the expiration of a two-year agreement on 5 October 2011. Thiess Indonesia management foretold its strategy to eliminate the collective agreement by telling the unions a new agreement would not be valid until after negotiations were complete. And then the stalling began.

	The mineworkers’ only choice was to strike and the first work stoppage occurred from 10 November to 27 December, from which six union leaders were sacked. When the two sides finally did return to bargaining on 28 January 2012, union leaders were summoned to police offices in East Kutai district where they were surprised to see that the police commander representing the company in talks.

	Two days earlier, KPC sent a letter that the status of the six union leaders would not be on the agenda. Miners began a work slowdown resulting in 264 workers getting the sack that, in turn, caused a second strike.

	When Sjaiful and other FSP-KEP leaders visited in mid-March, an agreement was sorted out between the police, a local parliamentarian, and the citizens’ group calling for the strike to cease, recall of the dismissed workers, and a return to negotiations.

	But Thiesse and KPC rejected that. When strikers came to the company’s offices then on 24 March, they were met by police and the mobile brigade wielding batons and other instruments of force.

	The ICEM condemns Thiess, part of Australian Leighton Holdings Ltd. (LEI), whose ultimate parent is the German global construction giant Hochtief AG, for utilising police and military intervention to avert legitimate collective negotiations. It also holds Bumi Resources accountable for this contemptible display of anti-social conduct in its home country.

Thiess, Operating in Indonesia, Uses Police to Bludgeon Striking Coal Miners

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	The ICEM’s Contract and Agency Labour (CAL) project publishes a quarterly newsletter intended to bring the latest news, developments, and trade union initiatives against the growing use of precarious work.

CAL Newsletter March 2012

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	In February the Play Fair campaign – a coalition of trade unions and NGOs including the ITGLWF and the International Trade Union Confederation - published a report highlighting code of conduct abuses in factories producing merchandise for the London 2012 Olympic Games. Play Fair researchers interviewed a range of workers from two factories in China – one producing pin badges and the second producing stuffed toys of the Olympic mascots.

	The organisers of the London Olympics – LOCOG – have a code of conduct which states that “To every extent possible work performed must be on the basis of recognised employment relationship established through national law and practice” and “Obligations to employees under labour or social security laws and regulations arising from the regular employment relationship shall not be avoided through the use of labour-only contracting…”.

	<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1204 playfair.png" style="width: 112px; height: 160px" width="390" />

	Despite the strong language in the code, Play Fair’s researchers found that workers in one of the factories had no idea of the terms of their contract, and had never been provided with a written contract of employment. Not a single worker interviewed for the research was employed on a permanent contract.

	At a second factory researchers found that core workers were employed on five-year fixed term contracts and that during periods of high orders the factory hired about 300 temporary workers, more than doubling the workforce. These temporary workers were employed on a daily wage and received only 40 CNY rather than the statutory minimum of 50 CNY per day. Temporary workers were not provided with social security payments.

	The full report is available <a href="http://www.play-fair.org/media/wp-content/uploads/play_fair_en_final.pdf">here</a>.

Toying with Workers’ Rights

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	Sintracarbón at Carbones del Cerrejón is held up as a strong example of positive industrial relations, with tough collective bargaining achieving considerable protections for 4,000 direct employees at Colombia’s largest coal mines, and stable communications channels between workers and management. Sintracarbón’s fight now is over the basic rights of outsourced contract workers at the largest set of coal mines in the world, a joint venture of three multinational mining conglomerates, BHP Billiton, Xstrata and AngloAmerican.

	First adopting a policy to fight outsourcing in 2008, Sintracarbón’s initial research noted the strategic policies of multinational corporations (MNCs) to increasingly outsource employment and weaken workers’ job security, social benefits, wage levels, and ability to organise and bargain collectively.

	The research also discovered that over 50% of workers at MNCs operating in Colombia are employed through contract companies, and that these workers had considerably lower standards of employment and no collective agreements. Almost every attempt by Contract or Agency Labour (CAL) workers to reach a collective agreement in Colombia prior to 2008 had been met with mass dismissals.

	<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1203-colombia-mining.jpg" style="width: 201px; height: 135px;" width="390" /> 

	At Cerrejón, 6,000 of the total 11,000 workers are precariously employed by contractors. In the 2011 collective bargaining agreement, Sintracarbón achieved a clause stating that Carbones del Cerrejón management is “committed to ensuring respect for the unionisation of all workers, including CAL workers.”

	The first attempt to organise CAL workers, in 2010, was at the company that provides transportation to the mine workers, SOTRANS. The effort of 500 members of SINTRANS was crushed with mass dismissals and harassment.

	The second attempt was at Chaneme, a company conducting maintenance of heavy machinery. This effort was successful and 50 workers remain under a CBA as members of Sintrachaneme.

	Through Sinaltrainal, a national union, employees of food supplier Aramark won a collective agreement for 200 workers in March 2011.

	Over recent months, mechanics at EPROFQ and ASEOCOLBA also have won struggles and achieved collective agreements. In the case, of EPROFQ the convention was signed after an eight-day strike.

	ICEM affiliates at glass supplier Ross and at Prodeco have also won victories over short-term, casual employment, bringing the total to 1,560 CAL workers organised in Colombia in ICEM sectors.

Sintracarbón, Colombian Unions Make Big Strides in Organising Against Outsourcing

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	A Charter of Demands by the Coats Employees’ Union, part of the Bangladesh Garment, Textile & Leather Workers’ Federation (BGTLW), in turn affiliated to the ITGLWF, was agreed to last month after intense pressure was placed on British-based threads maker Coats by the global textile federation and its Asian regional body, the Textile Workers’ Asia Regional Organisation (TWARO).

	The agreement comes after a 13 to 29 February strike against Coats Bangladesh Ltd. in the Tejgaon Industrial Area of Dhaka, and following several earlier months of fruitless bargaining. That bargaining reached a low on 12 February when union leaders, attempting to once again negotiate with factory mangers, had their mobile telephones confiscated by bosses and were forcibly detained overnight in company offices. (Read the <a href="http://www.itglwf.org/lang/en/UnionLeadersHeldCaptivebyFactoryManagersinBangladesh.html">ITGLWF release</a> here.)

	The Charter of Demands reached includes pay upgrades in job grades that will at least lift workers’ salaries to what is considered by the BGTLWF to be the bare living wage in Bangladesh, BTK 7,000 (US$85.60) per month from a previous pitiful quarter of that.

	<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Bangladesh.png" style="width: 180px; height: 83px;" width="390" />

	The wage increase is retroactive to October 2011. In addition, BGTLW’s perseverance in this dispute won increases in a host of other areas including housing rents, lunch allowances, medical and hospitalisation betterments, and education allowances.

	The agreement also ensures that striking workers will not be retaliating against, and that salaries during the strike will be paid. The Charter also addresses contract workers, stating that they will not be retaliated against for joining the strike, and grants them first priority for permanent jobs when such positions open up.

	In a message to the ITGLWF, BGTLF General Secretary Mohammad Abu Taher expressed gratitude to both the Brussels-based federation and TWARO for its “accelerating interventions” to solve the dispute.

	“We believe that peace and tranquillity are the only elements to make an industry more productive, profitable and vibrant and management eventually understood this and signed the agreement,” stated Abu Taher.

ITGLWF Intervention with UK Firm Coats Delivers in Bangladesh

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	Over 8,000 trade unionists and supporters rallied in Alma, Québec, Saturday, 31 March, on behalf of locked-out workers belonging to Syndicat des Métallos d’Alma Local 9490, an affiliate of the United Steelworkers (USW). Some 780 workers at an aluminium smelter of Rio Tinto’s Alcan subsidiary have been ruthlessly locked out of their livelihoods now for 14 weeks, and the economic stranglehold Rio Tinto has on the Saguenay-lac-Saint-Jean region of Québec is clear to all.

	Bus-loads of union militants from across Québec converged on Alma, a community of 30,000, to stand with the victimised Alma steelworkers. And the USW organised convoys and buses as well from elsewhere in Canada, including Toronto, Hamilton and other industrial cities in Ontario province.

	Some 50 international trade unionists also attended, representing workers employed at Rio Tinto or Alcan in Australia, France, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK, US, and other nations. A day prior to the manifestation, the ICEM held its bi-annual North American regional meeting in Alma as a global signal to the 780 Alma workers that they are not alone in their struggle for fairness on the job.

	<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1204-manfred-alma.jpg" style="width: 190px; height: 143px;" width="390" />   <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1204-jyrki-alma.jpg" style="width: 190px; height: 143px;" width="390" />

	Manfred Warda, Jyrki Raina Address Rally

	The well-organised rally started with speeches at an Alma shopping mall, before a march complete with sound truck playing working-class music wound its way through the streets of the city to an amphitheatre. There, political and union leaders continued to chastise the world’s second largest resources company for delivering economic devastation to workers’ doorsteps in central Québec.

	ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda pledged that global labour will mobilise Rio Tinto workers across the globe in this struggle.

	“If the ruthless social agenda of Rio Tinto cannot be defeated here in Québec, there will be little hope that it can be stopped when others face company attacks,” Warda said. Rest assured, “we will take the indignities committed by Rio Tinto Alcan here throughout the world until this company agrees to stop the attacks against your community and your union.”

	Jyrki Raina, General Secretary of the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF), said, “If Rio Tinto wants to prosper, it cannot break the delicate balance that connects it to the community.”

	<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1204-alma-stadium.jpg" style="width: 239px; height: 159px;" width="390" />

	ICEM Vice President and USW Canadian National Director Ken Neumann had a message for the Conservative government of Stephen Harper in his country, where the federal government has turned a deaf ear to several attacks by multinationals on Canadian workers.

	“Stephen Harper clearly fell short of his task by failing to impose conditions on the sale of Alcan to Rio Tinto in 2007 and to protect jobs,” said Neumann. “For someone who is so bent on involving himself in labour relations, why doesn’t he intervene with Rio Tinto to put an end to this abhorrent lockout?”

	That lockout was brought about by Local 9490’s rightful effort to stop erosion of permanent jobs that pay a living wage of C$34-an-hour against Alcan’s labour plan, which is aimed at replacing those jobs with outsourced work that pays half that amount.

	    <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1204-alma-turk.jpg" style="width: 212px; height: 159px;" width="390" />    

	Turkish Mineworkers Expressed Solidarity for Locked-out Steelworkers

	By late afternoon on Saturday, about an hour after the final speeches were given at Parc le Festiv Alma, Rio Tinto Alcan issued a defensive statement criticising the  USW event, and saying  a “calmer climate” was necessary in order to carry on with negotiations.

	But for nearly three months – until 19 March when Québec public pressure mounted primarily because Alcan was capitalising on the lockout by selling excess hydro-electric power back to the province – the company shunned bargaining, preferring instead to operate the modern and low-cost Alma smelter at reduced capacity while waiting for global aluminium prices to rise. (See <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4943-Negotiations-Restart-between-USW-Rio-Tinto-Alcan-in-Canadian-Lockout" type="internal">ICEM report</a> from 21 March.)

	Syndicat des Métallos Local 9490 and Alcan did return to talks for two days in March, with the help of provincial mediators, and two more days of negotiations occurred on 28-29 March. The two sides will in all likelihood meet again this week.

	But ever since the company prematurely halted negotiations and imposed the lockout on 30 December before a majority of workplace issues could even be tabled, Rio Tinto has been content to rob the Saguenay-lac-Saint-Jean region of C$1.8 million per week in lost salaries and benefits.

	With or without a settlement to the Alma lockout, the 31 March manifestation will stand as the prelude to a global fight against Rio Tinto to resist its anti-social agenda that has become all too common everywhere it does business.

Mass March, Manifest Lifts Locked-out Steelworkers in Alma, Canada

<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39" alt=""/>
The Asia-Pacific Regional Materials Union Network of the ICEM held its third meeting in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on 10-11 October. The meeting was attended by 34 trade unionists from 14 unions in the cement, glass, and ceramics industries of Japan, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, India, and the Philippines. 
 
This meeting agreed to set up a Saint Gobain Network in the Asia-Pacific Region, with affiliates in Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Vietnam, Australia, and New Zealand joining the network. Unions in the region are currently running networks at Lafarge and Holcim in India, Korea, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam. 
<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1110.vietnam HCMC Group Photo hcm 153.JPG" width="372" height="144" alt=""/>
The meeting was also joined by union leadership from Nippon Sheet Glass (NSG) and Taiheiyo Cement of Japan, who expressed support for networking in their subsidiaries. 
 
The Vietnamese General Confederation of Labour (VGCL) and the Vietnam National Union of Building Workers (VNUBW) hosted this meeting of the Network, supported by the German Friedrich-Ebert Foundation (FES). The meeting also welcomed the ICEM Secretariat and the Japanese Affiliates’ Federation (ICEM-JAF). 
 
“I am very impressed with the young and talented union representatives with research capacity and language skills in the region,” said ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda. “This participation guarantees a positive future for the trade union movement.” 
<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1110.HCMC Manfred -1 hcm 180.JPG" width="214" height="160" alt=""/>
ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda
ICEM Materials Industries’ Officer Phee Jungsun presented major developments and challenges in the global materials industries and profiles on multinational companies. 
 
Participants then gave country reports with pre-arranged survey details on working conditions and occupational safety and health. For the cement unions of Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia, performance of union activities is still difficult due to weak labour legislation. It was reported that both Lafarge and Holcim hire an increasing number of contract workers – averaging about 60% – with offers of voluntary retirement schemes to reduce permanent workers with long seniority. 
 
The meeting adopted a resolution to support contract workers at Swiss-based Holcim in India, who fight constantly for freedom of association rights. Also, support was extended to workers and unions at Lafarge in India, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Malaysia. The establishment of a Saint Gobain Network on the national and regional level is seen to coordinate with French trade union affiliate CFDT-FCE, which heads the Saint Gobain European Works Council. This Asia-Pacific network will work alongside a newly-planned North America Saint Gobain Network and hopefully build toward creation of a global network. 
 
The meeting also received a detailed report from ICEM-JAF General Secretary Yoshio Sato on the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Sato thanked all ICEM affiliates who showed solidarity to Japanese unions by sending messages and donations.

ICEM’s Asia-Pacific Materials Sector Network Meeting Held in Vietnam 

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