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<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" style="width: 100px; height: 39px;" width="390" />

	Following renewal of the Global Framework Agreement (GFA) between ICEM, the International Metalworkers' Federation (IMF), and the Belgian company Umicore last September, the Monitoring Committee conducted a visit to one of the company’s US operations in Tulsa, Oklahoma. That monitoring mission occurred 6-7 March 2012.

	Umicore is a global materials and technology firm that focuses in four business areas, Catalysis, Energy Materials, Performance Materials, and Recycling. The Umicore Group has industrial operations on all continents and serves a global customer base. It generated turnover of €14.5 billion (€2.3 billion excluding metal) in 2011 and currently employs some 14,600 people.

	Umicore Autocat USA Inc.in Tulsa was purchased from Delphi in 2007 andis organized by the IMF affiliate Union Auto Workers (UAW) through its Local 286. Geographically close to major auto assembly plants in the US, the plant produces catalysts used in automotive emission abatement systems for both light-duty and heavy-duty vehicles.

	 <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1203-umicore-group.jpg" style="width: 137px; height: 159px;" width="390" /> 

	Umicore Monitoring Committee

	Along with the Umicore Monitoring Committee members, Ignace De Ruijter, Senior Vice President of Human Resources; Guy Ethier, Senior Vice President of Environment, Health and Safety; Mark Dolfyn, Director of Corporate Human Resource; Kemal Özkan, ICEM Director of Industry and Corporate Affairs (who represented IMF as well); Peter Kamm, Umicore’s European Works Council and member of ICEM German affiliate IGBCE, the visit was joined by local company managers and UAW local representatives.

	The Monitoring Committee followed the same pattern of work as in three previous missions to China, Brazil, and South Africa. A wide range of information regarding employment, training and education, health and safety, environmental issues, social policies and working conditions, social dialogue, and relations with the local community was delivered and discussed during the visit.

	Since the plant supplies major auto producers, the plant suffered severely during the financial crisis period starting in 2008 with a substantial decline in jobs. However when recovery in the US auto industry started in 2009, Umicore’s Tulsa plant began seeing an uptick in business and some jobs were restored, although still far below the level of the pre-crisis period.

	   <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1203-umicore-inside.jpg" style="width: 227px; height: 159px;" width="390" />   

	Kemal Ozkan, UAW Representatives

	Local management and UAW local union representatives explained how the crisis period was handled through the industrial relations system at the plant. It was further reported that during collective bargaining negotiations in 2009, a more institutionalised procedure for conducting such periods was defined and agreed.

	Özkan and Kamm, together with UAW local shop stewards and James Cyr, Bargaining Chair; Warren McKinley, Co-Chair; Lance Boyd and Curtis Storey, both UAW Representatives, met in a separate union meeting to exchange information and discuss the labour situation at the plant. The union meeting examined current working conditions, the collective agreement and social dialogue at the plant, which was followed by a briefing on the nature and content of the GFA. It was agreed that communication would be continued between the UAW local union and the European Works Council.

	In evaluating the visit, the parties jointly committed to quality labour relations and social dialogue at the plant. Particular attention and appreciation was expressed for high quality health and safety practices conducted by joint union-management committee for safety inside the workplace. The Monitoring Committee will finalize its report at a meeting scheduled for the end of May.

Umicore Monitoring Committee of Global Agreement Visits US Plant in Oklahoma

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	On 7 March, the US National Mediation Board (NMB) announced that the International Association of Machinists (IAM) won exclusive bargaining status for 16,720 United Airlines employees, staff who work as passenger service, gate agents and reservation workers for the Chicago-based airline.

	In a mail ballot over the preceding seven weeks, 8,305 of the airline’s ground workers chose IAM, while 5,865 voted for no union. The ballot, conducted through the auspices of the US Rail Labor Act, became necessary following the December 2010 merger of United with Continental Airlines, the latter a predominately non-union airline.

	The IAM had represented United’s passenger services staff since 1998 but with the Continental merger, a new certification election became necessary. The union now represents 31,500 workers at the world’s largest airline, including ramp service, baggage handlers, and stock and store workers. The election also included passenger service employees of Continental Micronesia Airlines, which operates between the state of Hawaii and some Asia-Pacific nations and previously had another union.

	The election was marked by fierce resistance by United. Airline management tried to exclude 1,000 fleet service workers from voting but the NMB ruled that those workers have the right to join a union.

	IAM Transportation Vice President Sito Pantoja said the election “preserves IAM representation rights for pre-merger United employees and extends that benefit to their new co-workers from Continental and Continental Micronesia.

	“The win provides all IAM members at United with the advantages of size and strength that airlines themselves are seeking through consolidation.”

US Machinists Win Bargaining Status for 17,000 United Airlines Workers

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	The Global Unions Research Network (GURN) is collating information, links and publications on precarious work and making the information available through its <a href="http://www.gurn.info/en/topics/precarious-work">website</a>.

	<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1204-gurn-inside-cal.jpg" style="width: 362px; height: 103px;" width="390" />

	The website has been developed as part of the follow-up to the International Workers' Symposium on Policies and Regulations to Combat Precarious Employment which took place in Geneva from 4 – 7th October 2011, and will be regularly updated.

Global Unions Research Network web resource on Precarious Work

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	Turkish workers of rubber manufacturer Standard Profil, organised by ICEM affiliate Petrol-İş over a year ago, are more determined than ever to get a collective agreement from a recalcitrant employer. On 2 April, some 500 workers gathered with union President Mustafa Öztaşkin outside plant gates in the northern Anatolian city of Düzce to publicly state that union and workers will not be deterred in gaining their universally recognised collective bargaining rights.

	The ICEM as well joined the demonstration, the first such outward display by workers amidst a climate of management fear and intimidation, and promised that pressure will continue against the private equity firm that controls Standard Profil, a maker of weather-sealing door and window units for the automotive industry.

	<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1204-standard-profil-dick.jpg" style="width: 206px; height: 160px;" width="390" />

	ICEM's Dick Blin Displays Alert to a Company Customer

	The rally saw a number of Anatolian labour leaders participate along with Öztaşkin, Petrol-İş Organising Secretary Nimetullah Sözen and regional Organiser Ǘnal Akbulut. Gathering under the banner “One Year is Enough: Standard Profil Workers Are Unionised – They Want Their Right to Collective Bargaining,” the manifestation was conducted under the watchful eyes of managers who dispatched transport buses through in an effort to disrupt it.

	Following a Petrol-İş organising drive from December 2010 to February 2011 that saw well over half of 2,300 workers from the plant in Düzce and a sister factory in Bursa select the union as their bargaining representative, Turkey’s Labour and Social Security Ministry in March and April 2011 formally granted a pair of certifications stating Petrol-İş was both the correct sectoral union – rubber – for Standard Profil workers, and that it had exceeded the simple majority needed for representation.

	<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1204-standard-profil.jpg" style="width: 241px; height: 160px;" width="390" />

	Despite Petrol-İş and ICEM invitations to both Istanbul executives of Standard Profil and the UK-based private equity firm to form a positive labour-management relationship, the company chose an adversarial path by wasting company funds in legal challenges to both certifications in an effort to block workers from their legitimate workplace rights.

	Standard Profil managers further muddied the waters by sacking 37 union activists inside the larger Düzce factory, a grievous factory-level ploy to intimidate others against the union. Judging from Monday’s determined and vocal manifestation, workers are not intimidated. But they are growing short of patience with management’s stalling strategy through frivolous legal appeals.

	<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1204-standard-profil-banner.jpg" style="width: 365px; height: 128px;" width="390" />

	One Year is Enough 

	Petrol-İş President Öztaşkin made it clear at the one-year anniversary that a new era has now begun. The union will move in a different direction to get Standard Profil to the bargaining table. “We cannot and will not accept this employer’s attempts to block the internationally rights and freedoms of workers,” he said.

	The ICEM has begun to take the rights abuses outside Turkey. Standard Profil’s major auto-making customers have been identified and efforts are underway to alert trade unions and automotive factory managements of the company’s dereliction. In some instances, Volkswagen/Audi and Daimler for instance, global labour pacts contain strict guidelines that suppliers must comply with basic workplace rights.

	The rubber manufacturer’s assets are controlled by Bancroft Private Equity LLP, a holding company that has been trying to dispose of Standard Profil since last year. The ICEM has made it clear to Bancroft – and to the buyers of Standard Profil’s products – that a positive and respectful labour relations bond with Petrol-İş is far better than an adversarial one to ensure a productive and profitable future for the auto supply company.

One Year On, Turkey’s Standard Profil Still Delays Workers’ Bargaining Rights

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	Week-long strikes at seven Queensland, Australia, metallurgical coal mines ended today, but a dogged 16-month labour dispute between three ICEM union affiliates there and the BHP Billiton-Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA) continues. On 27 March, just when progress was being made on a new version of an enterprise labour agreement after two weeks of steady talks, BMA reneged on pivotal language, causing the latest round of protected industrial actions.

	For the 3,500 miners of Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU), and the Electrical Trades Union of Communications, Electrical, Plumbing Union (CEPU), the setback means they are no closer to a collective agreement under Fair Work Australia than when bargaining began in December 2010.

	For BMA, which twice now has rejected the unions’ Single Bargaining Unit (SBU) offer of third-party mediation, it means more disruption at the world’s largest coking coal mine pits with workers likely to take yet another legal round of stop-work actions next week.

	 <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1110.australia bhp mining cfmeu.jpg" style="width: 145px; height: 160px;" width="390" /> 

	On 2 April, BHP Billiton, the lead operator of the 50/50 joint venture, announced force majeure to customers in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, India, Latin America and Europe. It informed steel producers that it would be unable to meet its coal-delivery contracts due to the labour disruptions and wet weather in the Bowen Basin of central Queensland.

	Management also announced at the outset of last week’s seven-day strike that at the end of April it would again use its Fair Work law privilege to conduct a second mail ballot directly to workers without SBU involvement. The first time it did such, last October, miners rejected the throwback management rights’ proposals by 92%. (See <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4731-Australian-Miners-Reject-BMA-s-Contract-Proposal-by-92" type="internal">ICEM report</a> here.)

	Last week’s failed bargaining saw BMA regress on commitments it made in earlier days and earlier rounds of bargaining over family-friendly work rosters and other language that had been tentatively agreed to in principle. Issues that remain in dispute include the role of unions in safety matters, working hours, housing, and inequality for contract workers.

	On the company’s backtracking, the strike leader of the largest union representing BMA miners, CFMEU Queensland District President Stephen Smyth said, “The level of contempt they’re showing for their workers is truly astonishing.”

	<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1204-cfmeu-steve-smyth.jpg" style="width: 241px; height: 160px;" width="390" />

	Stephen Smyth

	That contempt rests in the belief that BHP Billiton believes it can cling to one-sided work rules common in the dead-and-gone WorkChoices legislation of pre-2009. The contempt toward miners and current Australian labour law is also evident in a leaked early March e-mail from BHP Billiton Coal Division CEO Marcus Randolph. In it, he told his Bowen Basin mine managers “this is the fight we had to have” and the work-rule issues in dispute “are not negotiable, not now, not next month and not next year.”

	Meantime, with BMA’s seven Queensland mines that produce one-fifth of the world’s metallurgical coal, prices are soaring and the ripple effect from Australia’s nastiest labour dispute in decades is being felt in rail and seaborne transport, and in steel-making centres across the globe.

	(An <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4879-Queensland-Coal-Strikes-to-Resume-against-BHP-Billiton-Mitsubishi-Alliance" type="internal">ICEM report on SBU</a> strikes from February 2012 can be found here.)

Intentional BHP Billiton Strife in Australian Coal Dispute Continues

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	The ICEM – along with the European Mine, Chemical, Energy, Federation (EMCEF) – will march in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, tomorrow, 16 November, in support of 5,200 British workers who are seriously threatened by Unilever with closure of a final salary pension scheme. The ICEM and EMCEF will join European workers of the world’s third largest consumer goods company in protest at the company’s Rotterdam headquarters.

	The message – Unilever, Don’t Make Workers Pay for Your Profits – will specifically target Unilever CEO Paul Polman for his 2010-11 salary and bonus pay-out of €8 million. Unilever is out to slash between 20-40% of pension earnings to UK workers represented by trade unions Unite the Union, GMB and the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers’ (USDAW).

	<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1201.jennie formbie unite.jpg" style="width: 141px; height: 159px" width="390" />

	Jennie Formby

	“Executive greed and compensation must be challenged,” stated United National Officer Jennie Formby. Polman saw a 50% increase in his total earnings from 2010 to 2011, some 285 times that of the average Unilever worker.

	The Rotterdam manifestation comes just days two weeks after Unilever posted a strong set of financial numbers in its latest results and three weeks after UK workers from several Unilever sites descended on Davos, Switzerland, where Polman served as one of the co-chairs at the World Economic Forum.

	The three British unions have engaged in two rounds of industrial actions against Unilever at 11 plants, the latest coming with 11 days of rolling strike actions that ended on 28 January. Unilever UK management did finally agree to meet with the unions on 9 February with the assistance of UK’s Advisory, Conciliation and Mediation Services (ACAS), but the company is still adamant on closing the final salary pension scheme effective 1 July 2012.

	Unilever instead intends to implement a pension scheme based on career average earnings. Formby said Polman’s vision of doubling Unilever’s revenue stream over the next ten years and creating “sustainable living” is disingenuous in view of cutting workers’ pensions.

	Tomorrow’s manifestation will begin at 12h00 at Unilever’s offices at Weena 455, Rotterdam. The ICEM also will raise concerns over the 5 February closure due to a labour dispute at Unilever’s Basamadi, Nepal, factory. The dispute at that facility, which produces Lux and Lifebuoy soaps and Pepsodent and Close-Up toothpastes, is close to a resolve this week after intervention from the Nepalese government.

Unilever Rotterdam Protest Pits Corporate Compensation vs. Workers’ Pension Cuts

WOMEN’S BULLETIN

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	Job security and job creation was the foundation behind a new two-year national labour agreement between social partners in Denmark. That came together in marathon bargaining over the weekend, 11-12 February, in framework talks for 240,000 Danish manufacturing workers and 6,000 enterprises, the latter represented by Dansk Industri.

	The trade unions, led by the eight making up Co-Industri, including 3F, Dansk Metal and HK/Pivat, in concert with the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions (LO), set an agenda of wage moderation, instead focusing on winning excellent and precedent-setting job preservation protections such as training, seniority, and reduced work hours at full pay for both old and young workers.

	This industrial social accord now establishes the parameters for other work sectors. The agreement will run from 1 March 2012 to 1 March 2014. The national industrial agreement did establish minimum wage guideposts, but exact wage increases will now be negotiated at local levels and inside company agreements.

	The framework agreement grants training at full pay with business downturns and when reductions in work time occur, and it also allows older workers to reduce their working time within five years of retirement by continuing their income levels through salaries and partial pension benefits. Workers will also have the option to tap into current pension plans as a supplement to salaries.

	A key element in the new agreement is an additional €.05-per-hour worked will be added to the national Industrial Training fund.

	Employee discretion in taking training options increases from two weeks to six weeks, in some cases, and full seniority is granted to workers when they are called back from lay-offs within nine months. Previously, it was six months. As well, paid sick leave occurs after six months on a job rather than the previous nine months.

	The new pact is also kinder to lower-income earners and gives better pay-outs when such workers are laid off. Parental leave was made more flexible and added pension accrual was put in place for weekend, holiday or extra work performed.

	The recommended minimum wage increase is €.18-per-hour effective 1 March, and the same amount again on 1 March 2013. A pay supplement of 1.4% each year is available for performing difficult work, and apprentices, trainees and interns will get a 2.25% pay hike in each year.

	The bargaining, which began in early January, nearly reached dispute when HK/Privat , the Commercial and Clerical Workers’ Union, sought to drop the 50% benchmark regarding number of staff needed before a collective agreement takes effect. A compromise was struck that gives employers the opportunity to sign labour agreements without the 50% threshold and HK/Privat coverage also was expanded to include administrative staff working as trainees and college students.

	The agreement was widely praised in Denmark as the necessary building block to restore some 80,000 industrial and manufacturing jobs that have been lost in the country since the onset of the financial crisis.

Enlightened Industrial Labour Pact Set in Place in Denmark for 240,000 Workers

USW Local 9700, one of the first unions to respond at the time of the 30 December lockout and representing Alcoa ABI workers at Bécancour, Québec, voted unanimously to draw C$25-per-week from their paychecks, donating C$25,000 weekly to Local 9490.<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBriefAlert.jpg" style="width: 140px; height: 68px" width="390" />

	Locked-out members of Syndicat des Métallos  d’Alma Local 9490, the United Steelworkers (USW), took their fight against Rio Tinto Alcan to Québec’s largest city, last Friday, 17 February, where Alcan CEO Jacynth Côté was part of a spurious forum on youth in employment, sponsored by the Board of Trade Metropolitan Montréal.

	Some 200 of 780 metalworkers from Alcan’s Alma aluminium smelter in the Saguenay-lac-Saint-Jean region, Québec, boarded buses and travelled 460 kilometres to Montréal for a noisy protest at this business luncheon, their first manifestation away from the 488,000-tonne-per-year smelter. They were joined by another 100 steelworkers from Montréal, and some 100 college students who joined the USW rally in mocking protest to a future youth theme that now sees business teaming with the Liberal provincial government of Québec to raise their university tuition fees.

	<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1202-2.jpg" style="width: 248px; height: 161px" width="390" />

	17 February Manifestation, Montréal

	This “Hot Issues@Lunch” theme was billed to “foster the success of the next generation of Québecers.”   The Syndicat des Métallos d’Alma found deep irony in Jacynth Côté participating, since Alcan in Alma is using a lock-out to replace C$36-an-hour permanent jobs with outsourced and presumably younger workers at C$16-an-hour.

	Côté was not expected to address the lockout at the hot-plate lunch, but when pressed by reporters on the sidelines, she called the dispute a “regional issue” and “it will be settled in Saguenay-lac-Saint-Jean” by managers who “have my full confidence.”

	Earlier last week, when the lockout entered week seven and with the remote mining and manufacturing region starting to feel the economic effects of a lost wage base, one such manager told Reuters he “wouldn’t put a timeline to (talks restarting) right now because nothing is scheduled.”

	 <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1202-1.jpg" style="width: 199px; height: 159px" width="390" /> 

	Dan Roy and Marc Maltais

	foto: France Paradis/Le-Lac-St-Jean

	With aluminium prices hovering now at very low, the Alma lockout serves as a convenient strategy to restrict supply to lift prices. It also fits Rio Tinto’s strategy of divesting and devaluing Alcan by C$8.9 billion in view of its US$39 billion purchase of the Canadian company in 2007, although the modern and high-tech tooled Alma smelter, with its low-cost hydroelectric supply, will not likely be jettisoned.

	Perhaps this should have been a more apt business theme to the Board of Trade elite last week, and it certainly best explains the anger of metalworkers and students alike gathered on the other side of the barricades. In this vein – with Rio Tinto’s share price dropping – it is worth mentioning that Côté herself exhibited a timely corporate mentality last week by shedding 3,671 shares of Rio Tinto to pocket US$213,500, money not likely to find its way to Saguenay-lac-Saint-Jean.

	USW District Five Director Daniel Roy addressed the disparity between full-time, family-supporting jobs in the region to the sub-contract and lower-wage jobs that Rio Tinto is trying create with the. “Accepting this would cause a dramatic downward spiral not only for the workers but for members of the community, which would see income, local business sales and tax revenues drop precipitously.”

	USW Local 9490 President Marc Maltais added, “By using subcontractors to do the work of union members, we are asked to concede on behalf of future generations. This is an attack on our children and grandchildren.”

	The buses departed Montréal late on Friday afternoon for the return trip to Alma, but first stopped at a plant-gate demonstration in Sorel, Québec, where workers and members of ICEM-affiliated FIM-CSN (Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux) at a Rio Tinto Iron and Titanium metal powders plant lent their support. This stop again depicts the long-erected barriers between Canadian trade unions that Local 9490 is erasing inside this lockout.

	     <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1202-3.jpg" style="width: 114px; height: 160px" width="390" />     

	Rio Tinto Alcan CEO, Jacynth Côté

	With Canada currently undergoing an unprecedented rash of corporate hostility, it is notable to witness trade unions and other groups galvanising behind victimised union workers.

	Last week, members of Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) Local 2301 at a Rio Tinto Alcan aluminium smelter in Kitimat, British Colombia, voted to take C$1-an-hour of their pay and donate it to  Syndicat des Métallos  d’Alma Local 9490. That represents C$60,000 per month.

	On 8 February, the Communications, Energy, Paperworkers (CEP) Union of Canada contributed C$25,000 to the Alma metalworkers, and a day later the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) contributed C$10,000. USW Local 9700, one of the first unions to respond at the time of the 30 December lockout and representing Alcoa ABI workers at Bécancour, Québec, voted unanimously to draw C$25-per-week from their paychecks, donating C$25,000 weekly to Local 9490.

	Syndicat des Métallos  d’Alma’s  journey to Montréal to confront Rio Tinto Alcan CEO Jacynth Côté is just the first sally outward. This week Local 9490 leaders will visit Rio Tinto’s borax miners in California, where members of ICEM affiliate International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 30 defended themselves courageously in a Rio Tinto-imposed lockout. And they’ll follow that solidarity visit with to Australia to meet with unions represented Rio Tinto there.

	On March 31, a day after the ICEM North American region meets in Alma, a manifestation will occur there with scores of global trade union leaders attending. And on 1 April, a workshop will occur in Alma to verse an exact fightback strategy against Rio Tinto on the global level.

Locked-out Alcan Workers Take Dispute to Canadian Business Doorstep

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	From the ITGLWF website

	On the evening of 12 February 2012, the President and General Secretary of the Coats Bangladesh Ltd. Employees Union went to the Coats Head Office at Novo Tower, Tejgaon Industrial Area, Dhaka in order to try to meet and discuss with company management with a view to resolving an industrial dispute.

	Instead of negotiating with the union leaders, company officials confiscated their mobile phones and forcibly detained them in their building overnight only releasing them when trade union colleagues alerted the local newspaper media of their disappearance.

	Management at the thread factory called Coats Ltd. in Bangladesh had failed to reach agreement with trade union negotiators. Having exhausted the bargaining procedures, a vote of the workers resulted in 98.12% in favour of strike action. The management somehow obtained a court order declaring the strike illegal.

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

	The workers at Coats Ltd. are paid poverty wages of only BD TK1,625 (US $18.90). The trade unions in Bangladesh consider BD TK7,000 to be the minimum that could be considered a living wage.  During the negotiations, the local trade union negotiators reduced their demand from 100% to 30% pay rise. The union demands also included increases in housing and other allowances all of which were refused by the management negotiators.  Despite trade union compromises the employer remained intransigent and refused to bargain in good faith.

	The Coats Employees’ Union is part of the Bangladesh Garments Textile & Leather Workers Federation (BGTLWF), which is an affiliate of the International Textile, Garment, Leather Workers’ Federation (ITGLWF).  The BGTLWF has called for solidarity from the wider trade union movement.  The ITGLWF is preparing a complaint to the OECD Contact Point for the UK over the matter.  Coats Plc. is based in the UK and is a leading global company that manufactures thread.

	The ITGLWF has written to Mr Paul Forman, CEO of Coats Plc. demanding that they intervene.

	Klaus Priegnitz, ITGLWF General Secretary, said to the Coats CEO, “Your employees have clearly been mistreated and exploited for some considerable time.  Theunion hasacted responsibly and with restraint in pursuing their justifiable and moderate demands.  We call on you to instruct your local management to engage in constructive dialogue with the local trade union with a view to resolving this dispute on terms which are acceptable to the workers.”

	See the joint ICEM-IMF letter to Coats management <a href="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/18%20ICEM-IMFletterCoats%20Bangladesh%2022Feb.pdf" type="internal">here</a>.

Bangladesh Union Leaders Held Captive by Factory Managers

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