English

Español

Français

Aerospace

Automotive

Base metals

Chemical, pharmaceutical and bio-science

Energy 

Glass, cement, ceramic and associated industries

ICT, electrical and electronics

Mechanical Engineering

Mining and DGOJP

Pulp and paper

Rubber

Shipbuilding and shipbreaking

Textile, garment, shoes, leather and textile services

Sectors

Action Plan 2025-2029

Action on textile and garment industry

Clean up shipbreaking

Ratify ILO C176

United for a just future - time to pay up!

Disinvest from Myanmar

Campaigns

Global Framework Agreements

Union building

White-collar workers

Health & safety

Industry 4.0

Women

Youth

LGBTQI+

Gender, equality, diversity and inclusion (GEDI)

Just Transition

Organizing with industriALL 

What we do

Affiliates

Statutes

Elected officials

Executive Committee

Geneva head office

South East Asia 

Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus

Latin America and the Caribbean 

Middle East and North Africa

South Asia

Sub-Saharan Africa

Regional offices

About us

Global worker No1 2022

Global worker No2 2022

Publications

Resources

Logos of IndustriALL Global Union

Press

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
The ICEM Brazilian affiliate, Federacão Única dos Petroleiros (FUP), or Oil and Gas Workers’ Unified Federation, carved important new safety protections for deepwater oil platform workers in a new collective agreement recently approved. 
 
The union twice came to the edge of beginning strike actions, but postponed walkouts when the Brazilian state company agreed to better pay and more FUP and worker involvement in safety matters on the platforms in the Campos and Espírito Santo Basins, as well as across the company nationally. 
 
Following the FUP General Board accepting a revised company proposal that spells out specific safety requirements on 22 November, the contract won favour from 35,000 oil workers in local meetings, many coming on 26 November. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMoil4.JPG.JPG" width="110" height="110"/>
The new contract stipulates mandatory union representation of 150 safety specialists on platforms in the Campos Basin, for instance, and it requires three annual inspections per rig. Petrobras is underway with a US$225 billion investment in downstream and upstream projects, including exploration and development of 19 new wells next year in the deepwater Campos Basin off São Paulo state. 
 
FUP leaders throughout seven rounds of bargaining called for the same safety criteria that Norwegian state company Statoil has with ICEM affiliate IndustriEnergi (IE). Since the 2001 killing of 11 workers in the explosions and subsequent sinking of its P36 platform in the Roncador offshore fields, Petrobras has seen some 80 workplace fatalities, including one in September from a fire on a diesel fuel tanker. 
 
The FUP in 2010 forced suspensions on both Platforms 33 and 35 off Brazil, and the company itself shut operations on different vessels in both January and February this year over safety concerns. 
 
Worker safeguards in the agreement came only after FUP set a second strike deadline of 16 November. Following a first strike threat some weeks before, Petrobras agreed to improve health and pension fund benefits for workers. 
 
The pay package, another key issue throughout talks, will see Petrobras oil workers get a 10.71% pay rise, which represents 3.4% in real wages when factoring in Brazil’s inflation rate.

Strike Threat Gets FUP Major Safety Protections for Brazil’s Petrobras Workers

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
Settlement was reached on 25 November to end the conflict between ICEM affiliated Sintracarbón and Glencore subsidiary Prodeco SA in northern Colombia. ICEM reported two weeks ago the <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4783-Sintracarb%C3%B3n-Launches-Strike-at-Glencore-s-Calenturitas-Mine-in-Colombia" type="internal">resounding vote to strike</a> by 1,200 miners after repeated efforts to bargain with company management toward a new collective agreement failed.  
 
The Calenturitas mine is located in Cesar department’s La Jagua de Ibirico municipality. 
 
The strike lasted nine days, with all Colombian ICEM affiliates present at the picket, Sintraelecol, Fenaltec, Sintracarcol, Sintravidricol, USO and Sintracarbon. Worker unity, in face of concerted company efforts to intimidate and harass, led to agreement on a new contract set to last two years. Operations at Calenturitas were resumed in the afternoon of 25 November after the signing, while at the same time ICEM affiliates gathered for the ICEM Congress in Buenos Aires were planning international solidarity efforts to support the strike. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1112.prodeco picket.png" width="240" height="161"/>
Prodeco Picket
Workers achieved a salary increase of 1.5% above the consumer price index and a settlement bonus of 1.5mn pesos (US$773) per worker. The agreement benefits all employees of Prodeco, strengthening their rights association, collective bargaining, and right to strike. And importantly the agreement improves job security. 
 
The effective strike caused the company to lose more than 30,000t/d of coal production, according to reports. 
 
As is almost always the case in labour disputes in Colombia, the Ministry of Labour made clear that if pushed they would declare the strike illegal, empowering the courts to disregard the collective will of mineworkers at Calenturitas. 
 
Calenturitas produces over five million tonnes of coal a year. Prodeco produced 10 million tonnes of coal in 2010 and aims to increase production to 19.9 million tonnes in 2013 and 20.7 million tonnes in 2015. 
 
For every 100 pesos of Prodeco’s cost structure, only 5 pesos are spent on their payroll.

Colombia Prodeco Mine Dispute Settled

<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39" alt=""/>
The right wing government of Viktor Orbán in Hungary has systematically over the past year and a half dismantled many trade union freedoms and social dialogue relationships. The new Labour Code is not only completely undermining workers’ ability to fight for just conditions in the workplace, but is now empowering companies to re-open old conflicts and punish trade union activists for actions taken under the previous legislation. 
 
ICEM affiliated unions were shocked to be informed at Congress of Japanese rubber conglomerate Bridgestone’s move to initiate a penal procedure against Tamás Székely, president of VDSZ, the Hungarian chemical workers union. The case against the union president is focused on a 2009 report in the union journal “Vegyipari Dolgozó” or “Chemical Worker” on the treatment of a company employee. 
<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0912.hungary.tamas.jpg" width="128" height="170" alt=""/>
VDSZ President Tamás Székely
Tibor Skoflek suffered occupational health problems in the spring of 2009 and Bridgestone at the time rejected any responsibility for this. Local management even failed to supply transport to hospital for Tibor Skoflek, and he was taken by a bus driver. 
 
This is the first time in 20 years of Hungarian trade union work that a company initiates a penal procedure against a union leader with absolutely no negotiations or consultation beforehand. 
 
The clear policy of the Orbán regime is to create fear among Hungarian workers so that they rescind trade union membership. 
 
The ICEM condemns in the strongest terms this crackdown on fundamental labour rights in Hungary, and specifically in this case against Tamás Székely, and will be exerting pressure at company and government levels.

Bridgestone Hungary forces the President of VDSZ to court

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
A member of ICEM-affiliated Metallurgical, Mining and Chemical Workers’ Union of Georgia who received serious burns but escaped death in a 27 August 2010 coal mine explosion died inside that same mine in late November due to a shaft cave-in. 
 
Sergi Ashotia, 50, was working inside the Tkibuli-Mindeli Coal Mine of Geo-Coal, owned by the Georgian Industrial Group, when he was buried on 24 November by rock and wooden support pilings. A similar shaft collapse at the accident-prone mine in western Imereti region occurred on 6 November, killing two miners – 49-year-old Bondo Mikheilidze and 61-year-old Tamaz Gioradze. 
 
Ashotia was one six miners severely burned in the August 2010 methane gas explosion that killed four miners. The ICEM then charged Geo-Coal, also called Saknakhshiri, with failure to install modern ventilation and detection equipment. 
 
Safety issues were a main reason behind a strike by the mine’s 200 workers last February. After a January 2011 mine explosion killed one worker, management sacked two low level managers and police in the city of Tkibuli arrested them for safety negligence. Miners then engaged in an open-ended strike on 2 February in support of them and in protest to the company’s safety inadequacies.
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1110.georgia.jpg" width="125" height="166"/>
Kutasi Meeting, October 2011: Mineworkers' Union Leaders Present 
That strike ended when the company agreed to a labour contract empowering the Metallurgical, Mining, and Chemical Workers’ Union to assist with safety improvements. The mine then experienced another fatality on 9 September 2011. 
 
As for November’s fatalities, the union is involved in the investigation, but Metallurgical, Mining and Chemical Union President Tamazi Dolaberidze said many of the facts are being distorted by people who were present during the cave-ins. He said the managing director is also disturbed by this. 
 
The result has been reinforcement of the terms ending the strike, with a joint labour-management safety committee established for better process control of safety and labour protection systems. Dolaberidzi said he is confident this will positively impact preventative measures. 
 
Geo-Coal, or Saknakhshiri, has granted each of the miners’ families with the equivalent if US$7,000 and paid for all funeral expenses. The company also took out an insurance policy last February that went into force on 1 November. The policy insures Geo-Coal for up to five fatal accidents per year, and it gave the families of the three miners who perished last month each with US$25,000. 
 
The union also assisted families of dead miners with stipends.

Deaths Continue To Plague Georgia’s Tkibuli-Mindeli Coal Mine

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
The US-based United Autoworkers’ Union (UAW) exhibited exemplary trade union solidarity with the Korean Metal Workers’ Union (KMWU) recently when American autoworkers turned out to picket and handbill Hyundai auto dealerships in the US. 
 
Customers at some 75 Hyundai dealerships on 30 November learned of the injustice afforded a contract worker at a Hyundai Motor Group factory in South Chungcheong province, who was sacked after she filed a sexual harassment lawsuit with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) of Korea.
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/HyundaSexH.jpg" width="260" height="171"/>
The UAW took on the mid-day action at Hyundai dealerships from California to New York to inform American car buyers of this contract worker’s current plight. The KMWU, affiliated to the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), is championing the 45-year-old woman’s case especially after the Korea Workers’ Compensation and Welfare Service, in investigating the complaint, inexplicably added to the harassment in outrageous questioning of the woman. 
 
Hyundai claims it is not responsible for liability, since the 14-year service worker was employed by Glovis, a symbiotic contractor of Hyundai. Among other forms of harassment in 2010, the woman had received inappropriate text messages and late night telephone calls from supervisors. 
 
Following the NHRC awarding her compensation of nine million won (US$7,725), Glovis fired her and has since refused to pay her the penalty. The woman has been holding a protest vigil in Seoul since June of this year. 
 
Said UAW President Bob King, “The UAW has embraced a global vision of social justice and will mobilize its membership to defend labour rights here and in other parts of the world.”

UAW Pickets US Hyundai Dealers over Sexual Harassment in Korea

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
Members of the United Steelworkers Local 207L numbering 1,050 are livid that management of Cooper Tire and Rubber in Findlay, Ohio, broke good-faith negotiations and locked them out on 28 November. They showed their anger on Saturday, 17 December, by manifesting strongly with other state and regional trade unionists in the northern Ohio town. 
 
To be sure, descendants of the founders of the company that gave birth to Cooper Tire are also unhappy with current management over the lockout. In a letter to top executives of America’s fourth largest tyre maker on 9 December, Janet Clinger and Lingel Winters wrote that their grandfather “Claude Hart adhered to the standards … believ(ing) that the company had a responsibility for the well-being of not only the shareholders, but the workers and the community.” 
 
The <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4808-Cooper-Tire-and-Rubber-Locks-Out-Steelworkers-at-Ohio-Factory" type="internal">lockout began</a> after workers rejected a concession-loaded proposal in late November and after the USW requested to continue work and continue bargaining. Cooper’s lockout was sudden, unprovoked, and now damaging both to labour relations and workers’ lives. Within days of the lockout, the company proudly announced it would re-start production with managers and temporary scab workers.
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1112USWcopperchain.jpg" width="75" height="75"/>
Lockout: War on Families
Cooper’s war on rubber workers at its flagship factory was evident at the 17 December manifestation. USW Local 207L President Rod Nelson lamented misguided managers who weathered the 2008-09 US manufacturing downturn with no small help from workers’ pay-check concessions, and now return for more economic cuts from workers when profits are good and executive bonuses are back. 
 
“Cooper hasn’t been fair with us at the bargaining table,” said Nelson, refuting a management that has lost touch with the company’s founding principles. “We don’t lock people out of their jobs, we work through our problems.” 
 
USW Secretary-Treasurer and ICEM Rubber Sector Chairman Stan Johnson told the rally that the union has responded globally and immediately received support from Serbian union Nezavisnost. That came within days of Cooper’s 8 December announcement that it would buy early next year a tyre factory from Trayal Korporacija AD near Krusevac, Serbia. 
 
The USW also received an assist from its trans-Atlantic partner Unite the Union in bringing the lockout to the attention of workers at Cooper’s Melksham, Wiltshire, UK. Unite has flooded the shop floor of former Avon Tyres Ltd., which Cooper bought in 1997, with leaflets, posters and details of the American lockout.
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0905.rubber.conf.1.jpg" width="110" height="136"/>
Stan Johnson
“This lockout is about greed and gluttony,” said Johnson at Saturday’s rally. “It’s about a shiny new jet (Cooper’s new purchase) and it’s about multi-million-dollar bonuses.” 

It is also about abandoning the traditions of social responsibility, judging from the letter by descendants of founders Claude Hart and John Schaefer. Expressing disappointment, Clinger and Winters wrote, “Locking out employees who helped the company during hard times and hiring scab workers to replace them subverts the purpose of collective bargaining. “ 
 
USW Local 207L and Cooper did return to the table on 13 December in talks supervised by US federal mediator Kevin Moyer. But those negotiations produced no trace of Cooper reconciliation, or rescinding of harsh contract terms. 
 
The stakes will now get higher between the USW and Copper as a contract expires on 20 January 2012 between USW Local 752L in Texarkana, Arkansas, and the Findlay-based company. The 1,500 workers there have voted to give their union committee a mandate to strike if necessary.

Steelworkers in Lockout Manifest against Copper Rubber in US

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
The ICEM extended condolences today to its affiliate, the Russian Oil, Gas and Construction Workers’ Union (ROGWU) following this weekend’s sinking of the Kolskaya oil rig in the Sea of Okhotsk. The Kolskaya, owned by a subsidiary of the Russian state-owned company Zarubezhneft OJSC, sank in stormy waters while being towed from off the Kamchatka Peninsula to Sakhalin Island in Russia’s Far East. 
 
Fifty-three oil workers went down with the rig, while 14 were rescued by the icebreaker Magadan and the tow ship Neftegaz-55, which were bringing the rig to port. The rig sank in icy waters 1,042 metres deep (3,400 feet) in the Sea of Okhotsk. Only four bodies were recovered and the rig’s four rescue boats were found, but with nobody in them. 
 
The Kolskaya had been drilling for Gazprom subsidiary Gazflot on the West Kamchatsky shelf since September before this tragedy in which it was capsized in a storm and sank in 20 minutes. 
 
The ICEM calls immediate attention to this oil rig disaster as another example of the perilous work that offshore oil workers must endure to meet world energy supplies.

ICEM Mourns Deaths of 53 Oil Workers off Russia

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
From the International Metalworkers’ Federation 

In a unanimous vote, the 300-member Central Committee of the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF) moved to convene an extraordinary Congress in June 2012 to create a new global union for industrial workers. The action occurred on the second day of the Central Committee’s meeting in Jakarta on 8 December. 

The new global union organization will unite workers of metal, mining, chemicals, energy and textile industries, and will bring the IMF together with the ICEM and the International Textile, Garment, Leathers Workers’ Federation (ITGLWF). The new global union, which will represent 50 million workers in 140 countries, will be launched on 18-20 June 2012 in Copenhagen, Denmark. 

Introducing the discussion on creation of the new global union, IMF President Berthold Huber said: “Many of our members are working in companies that cut across different industrial sectors. We need to bundle up our forces to speak with a single voice of workers in the manufacturing industries.”
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Berthold%20Huber%20IG%20Metall.jpg" width="142" height="158"/>
Berthold Huber
In a lively debate, delegates expressed hope about building a stronger counter-power to transnational corporations, and more focus and resources for organizing, fighting precarious work and defending trade union rights. Speakers emphasized the need to further improve gender balance in the different structures, including a 30% minimum share of women on statutory bodies and other forums. 

The Central Committee returned the proposal on presidents of IMF’s industrial departments back to the Executive Committee in order to find a better gender and north-south balance.

IMF Central Committee Moves on Dissolution, Merger Congresses

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

	From the International Metalworkers' Federation

	Trade unionists around the world will mobilize during the week of February 19-25, calling on the Mexican government to stop its attack on workers and implement steps to allow for workers to organize independent democratic trade unions of their choosing. 
	 
	Last year more than 50,000 union members, students and human rights activists from some 40 countries participated in the Global Days of Action, launched on February 14 in Mexico and Australia simultaneously. For six days union members came together in an unprecedented show of solidarity. Thousands of letters were sent to the Mexican government, more than 50 meetings were held at Mexican Embassies throughout the world, and massive demonstrations throughout the week, inside and outside of Mexico, marked the strength and urgency of our message: STOP the attack on workers, we demand Trade Union Rights in Mexico, NOW! 
	 
	The impact of our global actions were felt around the world. On February 24, just weeks after Global Action Days launched, political prisoner Juan Linares of the National Miners’ and Metalworkers’ Union of Mexico was released from jail after being unjustly imprisoned for more than two years. Building on our 2011 actions, independent unions in Mexico, together with their respective global union partners, have come together as a movement of force, challenging retrogressive labour legislation, Mexico’s scandalous “Protection Contract” system, and exposing corporate and political corruption.

	<img alt="" height="160" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1202.mexico days of action.jpg" width="113" />

	Despite an escalation in action and outcry from unions in Mexico and at the international level, workers continue to be denied fundamental rights, independent unions face violent and political attack, and corporate impunity is at an all time high. 
	 
	During the week of February 19-25, 2012, in honour of the Pasta de Conchos miners who died in a mine blast on February 19, 2006, members of the international labour movement are again asked to take action. 
	 
	POSSIBLE ACTIONS INCLUDE:

	Request a meeting with Mexican Embassy/Consulate representatives to discuss trade union rights in Mexico.
<ul>
	<li>
		<div align="justify">
			Organize a small delegation to deliver a statement or letter to your local Mexican Embassy/Consulate.</div>
	</li>
	<li>
		<div align="justify">
			Send a letter to your local Mexican Embassy/Consulate.</div>
	</li>
	<li>
		<div align="justify">
			Engage national policy makers to join meetings with</div>
	</li>
	<li>
		<div align="justify">
			Embassy representatives or to send similar letters to the Government of Mexico.</div>
	</li>
	<li>
		<div align="justify">
			Publicize actions taken in defense of trade union rights in Mexico on your union’s website and in its publications.</div>
	</li>
</ul>

	Print-ready posters and model letters are available to be used for actions and mobilizations. Posters are available in English, French, Spanish and Russian. The original In design artwork file is also available upon request if you wish to add logos or additional information, contact: <a href="mailto:unionrights@imfmetal.org">unionrights@imfmetal.org</a>. Model letters are available in English, Spanish, French, Russian and German. 
	 
	Please be sure to keep us informed of all actions taken, send photos, letters, and reports to: <a href="mailto:unionrights@imfmetal.org">unionrights@imfmetal.org</a> and <a href="mailto:tom.grinter@icem.org">tom.grinter@icem.org</a>.

Mexico Days of Action 2012, February 19-25

Meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 9 February, the ICEM’s Sub-Saharan African Regional Organisation (SSARO) adopted a moving statement that denounces violence against women in the workplace, most specifically a rape and murder earlier this week inside Anglo American Platinum Ltd.’s (Amplats) Khomanani Mine in Rustenburg, North West Province.

	ICEM affiliate National Mine Workers (NUM) of South Africa has given North West police until the end of this week to arrest those responsible for this horrific act of violence. The SSARO statement follows:

	“On the morning of 6 February, a 28- year-old female worker was violated and murdered underground at Khomanani Mine, which is owned by Amplats, a wholly owned subsidiary of Anglo American.

	“This barbaric and neanderthal act against an innocent young worker is the most glaring case of gender-based discrimination against women and abuse of power. Sexual assault is cruel, inhuman, horrible. A mineworker underground on a daily basis has to deal with death or injury that can come from a rock fall or machines. Having to deal with death and violation against your person sexually and otherwise compounds the insecurity of a human being. A fellow worker who was supposed to act as a fellow human being acted as an animal.

	“The National Union of Mineworkers has been fighting to enable women to work in mines. This and similar incidents should not be misconstrued to undo the progress that women have made to achieve equal employment rights.”

	He who does not love a woman, who does not respect a woman, despises his own mother having come out of a kind womb of a woman.

	“As the ICEM African Executive Committee and the ICEM African Women's Structure, we strongly condemn this atrocious act of barbarism.

	“Mines and all workplaces must be safe environments for women and men. It is up to the employer to ensure that the workplace is safe for all. We will be holding the employer accountable for this tragedy.

	“We call for a speedy and thorough investigation into these crimes. We are confident that the perpetrators will be brought to justice, whoever they are. We call on the police to do a thorough investigation as the mine has records of who works what shift. We call on them to use all the forensic technology at their disposal to find out who the perpetrator is. We will be following up on this case and checking that justice is done. We also call for a tough sentence for the perpetrator or perpetrators once found.

	“This young woman was only 28 years old and had one child, and her future and dreams were destroyed by a barbaric act of violence by a male counterpart. This is the triple oppression that we need to continue to fight against to attain true liberation for African women.

	“We call on comrades to rally around this slogan: Not Another Woman Must Be Reaped, Not Another Woman Must Be Murdered.

	“We call upon affiliates and sister organisations of ICEM to post this statement on their websites and to disseminate it widely to the press.”

ICEM SSARO Condemns Grisly Rape, Murder of Woman inside Amplats Mine

Archive