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<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
Leaders of the PT Freeport Indonesia Workers’ Union (SP KEP SPSI) and managers of PT Freeport Indonesia (PTFI) will meet today in Timika, Papua province, in efforts to forge fine points and back-to-work terms after a historic three-month strike ended last week at the Grasberg mines, the world’s largest gold and copper deposits. (See <a href="/en/77-All-ICEM-News-Releases/4810-Proud-Indonesian-Miners-End-Strike-with-Freeport-McMoRan" type="internal">ICEM news release</a> on strike terms.) 
 
Some 10,000 strikers were ready to take up their jobs on 17 December, but security reasons prevented an orderly return to work. PTFI, a subsidiary of US-based giant Freeport-McMoRan, suspended air lifts between Tamika and the Grasberg mines after a helicopter leaving Tembagapura early on 17 December was shot at. 
 
It was carrying 29 people, including union-represented staff workers. The wife of one worker was injured by glass and shrapnel, before the Russian pilots of the charter service, five minutes into the flight, diverted the aircraft to Timika. 
 
A union spokesman said it would be a week before workers started returning to the world’s largest gold mine and second largest copper mine. 
 
Today’s talks in Timika between the emboldened union and PTFI will center on infrastructure issues, such as bus transportation, improvements in transport shelters, and assuring that the company’s personnel data management system is up to date and accurate. 
 
These issues and overall security for PTFI staff and non-staff alike in returning to their jobs will be addressed.
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1111.indo mile 28.jpg" width="241" height="160"/>
Mile 28: Union Blockade Stymied Production
PTFI began operating one of five slurry lines between Grasberg and Timika over the weekend. The others are expected to be operational within a week. The slurry lines were vandalized in the early stages of the strike by indigenous people bunkering small amounts of gold and copper concentrate for sale on black markets. 
 
In the month preceding last week’s strike settlement, PTFI began repairs on pipelines using helicopter lifts of men and materials. The company will be at full production early in the new year. 
 
That was done to avert an iron-clad blockade between Timika and Grasberg by strikers and their families that proved to be union’s most effective leverage point. 
 
The strike, which started on 15 September, was historic since it pitted a low-wage, well-organised, determined and enlightened unionised workforce against a leading global extraction company with a wide revenue stream, most notably from its leading money-maker, the rich Grasberg open-cast and underground mines of Indonesia.

Security a Concern as Indonesian Miners Ready to Return to Jobs

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
On 2 December, representatives of the ICEM Canadian affiliate Communications, Energy and Paperworkers (CEP) Union participated in a discussion on trade union perspectives on the Canadian bituminous sands, or tar sands or oil sands. 
 
Organized by the Cornell Global Labor Institute and the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) with the CEP, the session was part of the international trade union World of Work events held at the 17th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-17) in Durban, South Africa. 
 
Jim Britton, CEP Western Region Vice-President, introduced the CEP and its membership. The CEP is Canada's energy union.
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/canadacep.gif" width="120" height="100"/>
Britton explained why the question of the tar sands cannot be separated from the question of the Keystone XL Pipeline, a new pipeline connecting the province of Alberta with US refineries. CEP has been opposed to the Keystone pipeline, and several previous pipeline proposals, for two reasons: the value-added processing of Canada's bitumen should take place in Canada; and the pipelines stand as a symptom of the lack of a sustainable energy policy in Canada, which is desperately needed. 
 
Sadly, these concerns have not found traction with Canada's present Conservative government, nor with the regulatory bodies or courts in Canada. 
 
An intelligent energy policy could ensure a rational continued development of the tar sands, with the creation of high-quality permanent jobs and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Canadians, including those who mine and process bitumen, want adequate regulation that ensures job creation, environmental protection, respects First Nations' rights, a growing economy and reduced risks for business. 
 
This is an area where everyone could win. Instead, Canada is sacrificing energy security and sustainability for short-term and short-sighted profits. It cannot be jobs "or" the environment, it must be both. CEP members expect it and the CEP will fight for it.
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1112.Roland Lefort CEP cop 17.jpg" width="150" height="132"/>
Roland Lefort 
Roland Lefort, President of CEP Local 707, representing thousands of oil sands workers, explained that his position was based on CEP policies on energy, the environment, and Just Transition that have been developed over many years and affirmed at successive CEP Conventions. Together, these call on Canada to develop a plan for the sustainable development of the oil sands. 
 
This plan would ensure, among other things: energy security for Canadians; carbon capture and storage for all new tar sands projects; the promotion of energy conservation; a well-funded Just Transition plan for energy workers and energy-dependent regions of the country; a fulfilment of Canada's commitments to stabilize and then cut greenhouse gas emissions. 
 
Oil sands workers in Canada believe in the science of climate change, the rights of aboriginal peoples, and the protection of Canada's resources. Their position is one of sustainable development. It disagrees with the proposition that there are only two positions on the issue of oil sands development – all or nothing. 
 
The present Canadian government and industry want to extract the oil sands without impediments or controls, while the environmental lobby, which is getting stronger by the day, wants to shut down the oil sands. The CEP believes that there is a position in between, a position of balance, a position for sustainability. 
 
To that effect, the CEP has been working to bring together government, labour, First Nations, and environmentalists to the table to develop the plan on energy as stated in our policies. 
 
Lefort's strong presentation in Durban, backed by his personal credibility as a miner and President of Canada's largest group of unionized oil sands workers, made a huge impact on the audience. 
 
Another panelist was Roger Toussaint of New York City and the Transport Workers’ Union (TWU). He stated that the issues involved in the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline affected everyone and his union decided it could not be silent on the issue. Instead of uncontrolled development, there is a potential to move towards a lower-carbon and just economy, with the creation of millions of good jobs in renewable energy, mass transportation, energy-efficient buildings, and the like. Toussaint believes that the global labour movement can lead this change and pointed out the forward-looking policies of the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) as an example.
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/USABoilermakers.jpg" width="90" height="106"/>
Asking a question from the floor, Anthony Jacobs, Director of National Construction Agreements for the ICEM-affiliated and US-based International Brotherhood of Boilermakers (IBB) stated that he understood Lefort's position, but passionately defended his union's support for the Keystone XL pipeline and the potential construction jobs it represented. Lefort said that he accepted and understood the IBB position but hoped that he understood CEP's. 
 
Other considerations in the debate on the Keystone XL pipeline include the US's dependency on foreign oil and the potential mutual economic benefit to Canada and the US. 
 
The event illustrated the value of unions' direct participation in international events such as COP-17. The value of an opportunity to hear directly from those affected is impossible to overstate.

Canada’s Tar Sands, Keystone Pipeline Gets Aired at COP-17

<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBriefAlert.jpg" width="120" height="59" alt=""/>
Local 27 members of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union were locked out at the New Year by Caterpillar Inc.’s Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD) in a callous display of corporate might that could lead to corporate flight from Canada. The 650 CAW members in London, Ontario, voted by 98% on 30 December for strike action and 24 hours later – just as they were returning to jobs on New Year’s Eve following a holiday shutdown – they were locked out. 

The lockout indignation comes on the heels of deeper indignation: Caterpillar’s EMD – run as part of the US company’s Progress Rail Services Corp. – attempt to extract unreasonable wage and benefit concessions from Canadian union members as excuse to shift production of electric-powered diesel engines and associated railroad components to a start-up and lower wage plant in Muncie, US state of Indiana. 

EMD began operations in Muncie in October 2011. Until Saturday night’s lockout, CAW and EMD had bargained under a seven-month contract extension, something the two sides agreed to in May 2011. However, EMD never once wavered from an initial, hostile and family-wrecking proposal demanding wage cuts from C$35-per hour to C$16.50, health benefits cut in half, and elimination of a pension scheme. 

At the same time, EMD was advertising for a Human Resources manager in Muncie with the stipulation that he/she have “experience with providing union-free culture and union avoidance.” 

EMD is paying average salaries between US$12-16-per hour in Muncie. Caterpillar and its wholly-owned Progress Rail Services is seeking to dislodge General Electric’s (GE) Transportation Division as the US’s premiere supplier of train locomotives at a time of government stimulus funding for infrastructure and transport needs. GE operates three major rail division plants that are unionised and pay average salaries of US$30-per hour or more. 

EMD’s London, Ontario, plant was purchased by Caterpillar in August 2010 for US$820 million from Greenbriar Equity Group and Berkshire Partners. The two capital companies in turn bought the manufacturing plant in 2005 for a quarter of that amount from General Motors when GM was shedding its non-auto making businesses.
<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Ken.Lewenza.CAW.jpg" width="130" height="188" alt=""/>
CAW President Ken Lewenza  

Then, Caterpillar was interested in buying the southwestern Ontario plant but CAW opposed the deal because of Caterpillar’s horrid labour relations record in the US. Now, with Caterpillar in control and deploying obvious whipsawing of CAW members against non-union Muncie workers that will number 650 this year, CAW Local 27 is forced to blockade the London plant to prevent equipment from leaving for the Indiana city 350 miles to the south. 

On Saturday, CAW President Ken Lewenza called the lockout “a serious attack on working people, their families and the greater community of London. 

“If (Caterpillar) is not going to do business in Canada, this wage cut is designed as a mechanism to blame workers,” Lewenza said in a published report, referring to production flight and a possible plant closing. In mid-December, the CAW lodged a formal complaint with the government over Caterpillar’s violation of the Investment Canada Act. 

EMD has other railroad manufacturing facilities in Sete Lagoas, Minas Gerais state, Brazil, and Sahagún, Hidalgo state, Mexico, a facility it operates jointly with Bombardier. EMD sells locomotives, replacement parts, and diesel powered engines for marine propulsion, oil drilling and power generation in 130 countries, and currently has major contracts with companies providing equipment for state railways in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa. 

Caterpillar’s deep contract concession proposals, the lockout, matched with lucrative incentives from Indiana’s anti-union state government for the Muncie start-up are a cause of great concern, particularly for two countries that each lack socially-minded industrial policies in the wake of a financial crisis.

CAW Members Victimized in Lockout by Caterpillar’s Rail Division

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/CAL_en.jpg" width="100" height="45"/>
An ICEM report has found that the rights of workers in the cement industries of the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and India are being routinely violated through the use of precarious forms of employment. 
 
In many of the plants covered by the research, Contract and Agency Labour (CAL) is being used to restrict or prevent workers from exercising their right to freedom of association. Lafarge in the Philippines, for example, has been using CAL workers to fill permanent positions ever since workers took part in industrial actions as far back as 2000. At one Lafarge plant in Indonesia, all permanent workers are union members, whereas none of the CAL workers are. In India, contract workers at Holcim were dismissed after they joined the union. To make it worse, the company started criminalising the union leaders. 
 
ILO Conventions 87 and 98 apply to all workers, as explicitly stated in the 350th report of the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association: “The Committee emphasizes that all workers, without distinction whatsoever, whether they are employed on a permanent basis, for a fixed term or as contract employees, should have the right to establish and join organizations of their own choosing.” 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/lafarge.gif" width="150" height="46"/>    <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Holcim.png" width="150" height="64"/>
The report further specifies that the non-renewal of a contract for anti-union reasons constitutes a prejudicial act within the meaning of Article 1 of Convention 98. 
 
In all five countries covered by the research, CAL workers earn less than permanent workers – despite performing work of equal value – and are denied access to many of the benefits enjoyed by their permanent counterparts. 
 
In both the Philippines and Thailand, permanent workers are increasingly being used only in supervisory roles. This division of responsibilities highlights the fact that it is often contract and agency workers who are performing core labour tasks. 
 
CAL workers in many cement plants live with the burden of uncertainty. As one interviewee explained, he felt his job would continue only “as long as I will cooperate.” In the Philippines, some CAL workers reported that they do not even have written contracts. In many cases and countries, CAL workers are also not clear who is responsible for their welfare. In Thailand, agency workers are the most likely to suffer workplace accidents, yet in many plants they are denied the same health care benefits as permanent workers. 
 
The ICEM decries these exploitative practices, and demands that multinational cement companies such as Lafarge and Holcim that operate in Asia guarantee equal rights for CAL workers and take urgent steps to bring their practices in line with not only the various applicable national legislations, but also with all existing international labour standards - including ILO Conventions 87 and 98 and the Employment Relationship Recommendation 198. 
 
Cement companies must also act to ensure that they meet their obligations under the OECD Guidelines for MNEs and the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. 
 
The <a href="http://cal.icem.org/images/documents/Cement%20Report.pdf">CAL Cement Report</a> is available here.

ICEM Report Exposes Asian Cement’s CAL Practices

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/CAL_en.jpg" width="100" height="45"/>
The ICEM CAL Mini Guide to Dealing with CAL is available in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi and Bahasa Indonesian. 
 
The guide gives an overview of what the ICEM and its affiliates around the world are doing to promote permanent, direct employment and at the same time to promote better conditions for CAL workers. It also suggests ways in which unions can build relations with CAL workers, for example by creating a dedicated precarious workers’ section or rep, or considering the introduction of different membership fee levels and/or an alternate method of dues collection. ICEM affiliates are encouraged to initiate a discussion on CAL within their own unions, and the Guide suggests a number of questions which may help to get these discussions started. 
 
The <a href="http://cal.icem.org/images/documents/ICEM%20Mini%20Guide%20CAL%20HQ.pdf">CAL Mini Guide in English</a> is available here. 
 
The <a href="http://cal.icem.org/images/documents/ICEM%20Mini%20Guide%20CAL%20French.pdf">CAL Mini Guide in French</a> is available here. 
 
The <a href="http://cal.icem.org/images/documents/ICEM%20Mini%20Guide%20Spanish%20HQP.pdf">CAL Mini Guide in Spanish</a> is available here. 
 
The <a href="http://cal.icem.org/images/documents/ICEM%20Mini%20Guide%20CAL%20Portuguese.pdf">CAL Mini Guide in Portuguese</a> is available here. 
 
The <a href="http://cal.icem.org/images/documents/ICEM%20Mini%20Guide%20CAL%20Hindi.pdf">CAL Mini Guide in Hindi</a> is available here. 
 
The <a href="http://cal.icem.org/images/documents/ICEM%20Mini%20Guide%20CAL%20Bahasa.pdf">CAL Mini Guide in Bahasa Indonesian</a> is available here.

ICEM Mini Guide to Dealing with CAL Available in Multiple Languages 

ICEM HIV/AIDS e-bulletin - No. 77, February 2012

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

	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 of 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="248" />

	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="199" />   

	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 are 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 Business Doorstep

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

	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.

	 <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1202-co-industri-100.jpg" style="width: 58px; height: 57px;" width="390" /> 

	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.

Danish Industrial Contract Gives Job Security Prime Seating

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
UK mobilisation in front of a second wave of Unilever strikes to begin on 17 January occurs tomorrow when three affiliates of the ICEM and the International Union of Food and Agricultural Workers’ Association (IUF) protest in front of Unilever’s London headquarters at 100 Victoria Embankment. 
 
Unite the Union, the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW), and GMB will conduct the rally beginning at 12 noon on 10 January over the food and consumer products company’s insistence on scrapping the final pension scheme for 7,000 workers. Unilever’s proposal would gut between 20-40% of pension earnings for one-third of its UK workforce. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1201.unite battle bus.jpg" width="241" height="160"/>
Unite Battle Bus
Unite will dispatch its “battle bus” to Unilever’s corporate offices tomorrow. It will leave Unite’s Holborn Street building at 10h30. The action comes four days after a joint union delegates’ conference of Unilever worksite leaders met in Liverpool and decided to unleash a second set of strike actions to begin 17 January and to run 12 days. 
 
On 9 December, some 5,000 union members staged a 24-hour work stoppage at 11 Unilever plants in the UK, the first industrial action in UK history at the Anglo-Dutch multinational. The lawful strike saw Unilever bosses retaliate with the petty act of cancelling staff Christmas parties and withdrawing a £15 holiday gift voucher to strikers. 
 
Unilever’s gutting of the pension scheme for active workers is further insult by the company, which in 2008 eliminating the pension scheme for new hires. The company and unions negotiated late last week but there was no sign that Unilever would accept a union compromise on the pension scheme. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1201.jennie formbie unite.jpg" width="141" height="159"/>
Unite's Jennie Formby
Unite National Officer Jennie Formby said, “Our members have dedicated their time and hard work to help Unilever build leading brands. We have shown the company that there is no need to destroy the reputation of a blue chip company because there is a solution on the table if they will talk with the union.” 
 
Unilever’s factories where strike actions have occurred and where workers will again strike on 17 January are located in Purfleet, Warrington, Trafford Park, Port Sunlight, Wirral, Manchester, Leeds, Glocester, Burton-on-Trent, Chester, and Crumlin. 
 
Unilever produces Dove soap, Marmite, PG Tips, Pot Noodle, Hellman’s mayonnaise, and several other consumer products at these plants.

UK Unions Hold Key Unilever Manifestation Before Second Strike Wave 17 January

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
Workers employed by Rio Tinto Alcan, the global mining giant’s aluminium producer, were locked off their jobs in the Canadian province of Québec on 1 January in a dispute centering on the company’s ceaseless subcontracting. Some 780 metalworkers, represented by Syndicat des Métallos d’Alma Local 9490, affiliated to the United Steelworkers (USW), were thrown off their jobs at contract expiration at one of the company’s most modern plants, the Alma, Saguenay-lac-Saint-Jean region, Québec smelter. 
 
The three bargaining units of the union voted to reject a new contact late in December after the company refused to limit subcontracting. The lockout at the end of a prior five-year contract comes before USW Local 9490 had even submitted demands regarding salary adjustments, vacations, or benefits. 
 
The three bargaining committees are seeking a floor of 750 unionised jobs at the Alma facility and a halt to subcontracting that reduces full-time, stable jobs to levels below that. In recent years, since Rio Tinto purchased Canada-based Alcan for US$39 billion in 2007, Alma management has used each worker retirement and other reductions in force as a means to reduce costs and manpower by contracting out more and more work. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1104.usw.daniel%20roy.jpg" width="105" height="160"/>
USW District Five Director Daniel Roy
Last year, USW District Five Director Daniel Roy said Rio Tinto has removed some C$7.4 million in salaries and purchasing power alone from the resource-rich region. Roy and leaders of Local 9490 will hold a press conference in Alma on 13 January to highlight the negative economic impact of the lockout and Alcan’s insistence on unlimited contracting out rights. 
 
The union states that the average C$36-an-hour unionized wage rate is reduced to about C$16 with each subcontract employee. 
 
On 3 January, Alcan succeeded in Québec Superior Court in obtaining a temporary injunction limiting the number of pickets at the main plant gate to 20. Locked-out picketers must remain at least 500 feet from the entrance. A full hearing on that injunction will happen tomorrow, 10 January. 
 
Rio Tinto Alcan announced force majeure at the aluminium smelter on 3 January, stating that it would operate only 122 of 432 electrolytic production cells. Alcan said it would operate at one-third capacity with use of 200 management and other personnel. The USW has lodged a complaint with the provincial labour board that Alcan is violating Québec legislation by using scab or replacement workers during a labour dispute. 
 
The Alma operation at full capacity can produce 438,000 tonnes annually and in 2010 Alma accounted for 11% of Rio Tinto’s global aluminium production. Rio Tinto Alcan operates two smelters in the Saguenay-lac-Saint-Jean region and has a 25% stake in a third, in Bécancour where Alcoa is the majority partner.

USW Affiliate in Québec Locked Out by Rio Tinto at Aluminium Plant

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