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ICEM affiliate National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) is in dispute with German rubber producer Continental Tyre over shift changes and restructuring at a Port Elizabeth factory. Up to 200 of the plant’s 1,400 workers could be retrenched under a company plan to cut weekend shift operations and manpower in various departments. Because management imposed the restructuring without consultation with NUMSA—a violation of the tyre industry agreement—over 300 workers staged spontaneous stop-work actions last week.

NUMSA Takes Issue with Continental Tyre's Restructuring

EPMU and Norwegian-based pulp and paper company Norske Skog signed an innovative agreement with Kewerau College for a maintenance training centre. The programme is the first of its kind in New Zealand and will provide training from apprenticeship up to and through advanced levels of skilled maintenance. “It’s a living example of a union and employer collaborating to fix a glaring gap in our skills and training,” stated EPMU National Secretary Andrew Little. Norske Skog operates the 600- worker Tasman paper mill, which produces newsprint and directory paper at Kawerau.

New Zealand's EPMU, Norske Skog Agree to Training Centre

"Meet the everyday needs of people everywhere." Few would argue with Unilever's central aim. But the food-to-toothpaste mammoth has forgotten one big human need - job security. 
 
Unilever will present its annual results in Rotterdam tomorrow (23 Feb.). They are unlikely to be small. It currently claims to be the world's second-biggest consumer goods business and 19th-biggest manufacturer. And on the company's own figures, its operating profit has so far been "approaching 4 billion [US] dollars." 
 
As for the workers, Unilever says it has "270,000 employees worldwide" - but for how much longer? 
 
Immediately after the company's media event tomorrow, the Unilever European Works Council will hold its own press conference in Rotterdam [at 13.30 in the Hotel Restaurant Engels, Stationsplein 45]. 
 
There, the story will be very different. For Unilever employees, 1998 was once again a year of painful redundancies and job losses. In the 7 years between 1991 and 1997, Unilever closed 57 factories in Europe. In many of the plants that remain, jobs and pay have been cut. 
 
The unions' press conference is being organised by their European-level industrial federations, the food and allied workers' ECF-IUF and the chemical and allied workers' EMCEF, and is supported by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). 
 
In a campaign backed globally by the food and allied workers' international IUF and the chemical and allied workers' ICEM, the works council is demanding: 
 
An end to divestments and sales of companies 
An end to factory closures 
The use of Unilever's cash reserves for investments rather than for further downsizing and restructuring.
An ICEM/IUF cybercampaign to back these demands is online now. It includes facilities for lobbying Unilever by e-mail and fax. 
 
Action by Unilever workers across Europe tomorrow will include leafleting, protest rallies and workplace assemblies. It is likely that short work stoppages will take place in a number of locations.

Unilever: Unions' Action Day Tomorrow Over Plant Closures

The Communications, Energy, Paperworkers Union of Canada would welcome global trade union support in its effort to block the Canadian government from selling its 19% state in Petro-Canada. Log on to www.cep.ca, click on the “Don’t Sell Petro-Canada” link on the home page, and you can draft and send a short message against divestment to the prime minister that is automatically copied to the finance minister.

CEP of Canada Seeks Petition Help on Petro-Canada

Workers at Chernobyl, and Ukraine's four other nuclear power stations, will go on strike unless a dispute over unpaid wages is resolved by tomorrow (6 March). Nationally and globally, unions are warning that the crisis could have implications for safety. 
 
Over the past few weeks, the nuclear workers have gradually been escalating their protests over the wage backlog, which now amounts to more than US$15 million. They have repeatedly warned that serious underfunding of the sector poses a threat to nuclear safety. 
 
Their union, the Atom Trade Union (ATU), issued the strike alert after the government and the nuclear energy utility Energoatom had persistently failed to tackle the wage debt crisis. The union has particularly criticised the government's foot-dragging over a decree that would open new credit lines for the cash-starved Ukrainian nuclear industry. 
 
ATU President Alexander Jurkin is now in negotiations with the Deputy Prime Minister in a last attempt to avert a full strike. 
 
At the global level, the ATU is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). 
 
"Our Ukrainian brothers and sisters can count on the full support of their colleagues worldwide," ICEM General Secretary Vic Thorpe. "The Ukrainian nuclear workers must be paid what they are owed, and the ICEM stands ready to back their campaign. 
 
"Non-payment of any group of workers is wholly unacceptable," Thorpe said. "In the case of nuclear workers, it also poses a threat to the wider national and global community. 
 
"Workers are a key factor in nuclear safety. They have to remain fully alert throughout their shifts. Nuclear workers who have serious financial worries, and who may have to take second jobs out of hours in order to make ends meet, could experience difficulty in concentrating. 
 
"The Ukrainian authorities must ensure full payment of the nuclear workers' wages without further delay," Thorpe insisted, "and they must provide the nuclear industry with the financial resources needed for safe operation. 
 
"The global community must also shoulder its responsibilities," Thorpe said. "Part of the international funding devoted to nuclear safety in Ukraine must be earmarked for the full, immediate payment of the nuclear industry's wage backlog. And the world's governments must insist that, from now on, wages be paid in full and on time to the workers on whom the world's safety depends."

Chernobyl Workers To Strike?

Global tyremaker Continental faced coordinated protests on both sides of the Atlantic over the past 24 hours by union leaders from 16 countries. 
 
Demonstrations took place in Akron, Ohio - a centre of the US rubber industry - and in London, England, where the tyre industry is holding a major European trade exhibition. Coordinating the campaign is the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), which represents tyre workers worldwide. 
 
The current protests centre on Continental's treatment of striking (and locked-out) workers at its General Tire plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. But union leaders have also voiced concern over the company's declared worldwide strategy of shifting production to "low-cost" areas. 
 
The core issue in the American dispute is that "Conti" is refusing to pay the going rate among leading employers of US tyre workers, even though the plant is now profitable. The American workers accuse Conti of failing to bargain in good faith and of trying to break the Charlotte local of their union, the USWA. After provoking a strike, the company drafted in "permanent replacement" workers last September, thus effectively locking out and dismissing the strikers. 
 
In 1995, after Continental bought General Tire, the workers bailed out the Charlotte plant by "giving back" about 90 million dollars in pay and benefits cuts. Charlotte is now showing a healthy profit, but the company is still refusing to bring its pay and conditions up to standard. 
 
Taking part in the Akron protests yesterday were tyre workers' leaders from ICEM-affiliated unions in Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Germany, Guatemala, Japan, Malaysia, Morocco, Slovenia, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the USA and Venezuela. Their demo was held in front of a retail outlet that sells Conti tyres. 
 
And in London this morning, protesters from ICEM-affiliated British unions rolled bald tyres up and down outside the TYREXPO Europe 99 exhibition. Time To Run Continental's Greed Off The Road proclaimed one placard at the London demo, while another said Reinstate 1,450 Sacked Continental Workers In North Carolina USA. 
 
"We will take our campaign against Continental to wherever they do business, here or abroad," John Sellers pledged in Akron yesterday. Sellers is Executive Vice-President of the USWA and heads the union's Rubber And Plastics Industry Conference. "German multinational corporations would not be allowed to abuse workers this way in Germany," Sellers declared, "and we're not going to tolerate such behaviour in the United States, either." 
 
"We are proud to join forces with our American brothers and sisters in protesting against Continental's actions in Charlotte," said British union leader Bert Hill. He is from British ICEM affiliate the GMB, which organises workers at Continental's Newbridge tyre plant in Scotland. Hill is currently in Akron. 
 
"Continental has been systematically trying to wrest concessions from our members in Scotland," he stated, "and we know we have to stand together in solidarity with other Continental workers in other countries against our common employer." 
 
 
UNIONS DRAW UP GLOBAL STRATEGY 
 
Hill and union leaders from Germany, France, Turkey, South Africa and the US met yesterday to plan a common strategy to support the Charlotte strikers. 
 
"Continental's actions in the United States are a disgrace," said Jacques Caltot, who heads the rubber division of the ICEM-affiliated French union FCE-CFDT. "We will continue to press Continental to adhere to international labour standards wherever it does business, and we will support the USWA strike in Charlotte until a fair and just agreement can be reached." 
 
"The situation at Continental is typical of a problem that we are going to have to tackle globally," commented ICEM Vice-President Fred Higgs just after the London demo. "Companies that pride themselves on being respectable employers in Europe often act very differently in contexts like the United States. We are going to be exerting the fullest possible pressure to secure the reinstatement of all the 1,450 Charlotte workers who have been so unjustly and ungratefully treated by Continental." 
 
Also heading up the London demo was Earl Pabst, President of the union local in Charlotte. 
 
"The support over here is even stronger than I had imagined," Pabst said. "Today's event has taken our message to another level." 
 
Asked what he wanted as a next step, Pabst replied: "I want the scabs [strikebreakers] out and us back in." 
 
Meanwhile, he said, the union would be expanding an "informational campaign" of leafletting customers outside US retailers that sell Continental tyres. "We're now contacting retailers across the USA," Pabst added. "We're telling them who we are and what we want, and we're explaining that we're with them, not against them." 
 
In Akron, ICEM General Secretary Vic Thorpe pledged continuing global union support for the American workers' campaign. 
 
"Our affiliated unions around the world are behind the USWA," Thorpe said. "We will show Continental there are serious consequences for its violation of workers' rights."

Continental Tyres Faces Intercontinental Trouble

CFMEU of Australia won an important court decision late last week that will broaden its organising strength in development-rich Western Australia. A federal court refused to ban the union from a construction site on the Barrup Peninsula where an A$650 million ammonia plant is being built. Contractors last January blocked CFMEU from entering, saying employees already had individual work contracts under the Howard government’s Australian Workers’ Agreements. The decision is expected to have far-reaching effects across Australia for union organizers.

CFMEU Wins Case against Howard Government’s Work Contracts

Following Japan’s worst nuclear accident in history on 9 August in which four workers were killed and seven injured seriously, Kansai Electric Power announced it would temporarily close all 11 of its nuclear plants for inspections of pipes for corrosion. The deadly accident occurred at Kansai’s Mihama nuclear plant north of Kyoto when a steam pipe ruptured. The pipe reportedly never had been inspected since the plant opened in 1976, and investigators after the accident found the once ten-millimetre-thick pipe had worn away to a thickness of only 1.4 millimetres. Minimum safety requirements mandate such pipes carrying superheated steam be at least 4.7 millimetres thick.

Japan’s Worst Nuclear Accident Occurs at Kansai Power Plant

US affiliate PACE has adopted a paper industry bargaining policy that has been approved by 75% of its local unions in the paper sector. Goals include collective agreements of no more than four years in length, and no waiver of rights to negotiate over health care plans, sickness or accident benefits, life insurance or pensions. Of PACE’s 275,000 members, about 160,000 work in the pulp and paper sectors.

PACE in US Adopts Paper Sector Bargaining Policy

In Nigeria, legislation called the Labour Reform Bill that would severely weaken the labour movement continues to be pushed by the government in Senate hearings. The bill, which would impose restrictions on union membership and union operations, is seen as revenge on the Nigerian Labour Congress for its role in strikes and near strikes over fuel price increases. In vowing that the legislation will not get a reading in the National Assembly, PENGASSAN President Louis Brown Ogbeifun told trade publication Upstream, “The government would be shooting itself in the foot if it pushed through measures to decimate organized labour, and I think they’ll soon understand this fact.”

Nigerian Labour Opposes Workplace Reform Legislation

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