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<img height="48" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="120" alt=""/>
A second methane gas blast in Russia’s Kuznetsk Basin region of southern Siberia on 24 May has killed 39 coal miners. The workers were affiliated with ICEM’s Russian Independent Coal Miners’ Union (ROSUGLEPROF), as were 110 miners who died 19 March at the Ulyanovskaya mine, Russia’s worst mining disaster in 60 years. 
 
Both mines are operated by Yuzhkuzbassugol, the mining subsidiary of the Evraz Group, Russia’s second largest steel and metals company.
<img height="162" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMminingsector5.jpg" width="160" alt=""/>
The tragedy 12 days ago occurred at Yuzhkuzbassogol’s Yubilienaya mine. An immense methane build-up had formed, and the explosion occurred due to a spark from a faulty electrical cable that apparently had been switched off. The ICEM mourns the loss of the miners and in the wake of this recent disaster, and calls on mining companies to implement all modern safeguards to protect the lives of miners in this era of high prices and high output of natural resources. 
 
Russia’s federal environmental, engineering, and nuclear worksite regulatory agency, Rostekhnadzor, had repeatedly cited the Yubilienaya mine with safety deficiencies. The agency had attempted to halt work at the mine until all safety measures were put in place. But managers of Yuzhbuzbassugol had fought those orders in local courts and won reprieves for work to continue. 
 
In fact, the shafts inside Yubilienaya where the explosion occurred had been temporarily shut for a brief period only weeks before. 
 
ROSUGLEPROF President Ivan Mokhnachuk faulted the Russian pay system for bringing unsafe conditions in mines. Since nearly all Russian coal mines have been privatised, the flat-rate monthly wage has been set at a bare minimum, while the vast share of all mining salaries are based on production. “While volume, productivity, and profits have risen since the coal industry has been privatised, individual workers are worse off,” he told the New York Times.
<img height="164" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0703Ivan.jpg" width="140" alt=""/>
 ROSUGLEPROF President Ivan Mokhnachuk
The 19 March Ulyanovskaya mine disaster in the Kemerovo region is a case in point. Evidence indicates that managers had tampered with sophisticated methane gas detection equipment in order that production would continue even with high build-up levels of the gas. 
 
The death toll of 159 from the two Yuzhkuzbassugol mine tragedies just 66 days apart more than doubles the 68 deaths that occurred in all of Russia’s coal mines in 2006.

Another Coal Mine Blast in Russia’s Kuzbass Kills 39 Miners

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The Amicus section of newly-formed UK union, Unite, has accused ExxonMobil of an attack on North Sea oil drilling jobs. In a letter to the UK Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Alistair Darling, the union says ExxonMobil’s decision to suspend drilling in the Beryl field for a period of three years will cost 70 jobs. 
 
Unite, the merged unification of Amicus and Transport and General Workers’ Union, is requesting that Britain’s Trade and Industry agency investigate the US supermajor’s decision, and to suspend the company’s license to operate in the field if necessary.
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The loss of jobs would affect Aberdeen, Scotland, based KCA Deutag, ExxonMobil’s main drilling contractor at the 40-year-old Beryl field production site. Workers at KCA Deutag, long represented by Amicus, say that over the past year, ExxonMobil has spent more that ₤20 million in preparing rigs for a renewed five-year drilling project. 
 
Unite’s Aberdeen-based regional officer, Graham Tran, said that Deutag detailed the project’s work to staff, guaranteeing they had a long-term future on Beryl field platforms. He said the drilling contractor had instituted a two-weeks-on, three-weeks-off rotation schedule for staff.
<img height="139" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMoil3.JPG.JPG" width="140" alt=""/>
“ExxonMobil has now put the drilling programme on hold for three years, which has put around 70 drilling jobs at risk,” said Tran. “The behaviour is disgraceful and deceitful. (ExxonMobil is) being dishonest to the employees, and also to the UK government and the UK taxpayer,” he added, alluding that ExxonMobil just might be attempting to get out of North Sea oil production. 
 
“I am therefore calling on the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to investigate this matter and if ExxonMobil refuses to reverse this decision, then government should take the necessary steps to remove its operating license and make this productive field available to operators who believe in the future of the North Sea.”

ExxonMobil Accused of Job Destruction in North Sea

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On 19 May, in a testament to the growing Solidarity now coming to strikers at Novamed in Turkey, 16 energy-sector trade union leaders from Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Moldova, and Belorussia visited picket lines in the Antalya Free Trade Zone. 
 
Eighty-four strikers have been out since 26 September 2006, protesting the medical equipment company’s harsh and unusual practices. Novamed, part of German-based Fresenius Medical Care, has refused to recognise ICEM Turkish affiliate Petrol-Iş.
<img height="158" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0706ROGWUNOVAMED1.jpg" width="280" alt=""/>
 ROGWU President Lev Mironov Addresses Turkish Strikers 
 

Eighty-two of the strikers are women. They have been subjected to inhumane treatment, including being forced to apply for permission from company bosses before becoming pregnant. 
 
The delegation from Eastern Europe and Central Asia came to Turkey following discussion and prominence of the strikers’ plight at the ICEM’s Executive Committee meetings earlier in May. They were greeted at the picket line by Petrol-Iş General Secretary Mustafa Cavdar and other leaders of Turkey’s dominant oil and chemical workers’ union.
<img height="210" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0706ROGWUNOVAMED2.jpg" width="280" alt=""/>
  
In thanking the trade union leaders, Petrol-Iş President Mustafa Oztaskin stated that their presence is a solid reminder that “this is a struggle backed by the whole trade union movement throughout the world.” The strikers heard from Lev Mironov, president of the Russian Oil and Gas Workers’ Union (ROGWU); Melik Mirzoyev, general secretary of the ICEM’s Interregional Oil and Gas Workers’ Federation; and Jahangir Aliyev, general secretary of the Oil and Gas Workers’ Union of Azerbaijan. 
 
Other leaders visiting the picket line on 19 May included: Yelena Mustafina, Oil and Gas Workers’ Union of Kazakhstan; Nikolay Stratila, Chemical and Energy Workers’ Union of Moldova; Yuriy Rovda, Belarus Petrol Gaz İşçileri Sendikasi Başkani; Ludmila Hrushetskaya, Belarus Mining and Oil Workers’ Union; and Tamara Bashuk, Ludmila Chubaryan, Natalya Navmova, Hasipat Hugayeva, Rostislav Zagorodniy, Vera Shchukine, Larisa Lukiyanova, Ludmila Brovkina, and Aleksander Vasiliyev, all of ROGWU.
<img height="225" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0706ROGWUNOVAMED3.jpg" width="300" alt=""/>

Energy Trade Union Leaders Visit Novamed Picket Lines in Turkey

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Whereas, the dispute between the workers of the National Federation of “Chemistry” – CL – “Podkrepa, ICEM affiliate in Bulgaria, and their employer, Turkey-based Sisecam, continues at two glass plants of the Group in Targovishte, Bulgaria; 
 
Whereas, the workers have been on strike since May 19, 2007, demanding a proper payment for night work, as well as for work performed during overtime, beyond the country’s legal minimum wage; 
 
Whereas, the workers merely demand their rights, as already guaranteed under existing Bulgarian labour law, and a signed collective agreement with their company; 
 
Whereas, the company continues its resistance toward a reasonable collective agreement and engages in blatant anti-union behaviour; 
 
 
Be it resolved, that the participants at the ICEM regional conference for Central Europe, meeting in Hungary on 5 and 6 June 2007, strongly support the Sisecam workers in their legitimate struggle for justice; 
 
Be it further resolved that the participants vigorously condemn the actions taken by the company to threaten workers, as well as the Bulgarian Government, with withdrawing investment in Bulgaria if existing labour laws are not changed, and if the union does not halt the strike.

ICEM resolution on Sisecam dispute in Bulgaria

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The Finnish Chemical Workers Union, Kemianliitto, signed a new national labour agreement on 8 June with chemical employers. The 30-month accord, coming 15 weeks before a current, two-year agreement is set to expire, covers 20,000 workers in Finland’s chemicals, plastics, oil, and petrochemical industries. 
 
It provides for wage increases that are substantially higher than the country’s predicted 2% inflation rate will be. 
 
On 12 June, Kemianliitto finished negotiations with rubber sector employers on a similar contract, covering 2,000 rubber workers. And, last night, 17 June, Finland’s Union of Salaried Employees’ Union, Toimihenkilöunioni, began bargaining with the same employers for a renewal contract to replace the one expiring on 30 September 2007, applying to 6,500 white-collar workers in the chemicals industries.
<img height="57" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/FinlandFlag.gif" width="100" border="1" alt=""/>
Both Kemanianlitto and Toimihenkilöunioni are ICEM affiliates. 
 
The pact for the 20,000 blue-collar workers includes an immediate bonus this month of between €250 and €305. On 1 October 2007, a pay increase of 3.4% was won, and another 2.5% is due in September 2008. Industry workers will receive a third percentage increase of 2.5% in May 2009, with the contract expiring on 31 January 2010. Additionally, the package includes performance-related increases for 2008 and 2009 that will be negotiated at plant-level, and which should result in a 0.4% bonus each year. 
 
The 8 June accord was the first in this round of bargaining under Finland’s incomes policy agreement. The strength of the wage package makes it clear that workers were not harmed by certain industrial employer associations, which chose to forego income policy bargaining at the national confederation level, i.e. centralised bargaining across all Finnish work sectors, and instead, sought national bargaining on a sector-by-sector basis.

Finnish Chemical, Oil Workers Set Pay Patterns for the Country

<img height="40" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100" alt=""/>
One of ICEM’s UK affiliates, Unite, has released a comprehensive study detailing the use and misuse of agency workers in the UK. The union, Britain’s largest and the product of a recent merger between Amicus and the Transport and General Workers Union, released the results of the study to the Department of Trade and Industry early this month. 
 
The study finds systematic abuse and misuse of agency and temporary workers at some of the most visible corporations operating in UK, including Coca-Cola, BMW, Harper Collins Publishers, Norwich Union, Honda, Unisys, and WH Smith. The study was conducted by Unite’s Amicus section, throughout the sectors of manufacturing, finance, construction, and graphical/media. 
<img height="142" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/CALhorse.jpg" width="100" alt=""/>
“Regardless of how you define a McJob, many employers are using agency workers to undermine pay and conditions, and replace permanent workers with cheaper, less qualified labour, leaving hundreds of thousands in a cycle of insecure and low-paid employment,” stated Derek Simpson, Unite Joint General Secretary. 
 
The study cites a situation at Unisys in which a contract employer, Right4Staff Agency, had up to five South African data-processing workers share one bed. The workers took turns sleeping, with those not sleeping being at work. At a Honda Civic plant in Swindon, due to growth in sales, the Japanese automaker found it needed an additional 800 workers. But rather than hire and train full-time, permanent staff, local managers turned to an agency called Best Connection. Workers from this agency are paid ₤2-an-hour less than the Honda starting rate and receive a third less holidays. 
 
At Coca-Cola in Wakefield, an agency specifically recruits Polish workers to do quality checking at ₤7-an-hour, nearly half the hourly wage negotiated by Amicus at the plant, and they miss out on a 38% shift allowance. At a BMW plant in Hams Hall, the company’s canteen operates with a two-tier pricing system – with prices higher for temporary staff. Some temp workers at BMW here have laboured for more than five years without being called for full-time employment. 
<img height="50" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/UKFlag.gif" width="100" alt=""/>
Unite blames the UK government with failing to provide equal employment rights to agency and temporary workers, despite a commitment from the 2004 Warwick agreement to do so. That agreement saw the Blair government pledge to implement the measures contained in the proposed EU Directive on Temporary and Agency Workers. Nothing was done. 
 
“We expect the new leadership of the Labour government to right this wrong, and implement the measures contained in the proposed (directive),” said Simpson. 
 
Earlier this year, a private member’s bill in Parliament brought by Labour MP Paul Farelly of Newcastle-under-Lyme was introduced that would have given agency workers the same rights, pensions, and working conditions as full-time workers. But the bill was talked out and denied a vote in the House of Commons.

Unite Study in UK Finds Rampant Abuse of Agency Workers

<img height="40" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100" alt=""/>
A third major methane gas explosion in a Russian coal mine has left 10 miners dead. This latest mine blast occurred on 25 June at the Komsomolskaya mine in Vorkuta, in the Russian region of Komi. 
 
Reports cite a popping noise, resulting in a power failure immediate before the explosion occurred. The miners who died were working in two shafts at depths of 900 metres for the company IAO Vorkutaugol. A total of 150 miners were brought from shafts following the blast, while four others were hospitalised with serious injuries. 
<img height="95" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMminingsector4.jpg" width="100" alt=""/>
The Vorkuta mining deaths come after a pair of earlier methane explosions in the Kemerovo Region claimed a total of 149 deaths. On 24 May, 39 miners died at the Yubileynaya mine. And earlier, on 19 March, the worst Russian mine disaster in decades occurred at the Ulyanovskaya mine, with 110 miners perishing. Both of these mines are operated by OAO Yuzhkuzbassugol, owned by Russia’s second largest steel and metals company, Evraz Group. 
 
These latest mining deaths come just two weeks after Russia’s environmental, technological, and nuclear safety agency, Rostekhnadzor, had asked the government to draft amendments to the Code of Administrative Violations, giving it a definite mandate to close unsafe mines. The workers’ safety watchdog has temporarily closed mines, but companies have used Russia’s courts to immediately reopen such enterprises. 
<img height="110" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Russia.png" width="250" alt=""/>
Rostekhnadzor, in a press release on the eve of OAO Vorkutaugol’s mine disaster, said it has begun drafting a methane safety programme for Russian coal mines for the period 2007 to 2010. The agency said 80% of all coal mines contain high methane levels.

Another Coal Mine Blast in Russia Kills 10

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A 4 January pipeline leak of some 4.5 tonnes of the chemical hexamethylene diamine (HMDA) at a BASF nylon intermediates plant near Bellingham, Teesside UK, was termed a “major incident,” causing injuries to 37 workers, including one worker still in serious condition at a North-East UK hospital. 
 
Two other workers had been hospitalised up until late last week. One of the two underwent plastic surgery for burns to the face. Hexamethylene diamine is a component in the manufacture of synthetic material nylons, and is a corrosive substance which causes chemical burns when contact with the skin and eyes is made. It also causes damage if breathed into the lungs. 
 
The incident injured both BASF staff and contract workers employed at the chemical plant. 
<img height="90" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/UKGMB.gif" width="90"/>
ICEM UK affiliate GMB, which represents some workers at the plant, said it will involve itself fully in investigations now underway by the UK’s Health and Safety Executive and the Environmental Agency. “When there is an accident of this nature, we always have questions about safety and why it happened,” GMB Regional Secretary Tom Brennan told a local newspaper, the Northern Echo. “I can assure you, there will be questions raised over safety procedures, equipment, and machinery. There will be a complete review.” 
 
Twenty of the workers were decontaminated at the worksite, but 17 others were rushed to hospitals. 
<img height="99" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMchemical.jpg" width="100"/>
BASF, the world’s largest chemical concern, has had two other serious health and safety occurrences in recent years at this operational site. The German company’s previous site, in Wilton, a town close to Bellingham, was struck by a massive fire in 1995. And four years later, a worker who inhaled cyanide fumes died. BASF was fined ₤20,000 in 2002 for that workplace death. 
 
BASF bought the nylon intermediate plant on Seal Sands Road in Bellingham in 1985.

Chemical Leak at BASF in UK Injures 37, One Seriously

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The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in South Africa gave Impala Platinum a seven-day ultimatum to respond to demands to improve health care services at the Impala Mine Hospital near Rustenberg, North West State. 
 
The ultimatum was given when miners staged a 23 January march on the hospital. NUM is protesting unfair and inferior treatment of union members at the facility. The union also accuses mine management, doctors, and hospital administrators of denying antiretroviral (ARV) drugs for treatment of HIV-AIDS. 
<img height="103" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/SouthafricaNUM.gif" width="100" alt=""/>
“We … condemn the collusion by both the management of Impala Mine and Impala Hospital that seeks to marginalize those not falling with a particular medical aid,” NUM said in a statement last week. 
 
The collusion includes charges that managers and medical facilitators make gravely ill staff continue working underground, failing which, they are terminated with insufficient severance money. 
 
The NUM’s demands include dismissal of doctors who are denying ARV treatments. The union also cites a host of incidents in which inferior health care was given. NUM said that if the demands were not addressed by 30 January, rolling industrial action would begin. 
 
Impala Platinum employs some 26,000 workers in South Africa. 
<img height="115" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/SouthAfrica.png" width="250" alt=""/>
At another platinum mine in the country, NUM union members began a strike on 26 January. Over 2,000 miners downed tools at Modikwa Platinum in Limpopo, Northern State, demanding an end to racism. 
 
The NUM branch there states that both pay and working conditions for white workers is better than that of black workers. The branch union also charges that recruitment and hiring procedures are not evenly applied. 
 
The strike began at 06h00 last Friday, and branch leaders were expecting to meet with Modikwa’s management later that day.

NUM Members in South Africa March Against Impala Platinum’s Hospital Care

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German ICEM affiliate IGBCE has called recent statements by Economic Affairs Minister Michael Glos “irresponsible,” referring to the federal minister’s remarks that the stock market listing of German coal and industrial company RAG as a publicly-traded company must be tied with the removal of coal subsidies. 
 
IGBCE President Hubertus Schmoldt challenged the comments on the eve of a summit on Germany’s hard-coal industry, which began yesterday in Berlin. “The economic minister endangers the coal discussions and creates an unnecessary uncertainty for 100,000 people,” said Schmoldt. RAG employs some 100,000 German workers in coal mines, power stations, chemical enterprises, and in real estate. 
<img height="83" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/GermanyIGBCE.gif" width="66"/>
Glos has sided with provincial authorities in the provinces of North Rhine-Westphalia and in Saarland, who have called for the end of German subsidies to the coal industry. He has proposed that the capital raised from RAG’s listing could be used as a replacement for coal subsidies. 
 
Schmoldt termed the plan “adventurism,” and called on the federal government to take more responsibility to assure a future for the 100,000 workers. “This is no way to run politics,” said Schmoldt, adding that the workers of RAG expect to be treated fairly inside a publicly-traded company. He said the listing of RAG is an opportunity for the German federal government to create long-term employment. 
 
RAG is expected to be floated on the Berlin stock market in the second quarter of this year.

IGBCE Blasts Plan to Link RAG’s Public Listing with Removal of Coal Subsidies

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