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Rio Tinto, the world's biggest mining corporation, is roundly condemned in a new motion tabled for debate by Britain's House of Commons. Rio Tinto is headquartered in London. 
 
The motion was brought in by Member of Parliament (MP) Michael Clapham, backed by fellow-MPs Eric Clarke, Tony Benn, Ken Purchase, Ernie Ross and Ann Clwyd. A further 23 MPs have already signed up to the text, which urges Rio Tinto shareholders to drum some ethics into the maverick multinational. 
 
The parliamentary motion in full: 
 
That this House condemns the activities of the Rio Tinto Corporation, which has been identified by the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers Unions as probably the most uncaring and ruthless company in the world judged by its appalling record of human and trade union rights violation, community destruction, environmental damage and disregard for the lives of indigenous people in many of the 40 countries where it operates; and calls on the shareholders at the annual general meeting in London on 13th May to demand a halt to its current practices and the introduction of an ethical company policy based on trade union recognition, compassion for its workers and their families and concern for the environment in which they live. 
 
[end of motion] 
 
Rio Tinto's anti-union stance in many parts of the world has made it a priority target for trade union networking by the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). The networking also extends to many other campaigning groups on human rights, notably the rights of indigenous peoples, and on environmental issues. Rio Tinto has come in for widespread criticism on all these counts. 

 
PROUD TO BE ANTI-UNION 
 
In its new annual report, to be distributed to shareholders shortly, Rio Tinto writes: "At our operations throughout the world, we respect the right of employees to choose for themselves whether or not they wish to be represented collectively." 
 
But these pictures tell a very different story. Broadcast on Australian television, they show a ceremony at the company's Hunter Valley No. 1 mine in Australia on 25 June last year. The overwhelming majority of the workers there were on strike over the company's refusal to conclude a collective agreement. So the company mined small amounts of coal by using white-collar staff plus just seven workers who had signed individual employment contracts. 
 
At the ceremony, trophies were handed out celebrating the "First Coal Mined at Hunter Valley No. 1 Mine by Non-Union Labour." 
 
Footage of this bizarre little rite is included in a new documentary on Rio Tinto, Naked Into The Jungle.

British Legislators Condemn Rio Tinto

Pomp, ceremony and a remarkably stunning symbol of Nordic generosity highlighted day one of the Third ICEM World Congress in Stavanger, Norway, 28 August. After opening Congress with three moving orchestral arrangements, the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra announced to 1,000 delegates from 121 countries that they would use proceeds from the performance to add to a benevolent fund the Symphony has initiated to rebuild musical programs and provide instruments to youth in war-torn Iraq. 
 

<img height="300" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ns-tn.jpg" width="225" alt=""/>
ICEM Gen. Sec. Fred Higgs and Norsk Skog's Rolf Negård. 
The Orchestra has raised 250,000 Norwegian Kroner for its project, and ICEM delegates displayed delight and appreciation at the surprise announcement. The Orchestra performed two arrangements by Edvard Grieg, Morning Mood and In the Hall of the Mountain King, and Hector Berlioz's March to the Scaffold. 
 
Opening Day Congress also was marked by welcoming speeches, an account of greed-driven government and business practices dominating today's world by ICEM President John Maitland, and the ICEM's Secretariat Report of programs and activities over the past four years by General Secretary Fred Higgs. 
 
One Nordic business resisting an anti-social agenda was also heard from in the opening session. Norske Skog, a pulp and paper producer is one of two Norwegian firms signatory to Global Agreements with the ICEM and affiliated national unions. Such agreements commit a company to labour, health and safety, and environmental standards wherever they have operations. 
 
Norske Skog Senior Vice President of Human Resources Rolf Negård told Congress that it is the company's philosophy to discuss and listen to union views and issues before decisions are made. "Our workplace practices require openness and an absence of hidden agendas," Negård said, adding a Norske Skog employee should expect to leave the worksite in the same health as he or she entered it, and to earn a decent, above-standard living. 
 
Olav Støylen, president of the Oslo-based, Norwegian Chemical Workers Trade Union, emphatically stated that labour unions must be vigilant to prevent multinational companies from working against worker rights. Stolen said unions must continue placing responsibility for local workplace decisions on central offices of MNCs, and Global Union Federations like the ICEM are best positioned for that work. 
 
Guy Ryder, General Secretary of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, spoke on the role of GUFs in today's complex global economic world and the specific work being done by the ICEM Secretariat on achieving Global Agreements and bring HIV/AIDS anti-retroviral drugs to developing regions of the world. 
 
"This is a movement where the borders between the national and the international are rapidly fading," Ryder said. "Today, more than ever, being a good trade unionist means being an internationalist. That does not mean substituting international links and solidarity for national action, but rather extending that solidarity and weighing in to help make the difference between success and failure." 
 
ICEM's Maitland, a leader in the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union of Australia, spoke on regressive trends toward civil society by governments and many international institutions. "At a time when civil society needs tolerance, transparency, balance and engagement, we are up against the political right that thrives on division, intolerance and fear." 
 
General Secretary Higgs gave a detailed report on ICEM work on Global Agreements, global networks of workers within certain companies bonding for communication and solidarity and the ongoing HIV/AIDS drugs work with pharmaceutical companies. He also addressed the spate of terrorism in the world today, and in condemning such actions, said the breeding ground for such desperate acts lies in poverty and inequality. "If you are going to fight terrorism, you do not fight it with bombers and not by invading countries, but you fight it by removing the mass hopelessness that exists in many parts of the world today." 
 
ICEM's theme for the Stavanger Congress is Globalisation: Local Problems, International Solutions By Solidarity. The Congress runs through Saturday, 30 August, at the Stavanger Forum.

Cultural Generosity Marks Opening of ICEM Congress

M eeting at the Third ICEM World Congress in Stavanger, Norway, the International Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM) announced formation of a Global Network of ExxonMobil Workers. Such a network will serve as a communication and information network apparatus to link unionized ExxonMobil workers across the globe. 
 
Unions representing ExxonMobil workers from 11 nations consented to forming the network on 29 August, the second day of the ICEM's quadrennial Congress. ICEM US affiliate Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy (PACE) Workers Union requested the formalized network with support from the Canadian Communications, Energy and Paperworkers (CEP) Union of Canada. 
 
PACE has been locked in dispute with the world's largest energy company at two refineries in Louisiana and Texas where workers represented by independent or stand-alone unions chose to affiliate with the US union. ICEM affiliate CEP also is in dispute with ExxonMobil. CEP successfully organized 420 offshore oil platform workers in 2001 at an enterprise called Hibernia, in which ExxonMobil is the lead company. Despite the Newfoundland Labour Board certifying CEP as bargaining representative, the US multinational has tied the matter up in Canadian courts. 
 
The 11 countries in which unions at the ICEM Congress agreed to become part of the Global Network include Belgium, Canada, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, United Kingdom and the US. 
 
Other formalized ICEM networks of workers' include Bridgestone/Firestone, a Japanese tire manufacturer; Goodyear, a US rubber producer; Rio Tinto, and Australian and UK mining concern; Novartis, a Swiss-based pharmaceutical firm; and International Paper, a US-based pulp and paper company. The ICEM represents 20 million members in 121 countries in energy, mining, chemicals and biosciences, as well as pulp, paper, rubber and other industrial processing sectors.

ICEM Forms ExxonMobil Global Network

Colombia's government must take immediate steps to protect trade unionists, the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM) insists in a letter faxed to President Andrés Pastrana. 
 
The strong protest from ICEM General Secretary Vic Thorpe follows the murder this Tuesday of the prominent Colombian union leader Jorge Ortega. 
 
Jorge Ortega was Vice-President of the national union confederation CUT, an executive board member of the electricity workers' union Sintraelecol and an adviser to the ICEM-affiliated coalminers' union Sintracarbon and to the labour centre USO. 
 
Ortega, who had received numerous death threats, had been leading an indefinite nationwide strike of state sector workers against the harsh austerity measures that have been brought in by the Colombian government and which mainly target workers and the poor. As news of his assassination spread, private sector workers joined in the strike action. 
 
The murder of Jorge Ortega is the latest in a long series of assassinations of Colombian trade unionists. The killings are often the work of right-wing death squads that have close links to the authorities. 
 
Thorpe tells President Pastrana: "The ICEM believes that this most recent assassination of a national trade union leader, following the murder of thousands of trade unionists over the past ten years, is the final confirmation of your government's complete inability to provide even the most basic guarantees of personal safety to the citizens of your country." 
 
So the ICEM demands that the Colombian government ensure: 
 
a full, public and impartial investigation of the assassination of Jorge Ortega 
the capture and trial of the intellectual and physical perpetrator(s) of this crime 
public, effective guarantees of the personal safety of all leaders and activists of the Colombian trade union movement 
a dialogue in good faith with the Colombian trade union movement in order to secure its full participation in resolving the country's pressing economic and social problems. 
Thorpe tells Pastrana that the ICEM will be consulting with its affiliates, with the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and with other fraternal organisations to ensure maximum economic, political and diplomatic pressure for the implementation of these demands, including through the UN's International Labour Organisation (ILO).

World Union Protests Over Colombian Murders

Trade unions, environment groups and indigenous people's organisations today demonstrated peacefully in Melbourne, Australia, outside the Annual General Meeting of Rio Tinto. 
 
 

<img height="269" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/mel1.jpg" width="380"/>
 
The multinational, which is the world's biggest private mining company, is facing a broad-based campaign against its environmental damage and its violations of human rights. In particular, its attacks on trade union rights in many parts of the world have made it a priority target for networking by the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). 
 
Around 200 protesters in Melbourne today held placards saying "Union Rights Are Human Rights" and peacefully lined the route taken by shareholders attending the meeting. A large truck displayed posters saying "North, South, East, West - Rio Tinto Fails The Test". 
 
All those attending the meeting were also given a copy of the major report on the company released by the ICEM - Rio Tinto - Tainted Titan - 1997 Stakeholders Report. Interestingly, a number of shareholders indicated they had already read the report via the Internet, as part of the ICEM'S Rio Tinto cybercampaign. 
 
A large number of stakeholder campaigners - around 70 - entered the meeting proper, using small shareholdings or roxy forms. The total size of the meeting was between 400 and 500 people. 
 
 

<img height="444" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/mel2.jpg" width="319"/>
Australian miners' leader John Maitland addressing protesters outside the Melbourne AGM. 
 
Rio Tinto turned down his proposal that the company should sit down with the various stakeholder groups to discuss their allegations. 

The meeting was conducted exclusively by John Uhrig, the chair of the Australian company. He allowed no other directors (all of whom were present) to answer questions. The chairman was questioned intensively by stakeholders over issues such as: 

<ul>
 <li>
 <div>relations with the Indonesian armed forces and human rights abuses around the Grasberg copper mine </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div>relations with Aboriginal people in Australia - particularly the distress and community division caused by the company's negotiations around the Century Zinc proposal </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div>the Hunter Valley coal mine dispute and the refusal of the company to recognise the recent vote (93%) against the company's proposal for a non-union enterprise agreement </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div>Rio Tinto's persistent refusal to consider a return to collective bargaining at its Hamersley Iron operations despite a recent survey result showing that 80% of workers polled wanted to return to a collective bargaining process (and away from the individual staff contracts). </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div>the refusal of the company to link performance bonuses to such issues as environmental and human rights performance </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div>the refusal of the company to justify why its new bonus scheme rewarded directors for only average performance by the company. </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div>John Uhrig repeatedly fumbled and failed to answer questions. He frequently relied on pre-prepared replies to questions which did not actually answer the questioner. He did not appear to be a chair either in command of the meeting or in possession of the relevant facts about the company. </div>
 </li>
</ul>
His conduct was often arrogant and patronising to questioners. John Ondawame, representative of the Amungme people from near the Grasberg mine in Indonesia, was especially poorly treated in this manner. Uhrig specifically singled out the "Tainted Titan" report and asked shareholders to note the company's response. He also tried to make an issue of the disclaimer attached to the stakeholders' report, but this point was refuted by Damien Roland of the ICEM who stated that the disclaimer was a standard one and similar to Rio Tinto's own disclaimer on its web site. 
 
The meeting concluded in some acrimony although the conduct of the overall meeting showed a very reasonable attempt by stakeholders to put their case. The chair concluded the meeting even though many questions remained unanswered. The final question allowed by the chair was from John Maitland. He is ICEM Vice-President and National Secretary of the ICEM-affiliated mining and allied workers' union CFMEU. His union is currently facing one of Rio Tinto's most sustained attempts to deunionise mines and end collective bargaining. 
 
In his question to the AGM, Maitland proposed to Rio Tinto that it sit down with various stakeholder groups to discuss the allegations against the company. This proposal was rejected with a flat "no" by the chairman, who then went on to say they would only discuss matters with individual groups in isolation.

Rio Tinto: Stakeholders Protest At Australian AGM

<img height="55" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="138"/>
ICEM energy workers’ affiliate in Argentina, Federation of Private Oil & Gas Workers (FASPYGP), will launch a nationwide strike beginning today in order to gain pay increases achieved in the oil-producing region of Chubut, Patagonia province. 
Since a month ago, Argentine workers there achieved significant wage increases by striking oil producers such as Repsol YPF of Spain, Pan American Energy, a company 60% held by BP, and Vintage Petroleum, a US independent now merging with Occidental Petroleum. FASPYGP warned there could be fuel shortages in Argentina within 48 hours of any nationwide strike occurring.

Argentina Oil Union Threatens Strike

<img height="55" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="138" alt=""/>
ExxonMobil revealed unfavourable employment plans at two European sites last week. 
In the UK at the Fawley oil refinery, ESSO announced it would recruit foreign labour for contract maintenance, prompting threat of strike action by trade union GMB. Esso said in a statement that consultations with the union to find flexibility in the UK working agreement failed, and that it would reach beyond British workers to find contract labour. Fawley employs 900 full-time staff and 500 contractors. 
In Belgium, the company announced cuts of 550 jobs on 13 October at the ExxonMobil Chemical Films plant in Virton. The firm said excess capacity of polypropylene films, used for food and other labeling, would cause two of 11 production lines to shut in January. Management has been in dialogue with unions since early this year on the restructurings. A union at the plant in southern Belgium did not rule out industrial action.

Job Cuts, Outsourcing for ExxonMobil in Europe

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The Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU), together with the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and a number of NGO's has called on two South Korea companies to divest their interests in Burma. 
At a 14 October press conference and rally in Seoul, the centers called on Daewoo International and Korea Gas Corp. to review human rights, workers’ rights and environmental destruction being carried out by the Burmese military government. 
FKTU also asked the South Korean government, as a member of the ILO, to review its relations with Burma, and to take preventative measures against possible violations of human and labour rights.

Korean Labour Federations Take on Burma Issue

<img height="55" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="138"/>
Not Walking the Talk: DuPont’s Untold Safety Failures is the name of a report issued by the USW in the US. The report challenged the chemical company’s behaviour-based safety programme. 
USW asserts in the document that DuPont encourages under-reporting of injuries, and the company’s own safety and environmental record belies a division inside DuPont that sells safety programmes to other chemical companies. Copies of the full report can be obtaining by visiting the union’s DuPont website, www.dupontcouncil.org.

USW Has Story to be Told on DuPont's Safety

<img height="55" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="138" alt=""/>
The US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has issued labour law violations against Asarco LLC, the Grupo Mexico copper subsidiary that 1,550 USW members struck in early July in the states of Arizona and Texas. 
The violations include illegally intimidating workers, which the NLRB says had provoked and prolonged the strike. Grupo Mexico, the world’s third largest copper mining concern that placed Asarco in US bankruptcy proceedings following the strike’s start, said 2005 would be a record-breaking year for profits. High metal prices are expected to bring the company net earnings of US$2.5 billion.

Labour Code Citations in US Mining Strike

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