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In Nepal, on International Human Rights Day this past Saturday, police used water canons and unnecessary force to arrest 130 activists, trade union leaders and academics who tried to conduct a protest in Kathmandu’s Ratna Park.
The protest, led by a multi-NGO coalition called Citizens’ Movement for Democracy and Peace, was to focus attention on continued restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly imposed by King Gyanendra’s suspension of the government and his imposition of authoritarian rule last February. Ratna Park in Kathmandu’s city centre is declared a restricted area by Nepalese authorities.
The head of the UN’s Human Rights office in Nepal, Ian Martin, on the occasion of the 10 December observance of the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, said that the number of torture cases by security forces in the Himalayan country has shown no sign of letting up over the past several months.

Security Forces Crush Human Rights Day Demonstration in Nepal

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The General Confederation of Labour in Greece (GSEE) has called for national strikes this week, on 14 and 15 December, over the conservative government’s planned revisions to public sector employment.
One such revision is to phase out permanent jobs for DEKO workers employed at public utilities, and replace them with employees on private-sector contracts. The strikes have been called together with ADEDY, the public sector union of civil servants.
The proposed changes, crafted by the government of Premier Costas Kamanlis, also would affect collective bargaining. This week’s strikes will get a prelude today when all public transport will stop between the hours of 11 AM and 4 PM.

Strikes in Greece This Week over Cuts to Permanent Jobs

New Zealand paper workers at a Carter Holt Harvey (CHH) converting factory in Auckland have won a 5% pay hike, but CHH workers in the woods sector are still staging industrial actions to get similar pay increases. On 23 September, 200 workers at a laminated veneer plant at Marsden Point in Whangarei began a week-long strike aimed at achieving affiliate Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union’s (EPMU) goal of 5% in 2005. The EPMU has succeeded in getting 5% hikes in 269 collective agreements since it’s Fair Share Campaign began in February 2005, 85% of all contracts open this year. The “5% in ‘05” Campaign prompted an industry association spokesman to remark, “If you get the message out there, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

New Zealand Affiliate Succeeding at 5% Wage Hikes

ICEM NZ affiliate National Distribution Union (NDU) has elected Laila Harre as national secretary. Harre, an industrial relations attorney who served as former Alliance Party leader in Parliament, had been head of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation. Last year, she won a NZ$380 million pay equity package for the country’s nurses, believed to be the largest pay package in public sector history. She has served in ministerial posts for Youth and Women’s Affairs, Statistics, and was Associate Minister of Labour. She is credited for winning paid parental leave for working mothers.

NDU in New Zealand Elects Laila Harre National Secretary

Fourteen workers were hospitalized and 30 treated for injuries following a 24 September hydrogen sulphide leak at Caltex Australia Ltd.’s refinery in Sydney. Less than a week later, on 29 September, another suspected gas leak forced evacuation of hundreds of oil workers at the country’s second largest refinery. The incidents occurred near a new, A$395 million clean fuels plant inside the Kurnell refinery, a major producer of transport fuels in Australia. Caltex, 50% owned by US-based Chevron, is behind schedule and has been burdened with unplanned maintenance and outages at the 124,000 barrel-per-day refinery.

Leak Hospitalizes 14 at Caltex Refinery in Australia

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Tensions remain high between ICEM affiliate Communications, Electrical & Plumbing Union (CEPU) of Australia and Western Power. The issue of outside contractors is central to the dispute. 
Western Power, citing potential blackouts, has petitioned the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to terminate the 600 line and maintenance workers’ right to strike. 
CEPU has implemented industrial actions over the pay, overtime and contracting dispute, but on 31 October called off a possible action because the utility had conceded a matter over discipline—whether or not workers were entitled to union representation. Days earlier, a Western Power confidential letter leaked, detailing outsourcing plans including dividing an entire grid into zones and then allocating maintenance of those zones to contractors. 
CEPU termed the strategy “privatisation by stealth.” CEPU Secretary Bill Game, quoted in a Perth newspaper, said, “Our guys are saying it’s clearly their core work that is being outsourced. Part of what we are trying to do is prepare the industry for young people coming in, so that they can have permanency and security and not having to run all over the place doing outsourcing work.”

Ongoing Dispute in Australia Between CEPU and Western Power

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Svenska Pappers, the ICEM paperworkers’ affiliated union in Sweden, could strike ABB Power Technologies at its Figeholm mill near Oskarshamn tomorrow. 
The union won a unanimous victory in a Swedish labour court last week, giving it the right to strike as well as granting sympathy actions by unions representing electrical, construction and transport workers. 
A Swedish-based multinational primarily engaged in engineering and papermaking equipment, the pressure now is on ABB to settle. The company has been stonewalling a collective agreement for 130 workers at the paperboard mill for two years, refusing to match work and social standards already in place in Sweden’s paper sector. “ABB simply has refused to give paperworkers at the ABB Figeholm mill their rights, which exist for the rest of paperworkers in Sweden,” said Sune Ekbåge, president of Svenska Pappers. 
The positive labour court ruling did prompt ABB to return to talks with the union on 12 November and again today in efforts to prevent a strike.

Swedish Labour Court Ruling Reinforces Svenska Pappers

The three-month-long dispute between 750 New Zealand miners, members of ICEM affiliate Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU), and state-run Solid Energy ended 19 July with a negotiated settlement. The union won a 5% wage increase for year 2005, plus 2% cash payment in 2006. In addition, EPMU won pay parity for miners in underground and open pit mines on both New Zealand’s North and South Islands. Workers at some mines will get an additional 3% next year, others will receive 2%, and miners at two of those coal mines will receive an extra 1.5% wage boost at the end of the two-year agreement in 2007. “This agreement sees another significant group of workers win a 5% pay rise, as well as re-establishing a national industrial agreement,” stated EPMU National Secretary Andrew Little. He added that it was “a milestone for the mining industry.” Since EPMU launched its “Five in ‘05” campaign in February, the union has negotiated 5% first-year wage settlements in 219 of 245 labour agreements negotiated across several different sectors.

EPMU Wins 5% for NZ's Solid Energy Miners

In Iraq, oil workers in Basra at the Southern Oil Co. brought the company to a 24-hour standstill on 17 July with a strike. Some 15,000 workers took part in the strike that was intended to force the company and Iraq’s Oil Ministry to take a portion of Southern Oil’s vast profits and use it to build Basra’s local economy. Backed by the General Union of Oil Employees (GUOE) and the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq, last week’s work stoppage could be a precursor to a general strike in Iraq’s south if allocations from the country’s largest crude oil producer are not used for basic infrastructure needs such as sewage systems, electrical grids and medical services. GUOE is also seeking a wage increase for workers, land allowances, and risk payments, something that Southern Oil’s managers already receive.

Oil Workers in Southern Iraq Strike

Turkish ICEM affiliate Selülöz-Is received mass support from two national trade union centers 4 March in its continued occupational of the SEKA paper mill in Izmit. The Selülöz-Is center, DISK, and TURK-IS mobilized affiliated unions to join the occupation that day. Some 700 paperworkers of Selülöz-Is plus family members have occupied the mill since 20 January in order to block privatisation of state-run company SEKA. Scores of ICEM affiliates from around the world have registered strong letters of protest to Turkish affiliates in their countries as a result of a 16 February ICEM Circular.

Support for Paper Mill Occupation in Turkey Growing

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