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<img height="55" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief1.gif" width="138"/>
ICEM affiliate Pan-Hellenic Federation of Employees in Petroleum Products—Refineries and Chemical Industry in Greece is engaged in a dispute with Chevron over the company’s restructuring measures. 
On 12-13 October, 78 clerical and technical staff of Chevron’s Lubricants Division involved in transport and storage operations struck over the company’s disregard of terms in the national Collective Agreement for petroleum products and liquid gases. 
Despite social dialogue and consultation that did not reach mutual accord, Chevron has unilaterally imposed job cuts in certain departments and has said there could be further retrenchments to meet company-set competitiveness goals. 
The ICEM has intervened in the dispute with US-based Chevron.

US-based Chevron Causing Problems for ICEM’s Greek Oil Affiliate

Requesting solidarity from the ICEM 
If you are requesting solidarity from the ICEM, take a look at this checklist so that we can give you the best help we can. 
 
Is there an international dimension?
Before contacting the ICEM your union needs to make a decision whether the problem you are facing or anticipating has an international dimension. 
 
This could be the case if: 
<ul>
 <li>
 <div>The company you are having problems with is a MNC or has clients abroad </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div>The problem you are facing involves the violation of a fundamental principle e.g. the right to organize or bargain </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div>The problem you are facing involves an issue that you think the ICEM has particular expertise in e.g. health, safety or the environment </div>
 </li>
</ul>
Give early notice
If it is anticipated that a dispute will arise send complete background information to ICEM, before the crisis begins. 
Too often requests for action are made after the conflict is so advanced that possibilities for effective international intervention are limited. In principle, the ICEM should be informed of any serious problem in any company or subsidiary and related problems with governments. Such information may be useful to other affiliates. 
 
Provide complete information on the company and the dispute
Tell us as much as you know about the company. Where possible, this should include: 
<ul>
 <li>
 <div>Full name of the company or subsidiary </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div>Name and title of senior managers in the dispute </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div>Full address, telephone, fax numbers and email addresses of these managers </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div>If the company is a subsidiary tell us anything you know about the precise relationship with the parent company. Is it a wholly-owned subsidiary, a franchise, a joint venture or does it have another relationship with the parent company? </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div>What does the company produce? </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div>Who are its major suppliers? </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div>Who are its major customers? </div>
 </li>
</ul>
Tell us everything you know about the dispute. This should include: 
<ul>
 <li>Number of employees and how many are engaged in the conflict? </li>
 <li>What is the background to the conflict? </li>
</ul>
It is of particular importance that ICEM is provided with accurate and full information. If an intervention is made and some aspect of the information is wrong or incomplete, it is likely to undermine the credibility of the trade union and the ICEM. If, for example, during a dispute, a company has found to be in violation of the law, but the union has also been found at fault, both pieces of information must be supplied and explained. 
 
Even if information is accurate, it may not be of much use if it is not well documented. Data must contain details that are convincing and make a conflict come alive to trade unionists in another country. The same good practice for trade union work at home, posing and answering all the right questions starting with who, what, where, when, why. 
 
Equally important to the information provided is the speed in which things can get done. For instance, If fax numbers or email addresses of the company or in some cases government departments can be provided action can sometimes be taken almost instantly. As some actions will be urgent, this may improve the chances for success. 
 
Indicate what do you want the ICEM and its affiliates to do? 
Solidarity actions may require a variety of tactics. What works in one situation may not work in another. It is important to have a clear idea of what you think will be effective. In general, ICEM affiliates are more likely to respond forcefully to requests for intervention when the dispute concerns basic trade union principles such as the right to organise, than if it is over a collective bargaining dispute that is not an issue of fundamental rights. 
 
Make regular reports of developments
In order to evaluate the effectiveness of solidarity actions and to keep unions that provide assistance fully informed at all stages, the ICEM must receive regular reports from the union requesting the intervention. The ICEM needs to be informed promptly to any significant changes or escalation in any dispute. The ICEM must know if and when a dispute has been resolved, and should be advised of the terms of settlement. Win or lose, solidarity partners in other countries should be thanked for their help. 
 
Appoint a coordinator 
 
It is good practice to designate a single person or contact point in your union to coordinate communications with the ICEM concerning a dispute and to make all communications as efficient and direct as possible. 

Responding to requests 
If you are responding to a call for solidarity from ICEM, look at this checklist first so that coordinated action can best be developed. 
 
Respond on a routine basis
The most frequent request for solidarity is a request for a letter, fax or email message. In many situations, the timely arrival of a sizeable number of protest or support messages can have a positive impact. 
 
Try to meet specific requests 
There may be times when your union will be the only good source for specific information on a particular company or subsidiary in your country. The ICEM may receive many requests from affiliates for information on trade union organisations within a MNC for example. Sometimes the ICEM will not have that information on file. In other cases, one affiliate may ask the ICEM to transmit a request to another affiliate in the company’s home country for intervention. 
While it is not always possible to meet such requests, the ICEM must be able to report back as to what, if any, action is being taken. Thus it is imperative that affiliates being asked respond in one manner or another. 
 
Advise the ICEM on what it can do to facilitate your responses to requests for Solidarity Actions
If you need assistance in responding to a request for solidarity action just contact the relevant ICEM industrial officer. You may need to provide more information to get an update on the dispute, or you may need assistance with language or preparing letters or publications. 
 
Send copies of messages, and information on any other action taken, to the ICEM
This helps the ICEM provide updated information on actions, and to evaluate the status of a specific action. This also includes forwarding press releases. 
This checklist is an adapted version of a checklist produced in the ICFTU publication

ICEM Solidarity Checklist

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Negotiations resume today in the bitter 10-day strike at Stora Enso’s Langerbrugge paper mill in Gent, Belgium. 
ICEM affiliate ABVV-FGTB and other unions are striking over local mill management’s callous style of labour relations. Managers have pitched ultimatums and reactive measures at the workforce of 330 in the newsprint and publications papers operation since workers requested standard wage talks last spring. Then, management agreed to negotiations but only if 24 job cuts went along. 
Workers rejected a miniscule €.12-an-hour pay hike with a 98% vote and Langerbrugge managers slammed the door on further dialogue. Even after the brewing dispute came to national level, management took an antagonistic bargaining posture and the matter went to a national conciliation. 
Unions issued a formal strike notice to Stora Enso if the conciliator’s wage offer was voted down in a vote of workers by 66.67%. The conciliator’s offer of €.17-an-hour failed by a 78.7% vote, and workers struck on 28 October. 
Last week, paper mill management escalated the dispute by petitioning courts to impose a €1,000-a-day fine on the unions for every worker turned away at plant gate pickets. To date, only 20 or so of the 330 workers have crossed picket lines, and those are employees in ancillary positions who fear their services will be contracted out.
Since the strike began, workers responded to a survey with 61.5% saying management’s ultimatums were unacceptable, and they would continue a course demanding mutual respect in social dialogue. Langerbrugge bosses, however, have continued, in the words of one union leader, “ill style of management” by threatening to call off the start of talks today if workers were to receive picket-line support and solidarity from other workers. 
Managers have portrayed the dispute as “all about pay” in the trade press, but, in fact, the dispute in Gent is about an abusive and dictatorial approach to collective negotiations by Stora-Enso managers.

Harsh, Abusive Management Style Leads to Stora-Enso Strike in Belgium

<img height="40" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100"/>
A US District Court issued an injunction against maverick mining company International Coal Group (ICG), 26 January, to prevent the firm from blocking United Mine Workers’ (UMWA) union investigators from the Sago Mine in the state of West Virginia. Twelve miners were killed inside the mine on 2 January. 
UMWA does not represent Sago’s 150 miners, but many workers there requested that UMWA take part in the follow-up probe, an action both lawful and binding under the US Mine Safety & Health Act (MSHA). ICG prevented UMWA investigators from entering the jobsite, using security guards to deny access. ICG quickly appealed the injunction obtained by the agency that oversees MSHA, but an appellate court in Richmond, Virginia, denied reviewing it. 
The US company now must allow UMWA to investigate IGC and Sago’s horrid and deadly safety practices. With energy demand and high coal prices driving the reopening of closed coal shafts in the US East, other coal mine fatalities have occurred in West Virginia in the wake of Sago. 
On 19 January, a conveyer belt fire at Aracoma Coal’s Alma Mine in Melville caught fire, trapping and killing two. On 31 January, two separate deaths occurred; one when a wall collapsed, killing a miner at Long Branch Energy’s Wharton mine, the other when an operator on a bulldozer at Massey Energy’s Black Castle surface mine struck a gas pipeline. The total of 16 mine deaths in West Virginia since 2 January exceeds the entire 2005 death count, which was three. 
In contrast, and also on 31 January, some 1,000 miles west, 90 miners and UMWA members at Freemen United Coal Co., near Gilead, Illinois, were evacuated after high levels of carbon monoxide were detected by UMWA-operated equipment inside the mine. UMWA teams safely brought the trapped miners to the surface, and the mine will remain closed pending an investigation.

UMWA Mine Safety Teams Succeed in US

<img height="40" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief1.gif" width="100"/>
A strike by ICEM affiliate International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) ended at US building products producer National Gypsum in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. Some 90 IUOE members at the Milford quarry and Burnside loading facility ratified a four-year labour agreement in late January calling for wage and benefit increases. 
The strike started 10 August 2005. It ended after the company had been cited by the provincial government for six safety infractions in January and after IUOE Local 721 announced a boycott of National Gypsum products, a boycott that had backing from the Nova Scotia Federation of Labour and Nova Scotia’s building trades. In a statement, the company said it would work to repair broken relationships and to build a foundation of trust.

National Gypsum Strike in Canada Ends

<img height="40" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100" alt=""/>
An ICEM News release on 3 February mentions current Belgian political debate on the legal status of a trade union. It said Swedish-Finnish paper company Stora Enso has now joined that debate on the side of right-wing political parties to re-classify unions across Belgium. 
Something basic and fundamental is at play at Stora Enso’s Langerbrugge mill in Gent. The company is systematically attempting to carve further job rights from workers at Gent’s Langerbrugge mill. 
Intimidations, bullying and divide-to-conquer tactics are the means. The company’s intention is for the 300 members at Langerbrugge to concede 70 jobs to subcontractors, to agree on flexibility at the expense of working conditions, and to give up their long-term right to 1 January as a shutdown day. 
That is reason enough to march in Gent tomorrow night (7 February, 19h00) to condemn Stora Enso’s intentions. The ICEM News release can be found at <a href="/?id=77&doc=1638" type="internal">/?id=77&doc=1638</a>.

Stora Enso Readies Itself for More Cuts at Belgian Paper Mill

Nepalese King Gyanendra’s statement over the weekend that he has invited political parties for dialogue on democracy will be a hollow promise unless the monarchy frees all trade union and political prisoners. The king yesterday, 19 February, used a new twist to deflect mounting international pressure and growing pro-democracy protests at home, with an offer to the seven-party political coalition “to come forth to fully activate, at the earliest, the stalled democratic process.”
<img height="201" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0602Nepalfree.jpg" width="380"/>
The king’s first public statement in his now year-long absolute rule that suspended basic rights, came in a state-run newspaper just before 3,000 demonstrators took to the streets in another set of peaceful protests challenging the monarchy. 
Gyanendra’s rhetoric is meaningless, the ICEM believes, until all trade union leaders of GEFONT and NTUC are released, as well as other human rights activists who have been imprisoned without cause. Several trade unionists were released last week after weeks of detention, but some leaders of the two labour federations—plus several leaders of education unions—remain incarcerated.
<img height="151" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/NepalGefont1.jpg" width="160"/>
GEFONT, NTUC and another labour federation, DECONT, on 13 February, gave the government a 35-day deadline to act on its and the ILO Actrav’s Charter of Demands for both formal and informal work. The Charter calls on the government to strengthen the labour code on wage increments, adopt an integrated social security fund, formalise basic labour rights commitments, and implement non-discrimination practices, particularly regarding women workers.

King’s Rhetoric in Nepal on Democracy Belies Trade Union Arrests

<img height="40" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100"/>
Contract workers in Azerbaijan’s oil and gas construction industry continue to unionise, following the successful lead by Azeri workers, employed by US contractor McDermott International, late in November 2005.
Some 2,000 workers at McDermott, BP and state-run SOCAR’s largest contractor, engaged in strike actions to win 30% wage gains, medical care, and union recognition with ICEM affiliate Oil and Gas Industry Workers’ Trade Union of Azerbaijan (OGWU). Union Chairman Jahangir Aliyev now estimates 5,000 to 7,000 contract workers are seeking unionisation, as Azeri workers employed by western oil service companies seek equivalent pay to that of foreign nationals employed on Caspian energy projects.
On 19 December 2005, 1,600 workers employed at the offshore BosShelf site, a French-Azeri construction project partially owned by Bouygues, officially organised with OGWU following a strike.
Responding to the rush of workers to organise, BP Azerbaijan President David Woodward conceded, “This is their right and no one can stop them from doing this. If they wish, we see the right for employees to take collective action.”
In a related Caspian labour development, OGWU and another ICEM affiliate, ROGWU, Russia’s powerful oil and gas workers’ union, agreed at ROGWU’s Congress in Moscow 21-22 December 2005 to begin joint union-building activities in 2006 intended to lead to a protocol agreement between the two unions.

Contract Workers Organising in Caspian Oil/Gas Fields

Whereas, nine trade unions from eight countries met in Brussels on March 22 and 23 to discuss common problems faced by workers at DuPont Company, a multinational chemical company headquatered in the U.S.
Whereas, this meeting was organized in cooperation with the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions, representing 20 million workers throughout the world; 
 
Whereas, the following unions were present at the meeting: 
<ul>
 <li>Gewerkschaft der Chemiearbeiter Österreichs (Austria) </li>
 <li>La Centrale Générale/FGTB (Belgium) </li>
 <li>LBC-NVK/CSC (Belgium) </li>
 <li>CNQ-CUT (Brazil) </li>
 <li>3F (Denmark) </li>
 <li>FCE-CFDT (France) </li>
 <li>IG BCE (Germany) </li>
 <li>FNV Bondgenoten (Netherlands) </li>
 <li>USW (USA) </li>
</ul>
Whereas, there was a free and open discussion among the trade unions present and a full exchange of opinions and ideas; 
 
Whereas, the key issues addressed by the trade unionists included 
<ul>
 <li>the out-sourcing of DuPont’s human resource functions; </li>
 <li>growing concern about worker and community exposure to PFOA (C8) from Teflon-related chemicals; </li>
 <li>lack of full company reporting of accidents; </li>
 <li>company support of union-busting in the United States, and </li>
 <li>the lack of a business strategy or an adequate response for dealing with redundancies in Europe at DuPont’s performance coating business; </li>
</ul>
Therefore be it resolved that all of the trade unions present at the meeting hereby form the Global Union Network of DuPont Workers to share information and develop strategies to protect DuPont workers and the communities where the live; 
 
Be it further resolved that the Global Union Network of DuPont Workers invites other trade unions to become members; 
 
Be it further resolved that the Global Union Network of DuPont Workers will exist to exchange information and to coordinate trade union strategy to address ongoing problems at DuPont.

Resolution from the ICEM Global Union Network of DuPont workers

Trade unionists from 8 countries, gathering today in Brussels, Belgium, established the ICEM Global Union Network of DuPont workers. 
 
Linking workers employed by DuPont anywhere in the world, this new global trade union network aims to establish efficient co-operation and practical international solidarity between the different trade unions that represent DuPont’s workforce in their respective countries. Its main ambitions are the exchange of information and company strategies, useful for collective bargaining, as well as the planning of joint action where necessary. 
The unions at this inaugural meeting represent workers from Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States. 
<img height="233" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0603DuPont.JPG" width="350"/>
Set up under the auspices of the ICEM, the network will be administered by the United Steel Workers (USW), ICEM's largest affiliate in North America. The network is the ICEM’s ninth global company network. ICEM Global Company Networks link, on a worldwide basis, workers and their representatives working for the same multinational company. 
<img height="82" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/USAUSW.jpg" width="150"/>
DuPont, a key player in the global chemistry industry, employs around 60.000 people world-wide, the majority of which are in the United States. The company is based in Wilmington, state of Delaware, and operates in over 70 countries. DuPont has a long standing history of industrial problems in the United States, where it continues to bitterly fight against trade union representation. 
 
The first meeting of the Global Union Network of DuPont workers adopted a resolution to guide its work. You can find the resolution here: <a href="/index.php?id=4&la=EN&doc=1722" type="internal">/index.php?id=4&la=EN&doc=1722</a>.  
 
In the resolution, a number of key problems are mentioned. These include: 
<ul>
 <li>the out-sourcing of DuPont’s human resource functions </li>
 <li>the growing concern about worker and community exposure to PFOA (C8) from Teflon-related chemicals </li>
 <li>the lack of full company reporting of accidents </li>
 <li>company support of union-busting in the United States </li>
 <li>the lack of a business strategy in Europe regarding DuPont’s performance coating business </li>
</ul>
“After this successful start of the network, we trust that we will be able to reach the vast majority of all DuPont’s workers world-wide through the participation from trade unions in all parts of the world”, said Michael Wolters, ICEM Chemical and Rubber Industry Officer. “It is only by working together globally that we can match the worldwide operations of multinational companies.”

Global DuPont Trade Union Network Launched

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