English

Español

Français

Русский

Aerospace

Automotive

Base metals

Chemical, pharmaceutical and bio-science

Energy 

Glass, cement, ceramic and associated industries

ICT, electrical and electronics

Mechanical Engineering

Mining and DGOJP

Pulp and paper

Rubber

Shipbuilding and shipbreaking

Textile, garment, shoes, leather and textile services

Sectors

Action Plan 2021-2025

Action on textile and garment industry

Clean up shipbreaking

Ratify ILO C176

United for a just future - time to pay up!

Disinvest from Myanmar

Campaigns

Global Framework Agreements

Union building

White-collar workers

Health & safety

Industry 4.0

Women

Youth

LGBTQI+

Gender, equality, diversity and inclusion (GEDI)

Just Transition

Organizing with industriALL 

What we do

Affiliates

Statutes

Elected officials

Executive Committee

Geneva head office

South East Asia 

Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus

Latin America and the Caribbean 

Middle East and North Africa

South Asia

Sub-Saharan Africa

Regional offices

About us

Global worker No1 2022

Global worker No2 2022

Publications

Resources

Logos of IndustriALL Global Union

Press

<img height="40" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100"/>
Nigerian oil workers’ unions PENGASSAN and NUPENG are demanding that the country’s National Assembly investigate the sale of Eleme Petrochemicals Ltd. by the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) to Indorama of Thailand. The privatisation of an olefins refinery in Port Harcourt to a group of investors was called into question by the two unions over several fiduciary disparities. 
On another level, the two ICEM oil and gas union affiliates in Nigeria also continue to negotiate with management of Agip, a division of Italian energy company Eni, over security protections. The talks come during another peak in kidnappings and energy installation occupations along the Niger Delta, this time with Agip worksites as the main targets. 
<img height="105" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/NigeriaPengassan.JPG" width="100"/>      <img height="114" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/NigeriaNupeng.gif" width="110"/>
Agip staff has threatened a strike to shut all of the company’s production down unless it provides the same level of security that it provides to expatriate workers. Agip office workers at a regional headquarters in Port Harcourt did strike on 30 October, and barricaded the office in protest to the company’s delays in providing extra security and pay. 
 
The security issue also threatens to renew a national oil and gas strike in Nigeria. On 11 October, PENGASSAN and NUPENG, after meeting jointly in Lagos, issued a statement that said a second phase of a national strike is close to being called because of “failed implementation” of the safety requirements that were agreed to after a two-day September strike. 
 
The Nigerian oil and gas workers’ unions protested the government’s “lukewarm attitude” in convening a security forum. They also called the failure to date to set up a commission to investigate the kidnapping and murder of PENGASSAN member Nelson Ujeye “unacceptable.” 
 
The unions, furthermore, called on the government to drop any plans to privatise the Kaduna refinery and petrochemicals division. 
On the flawed BPE privatisation sale, the official communiqué to the government from PENGASSAN and NUPENG provides staunch evidence that the investors not only defaulted on loan requirements and still got possession of the refinery, but that after gaining possession Indorama sold spare parts to generate funds for the sale. 
<img height="101" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMOil.JPG" width="100"/>
Since 75% of Eleme Petrochemical had been owned by the state, PENGASSAN and NUPENG said it was seeking the investigation “with a deep sense of patriotism.” 
 
The joint statement reads: “The Director General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises, Mrs. Irene Chigbue, was quoted as informing unsuspecting Nigerians that Indorama had paid the full price of US$225 million (N$30 billion) for the Eleme Petrochemical Co. Ltd. She was also quoted as describing the sale of EPCL as a star deal of the privatisation programme. 
 
“While Mrs. Chigbue is entitled to express her opinion and make personal assessments of her ‘achievement’ in BPE, we in NUPENG and PENGASSAN have consistently maintained that the sale was another asset stripping and charade, ever done on the national assets of our great country.” 
 
“Our position is premised on the fact that the selling of the plant at US$225 million is less than the US$336 million, which the Federal Government will pay as outlandish liabilities before Indorama took possession of the plant,” the communiqué stated. 
 
Meanwhile, a rash of violent acts again hit Niger Delta oil and gas installations, proving the Nigerian government still has not found viable solutions to the safety and security of workers in the area. 
 
About 40 Agip workers, all Nigerians, are still being held by militant youths at Eni’s Tebidaba flow-station in Bayelsa State. They, and eight other Nigerian workers, who managed to escape, were kidnapped there on 6 November by some 70 heavily-armed youth militia. The eight who had escaped told of a security guard being shot.

Nigerian Unions Close to Second National Strike

<img height="40" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100"/>
Over the past two years, ICEM affiliate Botswana Mine Workers Union (BMWU) has faced obstacles that would have crushed any normal union. The National Executive of the union has witnessed two mining companies, Debswana and BCL, now an enterprise of global mining house LionOre, subvert the union’s national leadership, instigate a wildcat strike (BCL) in order to sack workers, withhold union fees from BMWU, and now start a rival, yellow union. 
 
But the BMWU hasn’t flinched, and has met every onslaught with a legal and dignified response to the overt divide-and-conquer tactics of the two companies. On 3 November, the BMWU General Council met in session and reaffirmed the union’s role as the Mineworkers’ Union of Botswana.
It also set in motion resolutions passed from the 2004 Congress, national union initiatives that had been stalled by the companies’ conduct, and followed through on a restructuring plan that gives BMWU four regions. 
 
However, interference from both Debswana, a joint diamond-mining company between DeBeers and the government of Botswana, and BCL continues. Debswana is actively pushing members into a rival union, and strong evidence exists that management is funding such a union. 
<img height="95" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMminingsector4.jpg" width="100"/>
“The Human Resources Department works around the clock to divert our members,” said BMWU General Secretary Jack Tlhagale. He said Debswana took a full year, until September 2006, to recognise the legitimate branch committee from Orapa, a major mining area of Debswana, and has withheld union fees due the BMWU. 
 
Tlhagale also said the world’s largest diamond-mining enterprise has unilaterally taken union dues money and used it for fees owed in an appellate court case the BMWU lost in April 2004. Separately, the BMWU is still seeking justice for 461 workers fired in August 2004 when they went on strike, but the case is consistently being delayed in an Industrial Court. BMWU is convinced that the court is unduly influenced by the government and DeBeers in the matter. 
BCL, a copper and nickel mining operation bought by LionOre only in 2005, has entered into an illegal collective agreement with dissidents inside the Selebi-Phikwe branch of BMWU, dissidents who have been jailed for failing to comply with multiple court orders to turn dues monies over to the national union. 
 
BCL has financially supported the jailed group of workers, and has refused to recognise a duly-elected Selebi-Phikwe branch committee that replaced the one consisting of some of the jailed workers. That recognition case is scheduled to be heard in Industrial Court on 20 November. 
 
Perhaps BCL’s biggest offence is that management led machine workers and spannermen into a non-sanctioned strike in order to sack them. Some 181 workers were fired after BCL management told them they have no union to represent them. “The general manager did this deliberately as a trap to eliminate them,” said Tlhagale. “He was fully aware that a legitimate union committee was in place, but he said they have no union because the union he recognises is in prison.” 
 
The BMWU’s National Executive Committee will continue to receive the support, guidance, and solidarity of ICEM and its affiliates as it continues it’s legal and moral course for justice and a dignity for all Botswana’s miners.

Botswana’s Miners’ Union Fights Repressive Companies, BCL LionOre and Debswana

<img height="40" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100"/>
The National Federation of Mining, Metallurgy, and Steel Workers UNION (FNTMMSP) of Peru will hold a national session of all its affiliates in Lima on 22-23 November in order to formulate plans for a national strike. 
 
The ICEM affiliate said its discontent is aimed not at mining companies, but rather at the government. A bill now before Peru’s Congress aims to change the way profit-sharing plans are regulated. The union also seeks to get the government to regulate and enforce the manner in which contract workers are employed.
<img height="69" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/PeruFlag.gif" width="100" alt=""/>
“Our problem is a political problem,” said FNTMMSP General Secretary Carlos Luis Castillo in a published Reuters report. “On November 22 and 23, we will have a national session with delegates from all the country’s unions, and we’ll define the start date for the strike. 
 
Castillo added that in an era of high demand and high prices for base metals, “we show that we aren’t passive about things that are happening either because of government inaction or because of laws before Congress.” 
 
Mining companies operating in Peru have seen huge profits coming from high global pricing of metals. FNTMMSP has consistently backed the needs of people living in mining areas by seeking more social investment and environmental safeguards for these areas. 
 
Peru’s is the world’s third largest producer of copper and zinc, and ranks fifth in global output of gold.

ICEM’s Peruvian Mining Affiliate Braces for National Strike

<img height="40" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100"/>
A total and complete shutdown of subsea contractors in the UK’s North Sea oil fields by divers and their support staff proved effective, with all 900 of them gaining a 44% wage increase over two years. 
 
The ten-day strike, led by UK’s Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) Union, an affiliate of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), and an important member of the ICEM/ITF Global Oil and Gas Industry Trade Union Alliance, ended Friday, 10 October, after divers and their support teams ratified the agreement with an 84% vote.
<img height="99" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMoil3.JPG.JPG" width="100"/>
"By any standard, this is a tremendous victory for a group of workers who have displayed grit, determination, and complete solidarity in their campaign to win a fair pay increase,” said RMT General Secretary Bob Crow. 
“The strike was total from the first moment, and it is to our members’ immense credit that not one diving support vessel was operational throughout the stoppage.” 
 
The strike shut down seven oil-service companies who operate in both UK and Norwegian waters. RMT divers working in the energy sector in Egypt and Singapore also reportedly joined the strike. 
Late in October, divers and support teams rejected by better than a two-to-one margin an employer association offer of 37% over three years. They struck on 1 November, and the rock-solid strike proved too much for the companies, who attempted to get divers to sign individual agreements. The divers do installation and maintenance on underwater wells and pipelines. 
<img height="130" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0611RMTDivers.jpg" width="200"/>
The RMT members, who have some of the most dangerous jobs in the North Sea working at depths of up to 130 feet, or 40 metres, won an immediate 25% pay increase, with a further 5% increase coming in April 2007. And then further increases occur throughout 2007 and 2008. They also won entitlement pay for eight public holidays, up from the four that they previously had. 
 
The seven employers that are party to the UK Offshore Diving Industry Agreement include: Acergy, Technip, KD Marine, Integrated Subsea Services (ISS), RBG Ltd., Subsea7, and Well-Ops.

UK’s North Sea Divers and Support Staff Win 44 Percent Salary Increases

Following coordinated discussions today between the 20-million-member ICEM, and affiliated trade unions Transport & General Workers Union (TGWU) of the UK and Fédération Force Ouvrière (FO) Matériaux, Céramique, and Thermique of France, global strategies have been developed related to the economic devastation planned by Imerys to the Cornwall region of the UK. 
 
Meeting in Brussels, home to the ICEM, representatives of the three labour organisations vowed to organise all unions globally which represent workers of the French-based building products company. They will bring attention to the company’s adverse labour relations, as well as to their practice of forced redundancies in the face of massive profits. 
<img height="69" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/UKTGWU.gif" width="125"/>        <img height="67" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/FranceFO.jpg" width="112"/>
Imerys is targeting some 610 jobs to be made redundant late next year in Cornwall, Devon, Lee Moor and St Austell in the South West of England, cuts that will effectively end generations of family-sustaining industrial jobs in the region. TGWU delegates at the meeting noted that Imerys not only failed to offer economic alternatives to the lost jobs, but also offers little in the way of redundancy packages. 
 
French trade union leaders, at recent European Works Council (EWC) meetings, voiced deep opposition to the UK job cuts, as well as to company redundancies made earlier this year at plants in Lamotte-Beuvron, France, and at Lixhe, near Visè in Belgium. Today, they expressed their commitment for the global strategies against Imerys. 
 
FO’s Dominique Guelfucci, Federal Secretary for the Materials and Ceramics section, and FO’s Serge Gonzales, secretary of Imerys’ EWC, are ready to make a visit to the Cornwall area to address union members there. 
 
“We will assist the Imerys workers of the UK to assure that what they are fighting for becomes a reality,” stated Guelfucci. Added Gonzales, “We are prepared to illuminate the anti-social attitudes of Imerys. We see clearly that the company’s agenda is not with workers and that solidarity is urgently needed.” 
 
One immediate strategy resolved at today’s meeting is to form a global network of trade unions representing Imerys’ workers worldwide. 
 
Said ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs, “We sincerely hope that Imerys absorbs the ever-increasing expressions of solidarity that will now take hold and moves to negotiate an equitable resolution for the workers and the communities in which they live.” 
 
Higgs said it is also paramount that Imerys stops its increasing use of contract workers in the Cornwall region in order that permanent jobs are retained. 
 
Higgs added that the mining operations of Imerys and its predecessor, English China Clay, have literally left deep scars on the landscape. “If they hope to capitalise on the sale of land for other, non-industrial purposes, it is perfectly logical that Imerys makes commitments to the workers, who otherwise might be made redundant for jobs, on land reclamation projects.” 
 
“We welcome the initiatives from the meeting today,” stated Jennie Formby, TGWU National Secretary. “Imerys has failed to negotiate meaningfully with the unions on redundancies. It also has been extremely callous in its regard for the livelihoods of workers, as well as to the communities of the South West as a whole.” 
 
Delegates at the meeting also noted Imerys’ anti-worker attitudes at a USA plant in the state of Alabama as a reason why a global network of unionised workers is necessary. 
 
The ICEM is a Global Union Federation, representing 379 trade unions in 123 countries.

ICEM, UK, French Unions Draw Up Strategies Against Imerys

<img height="40" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100"/>
On 19 September, exactly one week before the trade union Day of Action for human and social rights in Colombia, a miner and community leader in the northern Colombian province of Bolívar was assassinated by members of the Neuva Granada Battalion of the Fifth Brigade of Colombia’s army. Alejandro Uribe, a father of two who was president of a local town council in the southern Bolívar province, had spoken out against the army’s aggressive intimidation and abuse of citizens. 
 
Local people, many miners included, fear they will be forced off the land by a new gold mining venture, and have become more and more vocal in recent months.
The mining venture, announced in June to explore and drill for mineral opportunities in Bolívar and Antioquia provinces, was created when South African-based AngloGold Ashanti and Canadian-based Bema Gold Corp. formed an enterprise called Newco. AngloGold is providing at least eight exploration properties in a 120,000 square kilometre area for initial test drilling for Newco, which is expected to be a publicly-traded company within two years. 
<img height="95" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMminingsector4.jpg" width="100"/>
The assassination of Uribe was the culmination of months of attacks, threats, blockades, and other killings by the army on some 1,300 miners and their families, said the Catholic Diocese of Magangue. 
According to Swedish-based New Colombia News Agency (ANNCOL), which tracks Colombian human rights abuses, residents of some 16 rural communities marched in a candle-light vigil in the town of Santa Rosa del Sur on 24 September, demanding that the government investigate the murder of Uribe and others, as well as demanding a response from civilian authorities over the military’s abuses. They were joined by Christian Peacemaker Teams and international human rights activists. 
 
ANNCOL reported that a meeting with national government authorities had been scheduled for 26 September in Santa Rosa. “The main condition the communities placed on the meeting was that it should take place with civil authorities and without the presence of military,” stated the ANNCOL report. 
 
But both Colombian officials and military officers insisted that the military be present. “In response, the people once again marched through the streets demanding justice. They then occupied the central plaza, and the government officials left without a dialogue,” wrote ANNCOL.

Colombian Army Murders Outspoken Mining Region Leader

An International Day of Mobilisation was held on 26 September to bring attention to a commitment not yet fulfilled in Colombia. That commitment, signed 1 June 2006 by Colombian trade union federations, the government of President Alvaro Uribe, and multinational companies operating in Colombia at the ILO in Geneva, promised freedom of association, full human rights, and meaningful social dialogue in union-management relationships in Colombia. 
 
The agreement also pledged to establish an ILO permanent representative in the South American country. Such an office is not only to be charged with ensuring that the ILO’s concept of decent work is carried out, but would also protect the basic rights of workers and their trade union representatives. According to the Colombian Commission of Jurists, over a two-year period, from 2003 to the end of 2005, 271 labour activists were killed in Colombia. 
<img height="66" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Colombiaflag.gif" width="100"/>
The Day of Action on September 26 was called for by three national trade union federations in Colombia, CUT, CGT, and CTC, as well as by the ICFTU because commitments from the June signing in Geneva have not materialized. 
 
Some one million members of Colombian trade unions and other groups marched peacefully through the streets of Bogotá, Cali, Medellin, and Cucuta on that day. Leaders and members of ICEM-affiliated unions Sintraelecol, Sintracarbon, Sintravidricol, Sintraquim, Sintracarcol, Fenaltec, and the Chemical, Pharmaceutical & Petrochemical Union of Colombia marched shoulder to shoulder with Colombian Members of Parliament seeking to implement the Geneva initiative, as well for an end to Uribe’s privatisation policies. 
Demonstrators also expressed opposition to current negotiations between the Uribe government and the US over a free trade agreement. 
 
On 19 September in Brussels, global trade union leaders, including ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs, met with Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos Calderón seeking speedy advances on the Geneva resolve. 
 
The ICEM is two years into its own programme regarding meaningful social dialogue in Colombia between affiliated trade unions and some seven multinational companies. “We see the process of social dialogue as a major step to achieving peace and justice in this war-torn country,” said the ICEM’s Higgs.

Colombia ‘Day of Action’ on 26 September Seeks Fulfilment of Social Promises

<img height="40" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100"/>
The dispute in Argentina between ICEM affiliate Sindicato Único de Trabajadores del Neumático Argentino (SUTNA) and the Fábrica Neumáticos de Avanzada (NA), a competition tyre making company in Córdoba, is going from bad to worse. Over the last few weeks, trade unionists have been harassed and intimidated, including many of the dismissed workers at the tyre plant, their family members, SUTNA union representatives, and the union’s attorney. 
 
The house of Ignacio Ferrer, a lawyer working for SUTNA, was turned upside down during a break-in by unknown aggressors. A clear sign that the burglary was only meant to intimidate, is the fact that nothing was taken. 
 
Further aggravation came when the provincial police refused to take action, arguing that they could do nothing since nothing was taken. Failure by the police to do something seems to be endemic in Córdoba as none of the other intimidation complaints have been investigated by the police either. 
<img height="112" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ArgentinaSUTNA2.jpg" width="129"/>
Union representatives, as well as union members, have been threatened on at least five different occasions, mainly through bullying by unknown individuals. Similar things happened to their family members. 
 
The Union’s Assistant secretary, Rubén Silva, for example, was approached by the company’s security people while he was talking to the strikers in front of the plant. He was told by a company security guard that the man “would break all his bones so that he could never **** again.” Another tactic used against the same man is to drive around in cars without license plates in the area where he lives, asking neighbours where his house is. 
 
NA refuses to participate in mandatory reconciliation efforts, thereby turning down any possibility for a dialogue. As part of that, the company’s security personnel refused entry to an officer from the Department of Justice, accompanied by, among other people, the union’s lawyer and two police officers. They were refused entry in spite of the fact that they had a warrant issued by a court. The group later managed to get in by jumping a gate. 
 
The conflict started in early August when NA, in a clear violation of trade union rights, started to dismiss staff members for becoming SUTNA members. Things escalated when the company became openly hostile to SUTNA’s industrial actions, which occurred in support of the 25 sacked SUTNA members. The dispute follows the signing, for the first time in 31 years, of a national agreement for the Argentinean rubber sector with the employers’ association.

SUTNA Rubber Dispute in Argentina Hardens

<img height="40" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100"/>
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero signed, on 9 May, into law a labour reform measure aimed at decreasing the abuse by employers of temporary work contracts. The new law, which becomes effective in July 2006, makes any employee who has held two or more temporary contracts totalling at least 24 months, within a 30-month period, a permanent employee with full social benefits. 
 
Companies, meanwhile, will receive incentives in the form of subsidies for transferring temporary workers to full-time status, as well as reductions in social security contributions for the same. 
Spain’s two trade union federations — CCOO and UGT — and the employers’ organisation CEOE, along with the government, have been negotiating this positive reform for the past 14 months in hopes of an overall reduction in the use of temporary workers and to reduce the work-life stress that fixed-term contract labour brings.

New Temp Workers’ Law in Spain Has Positive Aspects

<img height="40" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100"/>
In South Korea, trade union federations and legislators of the Democratic Labor Party have prevailed on the governing Uri Party not to table the controversial irregular workers’ bill in the National Assembly, at least not for now. In a series of daring political manoeuvres occurring in April, opposing forces to the pro-business legislation were joined by the major opposition party, Grand National Party, in successful efforts to sideline the proposed bills involving temporary workers. 
 
The legislation, if passed, would grant all temporary workers permanent status after two years. However, as it stands now, the bill woefully lacks the safeguards to prevent employers from discarding temporary workers through the two years. Trade unions and democratic advocates maintain that enactment of the law would mean more, not less, of Korea’s workforce would be made up of temporary workers. 
 
In early April, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions launched a five-day general strike against the Uri Party initiative.

South Korea’s Irregular Workers’ Bill Sidetracked

Archive