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According to information received by the ICEM, last week saw the arrest of Javanmir Poradi, the head of the Electrical and Metal Workers’ Trade Association, in the western city of Kermanshah in Iran. He was reportedly released again yesterday evening. Given the regular and persistent ill-treatment of labour activists in Iran, Brother Moradi’s disappearance was very concerning for his family. No information was available on Monday as to his treatment in detention. 
 
Iranian security forces allegedly told brother Poradi, on 12 September, to report to their offices the next day. Whereas his family was initially told on Wednesday that he was taken to the public prosecutor’s house, this office later stated it did not have information as to his whereabouts. He is said to have been arrested for “organising a May Day rally” this year. 
 
Four other labour activists, from the Shaho and Kurdistan textile factories in the city of Sanandaj, were also arrested earlier last week, in relation to a planned protest against a number of dismissals. The four were badly treated while in detention, before being released.

One More Arrest and Ill-treatment of a Labour Activist in Iran

ICEM WOMEN’S BULLETIN N° 15

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. 
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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

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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. 
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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

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On 3 May, Nigerian Labour & Productivity Minister Dr Muhammed Hassan Lawal prevailed upon ICEM affiliate PENGASSAN and ExxonMobil’s Mobil Oil Nigeria Plc. to come to terms over a company breach on a procedural agreement with the white-collar union. Specifically, ExxonMobil agreed to pay 50% of unpaid housing allowances owed to some 300 workers by the end of May. 
 
Several other matters were discussed, and the three parties agreed in a joint statement that industrial action would be suspended, with lingering issues taken up in further dialogue between the union and Mobil Oil management. 
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However, PENGASSAN’s National Executive Council has now issued an ultimatum to the company over its reluctance to curb the use of contract labour. The union’s Executive said that if this all-important matter is not immediately resolved in compliance with the laws and policies currently in place on expatriate quotas and local content, industrial action is imminent. PENGASSAN cites several companies within the country’s oil and gas industry for violations, but specifically targets Mobil Oil for industrial actions unless the grievances are rectified. 
 
PENGASSAN noted “with grave concern the disturbing trend in the recruitment, releases and compensation of well skilled and qualified Nigerians that are being employed as contract workers with no hope of security of employment.” 
 
On 2 May, local community members protested at a Mobil Oil export terminal at Qua Iboe over the company’s failure to pay compensation and adequately clean up an oil spill. Some 70 workers — many of them PENGASSAN members — had been detained by the protestors, but were later released. Production at the 420,000 barrel-per-day terminal was interrupted, but was later restored through efforts of members of PENGASSAN and NUPENG, Nigeria’s blue-collar oil workers’ union.

PENGASSAN in New Dispute with ExxonMobil in Nigeria

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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

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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

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Two strikes in the Colombian coal mining sector broke out recently, giving 3,000 miners of unaffiliated Sintramienergética a loud voice to express disapproval over working conditions in this resource-rich sector of the South American country. 
A strike by 1,000 miners broke out at Swiss-owned Glencore International’s Carbones La Jagua operations in Jagua de Ibirico, Cesar state, on 17 May, and one numbering 2,000 miners started on 22 May at US-based Drummond Coal’s LaLoma mines in Cesar, and spread to the company’s transport and export terminal operations in Cienaga and Santa Marta. 
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The Drummond strike centers on subcontractors. The privately-held US company refuses to extend collective bargaining rights to thousands of contract workers, mostly at the transport and terminal sites. Sintramienergética is insisting for these jobs to be made permanent, with full social rights as well as the necessary health care benefits both on and off the job. 
 
Wages are also a major issue with both companies, since coal’s high prices and the rich value of Colombian’s high-grade resource in America and Europe has left miners short-changed. Miners’ demands also include significant investment, particularly by Glencore, on environmental projects, and for both companies to begin providing medical assistance to communities that have been adversely affected by the mining enterprises. 
 
Columbia’s national labour center, Central Unitaria de Trabajores (CUT), has warned that company security units have made the strike scenes extremely volatile, and has called for constructive dialogue from both the national government and the two companies. CUT, saying the two strikes are lawful, said the companies refused to find solutions to the union’s demands over the past two months, and that the demands have the overwhelming support of the miners. 
Glencore recently sold its 33% share in another rich coal mining and export operation in eastern Colombia, Carbones del Cerrejón, to Xstrata, a global mining house in which Glencore owns a 15% stake.

Colombia’s Coal Industry Hit with Two Strikes

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In what the Chinese work-safety director is calling the worst coal mine disaster of 2006, 56 miners were trapped and killed by flooding at the Xinjing Coal Mine, Shanxi Province. Miners told managers to cease mining due to rising water levels six days before the 18 May mass flooding, but were ordered to continue mining. 
 
To make matters worse, local safety officials had attempted to cover up the extent of the disaster when it happened by stating only five miners were trapped. After two days, a State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS) investigation discovered 56 were trapped. Nine managers are under arrest, while the owner of the licensed mine is reported to have fled. In addition, six others were arrested in connection to the disaster, including two bankers as well as the person charged with work safety, who stands accused of leading the cover-up. 
Also on 18 May, near Beijing, a coal mine collapsed in Fangshan District, killing five miners. The mine is owned by Jingmei Coal, part of the Beijing Coal Group. These two mid-May tragedies follow a fierce explosion that occurred at the Wayaobao Coal Mine in Shaanxi Province on 29 April. It killed 32. 
 
Fatalities occurred in other Chinese mining sectors as well over the past month. On 13 May, at last three were confirmed dead after the Dalongshan Iron Mine collapsed in Anhui Province. On April 30, in an effort to heighten production, the Zhen’an County Gold Mining Co., raised water levels on a dam, which then burst and killed 17 villagers. That incident happened in Shaanxi Province.

Coal, Iron, Gold Disasters Kill Scores in China’s Mines

ICEM WOMEN’S BULLETIN N° 16

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