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<img height="40" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100"/>
A study by the Belgian ethical research organisation, Ethibel, of nine North American chemical companies found that DuPont, Dow Chemical, and Monsanto fell far short of a threshold for final analysis because, among other reasons, of the companies labour practices. Ethibel researched various environmental and sustainability criteria in making the study, including the genetic manufacture of agriculture seeds. 
 
DuPont received contrasting commentary on its environmental and sustainable practices. On the one hand, the company received high marks for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and for producing energy-efficient, next-generation products and technology. But DuPont also scored highest among 2006 air polluters, according to the US-based Political Economy Research Institute’s (PERI) Toxis 100 list. 
The study also showed DuPont as having a “major involvement in hazardous chemicals, as well as minor involvement in animal testing and armament.” The study also cited DuPont’s “stout anti-union reputation.” 
<img height="94" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMsustdev.JPG" width="100"/>
Dow Chemical, Ethibel claims in its research, “is involved in several disputable practices, union-busting, suing critics, and various environmental air and water pollution cases. In 2006, Dow ranked 11th on PERI’s Toxis 100 air pollution list. Monsanto ranked 69. 
 
The labour and environmental shortcomings meant the three companies fell short of eligibility for Ethibel’s Excellence Register, or Ethibel’s Pioneer Register. 
 
The companies examined by Ethibel, besides DuPont, Dow, and Monsanto, included Air Products and Chemicals, Praxair, Rohm and Haas, PPG Industries, Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan, and Ecolab. Only Air Products and Chemicals, Praxair, Rohm and Haas, and Potash Corporation were found to be eligible for the Ethibel Excellence Register.

DuPont, Dow, Monsanto Fare Poorly in Study of North American Chemical Producers

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The first ever strike by workers in a Turkish free-trade zone continues unabated. Since late September 2006, some 300 workers of German-headquartered Fresenius Medical Care have been on strike in Turkey’s Antalya Free Trade Zone. The strike was called by ICEM affiliate Petrol-Iş, Turkey’s oil, chemical and rubber workers’ union, some 18 months after the union successfully organised the workers.
<img height="428" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0702TurkChempix2.jpg" width="300"/>
  
For a full year, the company, which manufactures bloodline and kidney dialysis equipment, refused to recognise the union. When it finally did, bargaining began with workers’ representatives of Petrol-Iş on 19 April 2006. The company, however, continued its practice of union repression, failing to even come close to an agreement. 
 
Some 98% of the striking workers are women. 
Prior to the union organising the facility, working conditions were so bad that women were forced to apply to the company for permission to marry, and talking on the job was forbidden. It became a habit for managers to insult women workers. Following the successful organising, conditions improved somewhat, but managers continued subtle harassment and openly pressed workers to resign from the union.
<img height="225" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0702TurkeyChemPix1.jpg" width="300"/>
IGBCE and the European Mine, Chemical and Energy Workers’ Federation (EMCEF) have brought the inhumane conduct and union repression of Antalya’s Novamed GmbH to the attention of the German parent company. The two unions have also brought it before Fresenius Medical Care’s Works Council.

Petrol-Iş in Turkey Fights Back Against Anti-Union Medical Company

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In a display of political manoeuvring that will have a devastating effect on millions of contract workers, South Korea’s Grand National Party (GNP) and Uri Party combined to pass a series of bills in the final days of the most current National Assembly session. 
Included among those bills were three so-called “irregular workers’ bills,” which will give Korean employers a virtual unlimited license to use and discard contract and agency workers. 
 
The contract workers’ bills, along with hundreds of other bills, had been held up by the GNP throughout the current 100-day legislative session over opposition to South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun’s choice for president of the country’s highest court, the Constitutional Court. 
<img height="142" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/CALhorse.jpg" width="100"/>
But in mid-November, Roh withdrew the nomination of his close friend, Chon Hyo-suk, and two weeks later, on 30 November, GNP members inside the Assembly sided with Roh’s Uri Party members to push into law the liberalisation of contract workers. 
 
GNP support for the measures meant that the Uri Party’s 139 members had the necessary majority in the 297-seat Assembly for passage. But passage did not come without controversy. The Uri Party Speaker of the Assembly bypassed a key committee and took the bills straight to a plenary session for final vote. Passage occurred despite vehement opposition from South Korea’s two labour federations, and members of the Democratic Labor Party. 
 
The new irregular workers’ law will, beginning in July 2007, allow employers with 300 workers or more to utilise contract or agency workers for up to two years before they must be made permanent. The same policy becomes effective in July 2008 for companies with 100 to 299 workers. For companies with fewer than 100 workers, the two-year period takes effect in September 2008. 
<img height="115" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/SouthKorea.png" width="250"/>
“South Korea has effectively opened a revolving door for the use of contract and agency workers,” said ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs. “Employers can now use, abuse, and then discard contract workers within a two-year time period, which certainly will prove to be detrimental to sustainable and family-supporting full-time direct employment inside the country.” 
 
South Korea currently is one of the highest ranking OECD countries in terms of contract workers, with estimates of up to 50%, or 8.5 million workers, engaged in work in part-time or temporary status. 
 
In another legislative action before the National Assembly, a committee late last week passed a controversial labour reform measure which includes the three-year suspension of a pay ban for full-time union members, as well as allowing multiple unions to take hold inside a workplace, effective in December 2009. 
The reform bill, passed by the labour committee on 8 December, must now go before the judiciary committee before it is expected to be voted on in plenary session this week.

Korea’s National Assembly Passes Regressive Contract and Agency Labour Regulations

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On 30 November, the Conseil Constitutionnel in France took a decision that postpones the merger plans of two European energy giants, Gaz de France (GDF) and Suez Group, by at least another seven months. The constitutional court ruled that, since GDF is a public service, the merger cannot go forward before 1 July 2007, which is when the French gas market opens up for competition. 
 
French trade unions had already managed, through earlier legal encounters, to postpone the merger until 2007. (See: <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/2047-Unions-Win-Important-Legal-Battle-in-GDF-Suez-Merger-Saga" type="internal">/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/2047-Unions-Win-Important-Legal-Battle-in-GDF-Suez-Merger-Saga</a>) 
<img height="99" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMgas.JPG" width="100"/>
Many observers and experts, including large portions of the investment community, now believe that the GDF-Suez merger may not happen at all. One major reason behind this thinking is that this latest court decision postpones a possible merger until well after the presidential elections in France, which take place in the spring of 2007. The French Socialist Party, currently in opposition, has said it will stop the merger if it wins.
The Constitutional Council did, however, validate the article of the energy law that allows GDF to be privatised. FNME-CGT, the majority trade union at GDF, now seeks another reading of that law before the French Parliament. The union argues that the Council changed the text of the law, which means it is no longer the same text that had been adopted by Parliament. 
 
Unions in France have been resisting the privatisation of GDF through the merger with Suez from the very beginning. The State of France currently holds 80.2% of GDF. In the event of a merger with Franco-Belgian Suez Group, that ownership stake would be reduced to 34%.

GDF-Suez Merger Further Delayed by Court Ruling

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The paper sector caucus for eastern Canada of the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers (CEP) Union has resolved to hold intact the pattern sector labour agreement without granting concessions to employers. Meeting in Montreal on 4-5 December, local branch leaders of the CEP’s paper industry sector adopted a strong anti-concession stand to preserve the current agreement. 
 
“Our local union leaders are telling us to draw a line in the sand,” said CEP President Dave Coles. “And that is exactly what we intend to do. I will be in touch with the major players in the (paper) sector, including Abitibi Consolidated and Bowater, to let them know we have no intention of negotiating concessions to our existing wages and benefits.” 
<img height="102" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMpaper3.jpg" width="100" alt=""/>
The CEP will instead call on forestry companies to join it in its pronounced campaign before the federal government, calling for real and meaningful answers to Canada’s forest products crisis, a crisis that finds the government short on ideas, and lacking in economic initiatives to stem both the mass job losses and resulting rural destruction. 
 
Some 7,000 CEP members have lost their jobs over the past two years, with some 40 full or partial mill closures occurring in that period. 
 
Coles said that the wage and benefit portion of operation costs in any given mill is among the lowest of cost items faced by employers. “We have had more than one employer tell us we could work for nothing and he would still close his mill because the union contract was not the problem,” said the CEP’s president. 
<img height="92" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Canada.png" width="200" alt=""/>
CEP has engaged a national campaign inside Canada, calling on the federal government to adopt a national forest strategy. Stated goals are money for research and development, creation of alternate end uses for fibre resources, investment in initiatives to ensure sustainability of resources, and accelerated adjustment programmes for workers, their families, and the communities at-large, which have been the hardest hit by this national crisis. 
 
The CEP is currently in the middle of a five-year labour accord with pulp and paper manufacturers operating in the eastern half of Canada, covering some 25,000 paperworkers.

CEP Says ‘No’ to Weakening of Paper Sector Pact in Eastern Canada

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ICEM affiliate FUB/FS, Brazilian rubber workers union, invited delegates from several Latin American rubber workers’ unions to the recent conference of FUTINAL (Frente Único de Los Trabajadores en Las Indústrias de Neumáticos y Afines de Latinoamerica) at Praia Grande/Sao Paulo, from 5 to 7 December 2007. 
 
Roughly 100 delegates, mostly from ICEM affiliates, including from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and the USA held discussions, among other things on the need to set up more trade union networks for multinational companies. The USW explained the situation surrounding the Goodyear strike in the US and Michael Wolters, ICEM Rubber Industry Officer, reported on the last developments in the rubber sector as well as on the main strategies by the major global tire companies. 
<img height="106" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0612Futinal.jpg" width="380"/>
Unions organising Continental AG plants in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and USA, used the time to coordinate their ideas and activities for the coming International Action Day for all Continental tyre unions from the western hemisphere (13 December 2006) 
 
At the end of the conference, an action plan was adopted for future work. 
<a href="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0612pptMichaelSaoPaulo.ppt" type="internal">Click here for the ICEM's Presentation at the conference</a>

Latin American Rubber Workers Hold Conference

Finland’s national trade union centre, SAK, has given the issue of contract and agency labour top priority in the nation’s parliamentary elections, and promises it will be a primary topic in parliamentary discussions on the opening of labour markets following the 18 March elections. 
 
A SAK task force has already worked out proposals to protect workers employed under fixed-term contracts or by agencies, a phenomenon that has increased dramatically in the Nordic nation in recent years. Finland legalised agency labour over a decade ago. Legislation, however, has not kept pace and offers little in the way of protections for contract workers. 
<img height="68" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/FinlandSAK.gif" width="180"/>
One proposal by SAK would be to make agency workers regular employees of the job agencies, a remedy which would guarantee them certain salaries even during periods when their agencies are unable to find them work. SAK believes adoption of such a proposal would limit redundancies of regular workers in favour of contract workers. 
 
Another proposition by the task force is to give shop stewards the right to represent contract workers or agency labourers at their worksites. This would also include the right of shop stewards to have full information on the pay, benefits, and working terms of contract or agency labour. 
<img height="102" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Finland.png" width="100" border="1"/>
SAK’s agenda is not one to eliminate the use of contract or agency labour. “For some people, such as students, fixed-term employment and agency labour may be proper,” states SAK’s Nikolas Elomaa, the confederation’s expert on working conditions. “However, the rapid growth of agency-hired work and its expansion to industries it was not meant to be applied to is worrying.” 
 
SAK estimates that 2005 revenues of labour agencies doing business in Finland topped €650 million.

Finnish Labour Prioritises Contract Labour Issue on National Agenda

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The Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers (CEP) Union of Canada has filed a petition with the country’s National Energy Board (NEB) to block construction of TransCanada’s 2,970-kilometre Keystone Pipeline into the US. The union, together with the Alberta Provincial Federation of Labour, the Parkland Institute, and academics, filed the motion on 15 May with Canada’s federal energy regulatory body. 
 
“We’re shipping our natural resources down to the US so they can create upgraded oil products,” said CEP President Dave Coles. “Meanwhile, we’re missing out on the creation of 18,000 good Canadian jobs, and putting our gas supply at risk in the process.” 
<img height="158" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0610DaveColes.JPG" width="120"/>
CEP President Dave Coles
In its filing, CEP cites a study by an independent research firm, Informetrica, showing that 18,000 jobs could be lost by the export of unprocessed bitumen to the US. 
 
The CEP seeks bitumen from the tar sands to be made into refined petroleum products inside Canada. The Alberta oil sands are currently producing millions of barrels of diluted but unprocessed bitumen each day. 
 
The CEP charges that the NEB, and federal and provincial governments in Canada, have done too little to protect the environment and the social well-being of the public interest in the booming oil sands industry of western Canada. “Hundreds of workers in refineries and petrochemical plants have already lost their jobs because the priority of the NEB has too often been fixed on serving the needs of the US rather than Canadian consumers,” said Coles. 
 
The US$2.1 billion Keystone Pipeline is expected to be complete in 2009, and would transport 435,000 barrels-per-day of crude oil from the province of Alberta to the US state of Illinois.

Crude Oil Pipeline Will Mean Loss of Energy Jobs in Canada, CEP Warns

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The ICEM has demanded that the Turkish parent company of Trakia Glass in Bulgaria intervene to settle a two-week strike at factories in Turgovishte, in the northeast of Bulgaria. Hundreds of glass workers, members of ICEM affiliate National Federation of Chemical Workers – CL Podkrepa, began a strike on 19 May over the company’s failure to keep pace with minimum salary levels, as set by Bulgarian labour code. 
 
Trakia is wholly-owned by Turkish glass and chemicals groups, Şişecam Group. In a letter dated 1 June, ICEM called on Şişecam’s General Director Doğan Arıkan to resolve the dispute immediately in a manner that protects the company’s reputation, as well as respects Bulgaria’s status as a member of the European Union.
<img height="117" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMglass.jpg" width="120"/>
“Bulgaria’s membership in the EU assures that its citizens have certain rights and entitlements, and your company’s recent behaviour in Targovishte reflects disdain and disrespect for these rights and entitlements,” wrote ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda to Arikan. “A company headquartered in Turkey, which is now on a course of negotiations toward EU entry, must and should do better in pursuit of such entry.” 
 
Workers of Trakia are seeking increases in overtime work and night-shift work, increases which were mandated by the country’s minimum monthly salary which took effect 1 May.
<img height="115" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Bulgaria.png" width="250"/>
Because of the union’s salary demands, during the week of 7 May, Şişecam has suspended a €221.6 million investment at the glass factories, an investment that was to include a second flat glass factory, a second factory for glassware, and additions to processed glass works already operating. The Bulgarian government had made incentives available to the Turkish company, which included road construction and associated infrastructure needs. 
 
Trakia Glass Chief Executive Gulsum Azeri openly states that the investment was suspended until Bulgaria make regressive revisions to its labour legislation, social conduct which the ICEM termed “unacceptable.” 
The ICEM Regional Conference for Central Europe, meeting in Hungary on 5 and 6 June 2007, adopted a resolution in support of the striking workers in Bulgaria. To read the resolution, click <a href="/index.php?id=21&doc=2286&la=EN" type="internal">here</a>.

Turkish Glass Firm Şişecam Prompts Strike In Bulgaria

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Privatisation auctions by Nigeria’s Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE) of refineries owned by the state’s Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. (NNPC) have brought further strikes and threats of strikes. The two oil workers’ unions in the country – ICEM affiliates PENGASSAN and NUPENG – are protesting the lack of transparency in the sales. 
 
Late last week, branches of both unions at the Kaduna refinery threatened a shutdown of that facility if the BPE follows though on 51% sale of Nigeria’s second largest refinery. In mid-May, BPE threw out the lone offer for Kaduna, a US$102 million by the China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC). But shortly thereafter, the government’s privatisation arm accepted a US$160 million bid by Bluestar Oil, which is a consortium of Nigerian industrial interests.
     <img height="137" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/NigeriaPengassan.JPG" width="130"/>           <img height="145" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/NigeriaNupeng.gif" width="140"/>
Bluestar had earlier won a bid on the larger Port Harcourt refinery with a US$561 million offer. The lack of transparency in that process brought a two-day strike by the unions on 24-25 May, which halted all shipments of crude oil into the refinery. 
 
The branch unions of PENGASSAN and NUPENG at Kaduna called Bluestar’s bid “a deal … sealed under the table, to a company that has no record of refinery operations, and for a price that can only be described as give-away.” 
 
The statement by the unions added: “Based on the glaring lack of transparency in the privatisation process and insincerity on the part of BPE, the sale of (Kaduna) fails to meet the minimum standard, set by the government and cannot in any sense of the word be said to have been a transparent exercise. 
 
“First, the sole bidder (CNPC), failed to match the undisclosed reserved price of Kaduna during the first and second rounds of bidding, suddenly another company (Bluestar) that did not submit a bit, that did not conduct any due diligence on the facility, that is completely alien to the transaction, that has no track record in the refining sector, is now said to have 51% shares of Kaduna in a process the BPE describes as “closed-in” bidding.” 
 
PENGASSAN and NUPENG have vowed to resist the turnover to Bluestar until all the issues raised by the union are resolved.

Privatisation of Nigerian Oil Refineries Bring Further Unrest

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