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<img height="35" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Aids ribbon.jpg" width="25"/>
ICEM Affiliates: HIV/AIDS Activities Pick up 
 
ICEM affiliates in Botswana organised a series of meetings on HIV/AIDS policy, peer education, and voluntary counselling and testing. The National AIDS Coordinating Agency (NACA) has shown an interest in the unions’ programme. 
 
In Tanzania, ICEM affiliates TUICO and TAMICO organised training workshops for peer educators at the Mbeya Labour College and in Dar-es-Salaam. A separate seminar was held for members from the Kiwira Coal Mine. 
 
Workplace union representatives were the target group of a training seminar in Côte d’Ivoire which dealt with behaviour change communication, the rights of HIV-positive workers, and the essential elements of workplace policies. 
 
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, two training workshops for peer educators were held in Kinshasa and Moanda, which is a town on the border with Angola where prevalence is high. 
 
All these activities were supported with funds for national activities from the LO/TCO-FNV Mondiaal HIV/AIDS project.
<img height="35" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Aids ribbon.jpg" width="25"/>
ICEM Regional Meetings in Africa 
 
At the Regional Women’s Conference in Johannesburg, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) of South Africa presented a resolution on the gender dynamics of HIV/AIDS. Women need to be empowered to take control of sexual behaviour, especially condom use. HIV/AIDS and women workers has been made one of the priorities for the work of the women’s committee in the coming years. 
 
Several speakers at the Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Conference in Gaborone, Botswana, referred to the importance of behaviour change, the need for testing, and the necessity for a wider availability of anti-retroviral drugs. HIV/AIDS must be considered a disease like any other. Only then can stigma, which prevents people from knowing their status, be eliminated. 
 
The host unions in Botswana reported on a successful campaign when, on one day, 350 people were tested in Silebe Phikwe, a mining town with one of the highest prevalence rates in the country. Sadly, however, a delegate from Zimbabwe described a bleak situation where people prefer not to be tested because ARVs are not available.
<img height="35" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Aids ribbon.jpg" width="25"/>
Tanzania: Hope to AIDS Sufferers 
 
As more and more people visit Care and Treatment Centres (CTC), the number of HIV patients on anti-retroviral treatment has doubled in just over a year. 
 
The increase has been attributed to the introduction of “fellows” trained by the Benjamin Mkapa HIV/AIDS Foundation, an NGO jointly initiated by former presidents of Tanzania and of the US, Benjamin Mkapa and Bill Clinton, respectively. 
 
These so-called fellows address the gaps in human resources for the public health sector, which is key in scaling up HIV/AIDS care and treatment. 
 
Setting a good example, the current President of Tanzania, Jakaya Kikwete, publicly took an HIV/AIDS test. 
 
(Source: East African, Nairobi, 24 July)
<img height="35" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Aids ribbon.jpg" width="25"/>
India: 2.5 Million People Living with HIV, According to New Estimates 
 
The new 2006 estimates, released on 6 July by the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO), supported by UNAIDS and WHO, indicate that national adult HIV prevalence in India is approximately 0.36%, which corresponds to an estimated 2 million to 3.1 million people living with HIV in the country. These estimates are more accurate than those of previous years, as they are based on an expanded surveillance system and a revised and enhanced methodology. 
 
The revised estimates will be used to improve planning for prevention, care and treatment efforts. “While it is good news that the total number of HIV infections is lower than previously thought, we cannot be complacent. The steady and slow spread of the HIV infection is a worrying factor. The better understanding of India’s epidemic has certainly enabled us to have more focused HIV prevention and treatment strategies and more effective deployment of resources,” said Mr. Naresh Dayal, Secretary of Health and Chair of the National AIDS Control Board. 
 
Commenting on the new estimates and guarding against their misinterpretation, Sujatha Rao, Additional Secretary and Director General, National AIDS Control Organization said, “The calculation of figures for several years, using the new model helps us understand that the new lower estimates do not mean a sharp decline in the epidemic.” She cautioned against easing off the momentum of the HIV response. 
 
Comments by the editor of this e-bulletin. Hans Schwass: The 2006 UNAIDS epidemic update put the 2005 figure for India at approximately 5.7 million with a variance of 3.4 to 9.4 million. This made India the country with the highest absolute number of people living with HIV/AIDS in the world. 
 
Prof. James Chin, former unit chief at the WHO Global Programme on AIDS, says that UNAIDS has overestimated HIV prevalence in a large number of countries. He goes on to say that exaggerating the numbers will cause a backlash and damage support from the public and policymakers. He acknowledges, however, that the pandemic is severe in a large number of regions and countries and that it requires that AIDS programmes continue to receive the highest public health priority and funding. 
 
(Source: UNAIDS Press Release, 6 July and The Monitor, Kampala, 28 July)
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HIV: A Time Bomb for the Mining Industry? 
 
Mining companies all over the world have belatedly realised that at a time of booming demand for minerals, HIV/AIDS is hampering their operations. 
 
Mining areas regularly have a higher prevalence rate than the national average. In South Africa, the infection rate is nearly double that of the general working population; in the Russian mining town of Irkutsk, it is three times higher than the national average. To a large extent, this is due to the working and living conditions of mine workers and the high rate of migrant workers who are employed in the industry and who have to leave their families behind. Remote mining sites also attract commercial sex workers. 
 
Brian Brink, Senior Vice President Health of AngloAmerican mining house in South Africa, admits that despite all their efforts, they did not stop the epidemic. A lot of cases still go undiagnosed and do not get reported. In India, where the prevalence rate is still low (see previous article), there are areas where the rate is around 1%. “In the early 1990s, that is where we were and then it is very difficult to stop,” declared Brink. “Other countries must not fall into the same trap as South Africa, said Lennox Mekuto, Health and Safety Officer of the ICEM-affiliated National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). 
 
(Source: The Namibian, Windhoek, 13 July)
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News from ILOAIDS 
 
Edwin Cameron, Judge at the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa, gave a talk at the ILO on 19 June on “Legislating an Epidemic: The Challenge of HIV/AIDS in the Workplace.” The talk was given on the background of the ILO having started work on developing a Recommendation on HIV/AIDS in the World of Work, following a decision of the Governing Body in March 2007. 
 
On a workplace perspective, Judge Cameroon made three propositions: that the effects of the epidemic on the workplace are distinctive, and must be distinctively addressed; that in countries where the epidemic has taken hold or threatens, the response by unions, employers, and governments to workplace issues has not been sufficient; and that the workplace offers a particularly appropriate location for addressing HIV-related issues. 
 
He went on to say that since the adoption of the ILO Code of Practice on HIV/AIDS and the World of Work in 2001, the epidemic has moved fast and that some aspects of the Code seem outdated now. He gave two reasons: the Code elides treatment and its approach to testing is antiquated. 
 
On treatment Judge Cameron argued that since 2001, large-scale provision of anti-retroviral treatment, even in resource-poor settings, has proven to be effective and feasible. 
 
The Code is fully five years behind. Encouraging access to anti-retroviral treatment should now be a cornerstone of every employer’s policy in every country where the epidemic has taken hold. Although it probably remains too ambitious to want to oblige employers to provide ARVs, they should certainly be obliged to assist and to provide information on ARVs, and to provide assistance in accessing them. The fact is, the workplace is an ideal environment for treatment literacy campaigns, for partnering treatment roll-out programmes, and even for directly observed treatment supervision. 
 
On HIV testing, he maintained that the Code’s approach is out-dated. In the present climate of continuing stigma, amid the availability of treatment, the Code’s approach to treatment is even retrogressive. It was valid before large-scale treatment became available and at a time when testing was all too frequently merely an excuse to discriminate and exclude. 
 
Thus the Code cautions that testing should not automatically be carried out in the workplace and that it should be strictly confidential and with informed consent. The debate about testing has moved far beyond these constricting parameters. Where non-discrimination protections do exist, and where confidentiality is assured, testing should be actively encouraged – not hedged around with impediments. The ability to establish your HIV status should be celebrated as a means of self-knowledge, self-empowerment, and as a portal to treatment. According to Cameron, the Code’s approach badly needs an over-haul. 
 
Judge Cameron declared his HIV positive status publicly some time ago and is, as he stated, “proudly and openly gay.” At the ILO, he went on to say, “I owe my own presence with you here in Geneva today to anti-retroviral medication. I started taking ARVs nearly ten years ago, in November 1997, when I was very sick with AIDS and facing death. I have been on the same drug combination for nearly seven years – since early 2001.”
<img height="35" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Aids ribbon.jpg" width="25"/>
News from the Global Union Programme and Global Union Federations 
 
In its most recent HIV/AIDS updates (Nos. 24 and 25 of 1 and 15 July) the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), <a href="http://www.itfglobal.org">www.itfglobal.org</a>, reports, among other items, on plans by India’s National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) to increase the number of condom vending machines from 600,000 to 3 million. Condom promotion is one of the priority areas for NACO in HIV prevention. It also reports on a new public/private partnership to use cell phones to bolster care and treatment in ten African countries.

ICEM HIV/AIDS e-bulletin - Nos. 22 & 23

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In South Africa last week on 9 August, people celebrated National Women’s Day in commemoration of the brave women one and two generations ago who first stood up against the racially-dividing Pass Laws of the apartheid government. 
 
Men and women gathered at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, site of an August 1956 march by 20,000 women in protest of the Pass Laws that were enacted on 9 August 1956. In Cape Town last week, 700 women and children marched and demanded that the government immediately implement the Domestic Violence Act. The march to government buildings there was against the abuse and rape of women and children.
<img height="60" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/SouthAfricaFlag.gif" width="100"/>
And across South Africa, unions, civil society organisations, and other groups used the 9 August holiday to urge more governmental action on HIV/AIDS-related work and treatment centres. Women are the worst affected by the scourge of the HIV virus. 
 
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) issued a statement commemorating both the brave women of the anti-pass struggles, and the brave miners who stood up to white bosses in the Great Mining Strike of 1987.
<img height="56" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/womenlogo.jpg" width="45"/>
“We salute the heroes and heroines of these struggles and call on employers to improve the welfare of women and workers in general as a tribute,” stated NUM General Secretary Frans Baleni. “The good wage agreements we enter into this year are a tribute to the fallen heroes and heroines of these struggles. 
 
The anti-pass protests and deaths from those protests had a galvanizing effect against the control-minded apartheid government of the late 1950s and 1960s. The Pass Laws prevented the free movement of black people. The laws defined the very essence of oppression and racism then in South African apartheid life. White citizens, although required to have identity documents, were not required to carry them. Black South Africans had to carry passes. 
 
The Afrikaners called it bewysboek (Book of Proof). Blacks called it dompas (stupid pass). The laws gave the police the opportunity to detain any black African who was unemployed. And since statutes said that “pass bearers” could not be officially classified as employees, blacks saw further discrimination in terms of workplace conditions and trade union rights. 
 
On 21 March 1960, an anti-pass protest was met by the ruthlessness of police in the township of Sharpville, south of Johannesburg. Police fired on demonstrators, killing 69 of them – many shot in the back as they were retreating – and wounded 178 others. Many of the organisers were arrested.
<img height="115" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Maps/SouthAfrica.png" width="250"/>
Considered the leader of South Africa’s anti-pass movement was Margaret Gazo, the woman with the idea for the 20,000-person march in August 1956. She died in 1974, but spent five years in prison due to her activism. The Pass Laws were repealed in 1987, with some aspects of the statutes repealed earlier. 
 
The ICEM salutes South African working men and women of today for honouring the groundbreaking achievements of women of the anti-pass movement, and echoes NUM’s Baleni in paying tribute to these pioneers of the early anti-apartheid era.

9 August: National Women’s Day in South Africa Celebrates ‘Anti-Pass’ Struggles of Apartheid

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US Affiliate United Steelworkers (USW) won an important court victory in its pursuit of justice for workers at shuttered Continental tyre and rubber plants in America. On 31 July, a federal judge for the U.S. District Court in the state of Ohio ruled that the German company must fulfill union contractual obligations to retired workers regarding health care.
<img height="100" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMrubber.JPG" width="100" alt=""/>
In December 2006, some 2,000 retirees from closed Continental plants in Charlotte, North Carolina; Mayfield, Kentucky; and Byron, Ohio, filed a class action lawsuit with the support of the union. Along with the cost-savings plant closings, the company shifted a large part of health care costs onto retirees. 
In the lawsuit, USW retirees, many of whom had been sacked at the time of the plant closures, sought restoration of the previous health insurance programme, and they argued for refunds on premium payments and other compensation. 
Judge Jack Zouhary of US. District Court in Toledo, Ohio, ruled in a summary judgment that the company had improperly reduced the benefit levels for retirees and their spouses. The judge’s decision stated that since the company was unable to force its terms with the USW during contract talks, it unilaterally and illegally began implementing the cuts. 
Continental North America argued it had the right to lower retiree benefits, because the labour contracts had expired. Zouhary ruled that retiree benefits must remain separate from wages and benefits of active workers since there is "inference" in labour agreements that "those benefits ... continue as long as the beneficiary remains a retiree."
<img height="158" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0609USARonHoover.jpg" width="120"/>
 USW's Ron Hoover 

USW President Leo Gerard praised the judge’s decision. “The fact that the court issued summary judgment shows just how disgraceful Continental was in abandoning its contractual obligations to American tire builders who gave the company a lifetime of work.” 

Continental has stated it will appeal the judge’s decision, but the USW is calling on the company to make the payments even if it does appeal. “This is an international corporation that has made massive profits throughout this sorry affair,” said USW Executive Vice President Ron Hoover. “It is time for them to finally stand up and fulfill the promises” made to workers.

Continental Tyre Owes USW’s Retirees Medical Pay, Judge Rules

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Pilkington glass workers in New Zealand, represented by Engineering, Paper and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) will decide tomorrow night, 14 August, whether or not to escalate industrial actions. During the first days of August, EPMU members at the Hamilton glass plant began a seven-day overtime ban because of a pay dispute. 
 
That was extended last week and union members at another Pilkington plant in Auckland met and agreed to support the Hamilton workers’ job actions. The Auckland workforce, represented by EPMU, was forced to take nine days of job actions last year in a pay dispute. In 2006, UK-based Pilkington was bought by Nippon Sheet Glass for €3.2 billion, in a move to strengthen the Japanese company’s presence in Asia, particularly China.
<img height="50" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/NewZealandFlag.gif" width="100" alt=""/>
“The company’s arguing over a quarter of a percent (in Hamilton), and frankly the members are getting sick of this kind of penny-pinching … the members are simply asking for their fair share,” said an EPMU representative, as quoted on the union’s website.

Pilkington Workers in Glass Dispute in New Zealand

<img height="40" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100"/>
Similar to non-union coal miners at the fateful Sago mine in the US state of West Virginia (<a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/1583-Sago-Mine-Disaster:-Safety-Workers’-Rights-Victimized-by-Bankruptcies" type="internal">click here for more</a>), miners at Murrau Energy Corp., in the state of Utah, have designated ICEM affiliate United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) as their representative in discussions with the company and the US Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). 
 
Those discussions and subsequent investigation follow the tragic cave-in at Murray's non-union Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah, which killed six trapped miners on 6 August and another three miners on 16 August during a rescue effort. The disaster took place at 600 metres underground. 
<img height="109" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMminingsector6.jpg" width="100"/>
Under US mine safety law, non-union miners can request the expertise of the UMWA in the event of a disaster, or safety occurrence. That happened at the Sago Mine in early 2006 when 12 miners perished due to an underground explosion. Then, International Coal Group and its owner, New York investor Wilbur Ross, blocked UMWA safety experts from entering the mine following the blast. The union and MSHA had to sue the non-union company to gain access in order to uphold the law. 
 
In this month's Utah tragedy, again, production and the pursuit of profit led to mining deaths. Murray Energy had been engaged in retreat mining at the south end of the 5,000-acre Crandall Canyon Mine when a bump -- or shift of earth and rock resulting from excavation -- occurred. 
 
Retreat mining is when grids supporting a shaft's ceiling are deliberately removed in order to cause a controlled cave-in. Murray, which bought the mine in 2006, had been ordered by MSHA to halt the practice of retreat mining on the north end of the mine in March 2007, but the federal agency did grant permits for retreat mining on the south side. 
<img height="88" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/USA.png" width="200"/>
The UMWA termed the practice "a recipe for disaster," since mining was happening between two sections that already had been excavated. On 16 August, another bump occurred during the rescue, killing the three rescue workers and injuring six others. 
 
Cleveland, Ohio-based Murray Energy is owned by the controversial Robert Murray, holder of 19 coal mines in five US states. His mines have been hot with 32 serious safety infractions so far this year. He also violated US labour law previously when he threatened to sack UMWA members at a mine in the state of Pennsylvania if they talked openly about a brewing labour dispute. 
 
Murray told reporters last week that he would permanently close the Crandall Canyon Mine, thus entombing the six miners. But he reversed that public stand the very next day.

US Non-Union Miners Turn to UMWA in Aftermath of Utah Coal Tragedy

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Anglo Coal is the target of coal strikes in central Queensland, Australia, by two unions, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) and the Construction, Forestry, Mining & Energy Union (CFMEU). The unions took strike action again last week over concessionary terms that the subsidiary of Anglo American Group is attempting to impose at its massive Dawson mining complex near Moura, Queensland.
In the wake of an A$1.3 billion expansion that will lift coal output from 11 million tonnes annually to 16 million tonnes, Anglo Coal is seeking to extend 12-hour work shifts with another 45 minutes, as well as instituting further disciplinary and dispute procedures in the enterprise agreements. 
<img height="90" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/AUSTRALIAAMWU.jpg" width="90"/>     <img height="93" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/AUSTRALIACFMEU.gif" width="90"/>
Miners are allotted only two 30-minute breaks at the sprawling open cast set of mines, which would lead to obvious safety hazards. They also reject the company’s plan to conduct random and compulsory health and fitness exams. 
 
Some 700 AMWU members staged a 24-hour strike on 14 May, and plan another one today. The union did four-hour stop-work actions on 27 and 30 April. At the Dawson Central mine on 13 May, 360 CFMEU miners took strike action. They had previously conducted a warning strike in mid-March. 
 
Anglo Coal is connecting three large open pit mines, spanning some 120 kilometres across central Queensland, with its minority partner, Mitsui of Japan. Miners also seek a bigger pay package from Anglo Coal in the face of huge company profits and escalating housing costs in this booming coal-export region of Australia.

Australian Miners Strike Anglo Coal in Queensland

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A 14-month-long freedom of association fight on behalf of workers of Lafarge subcontractors in Korea ended on 28 May when the company and ICEM affiliate Korean Chemical and Textile Workers’ Federation (KCTF) signed an accord granting the workers employment rights and union rights. 
 
The agreement ends a bitter dispute that started when workers of Woojin Industry, a Lafarge subcontractor at its Okgye, South Province, cement plant, joined the KCFT in March 2006. Thirteen of the workers were sacked, and Lafarge cancelled its contract with Woojin, moving the jobs and the company’s equipment to two other subcontractors.
<img height="83" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/SouthKorea.png" width="180" alt=""/>
Under terms of last week’s agreement, covering six workers who still sought their rightful return to work, Lafarge Halla management in Korea will make “best efforts” for the former Woojin workers to be employed by three subcontractors now on site. The agreement also pledges to ensure that none of the subcontractors, Sehwa Sanup, Daewon Sanup, and Soogwang Maintenance, will discriminate against the workers because of their union membership. 
 
Additionally, all legal complaints, petitions, and requests for remedies – from both sides – were to be withdrawn. 
 
The ICEM, together with the Building and Woodworkers’ International (BWI), the two global union federations signatory to a Global Framework Agreement with Lafarge, had ardently pressed the issue of freedom of association for the contract workers before senior managers of the company in Paris on several occasions.
<img height="165" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0704Manfred.jpg" width="120" alt=""/>
ICEM Gen. Sec. Manfred Warda
“We commend our affiliate, the Korean Chemical and Textile Workers’ Federation, for its diligence in seeing that justice was delivered for these contract workers,” said ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda. “This serves as a strong example that trade unions have an important role to play in protecting labour standards that contract workers and agency workers are entitled to.”

Lafarge Agrees to Give Employment, Union Rights to Korean Contract Workers’

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On 29 May, ICEM’s three Italian affiliates called a one-day strike across the country for natural gas workers of the Eni, Italy’s largest energy concern. The protest was over the company’s mid-May announcement that it would close 37 of 49 customer service centres. 
 
Italian trade unions Filcem-CGIL, Femca-Cisl, and Uilcem-Uil also conducted a mass mobilisation in Rome on 29 May at Piazzale Mattei, home of Eni’s corporate headquarters. The unions fear Eni will outsource the jobs of its Conus gas and electric subsidiary. The unions also protest unfair transfers of some 250 of 850 jobs that are expected to occur in the restructuring.
   <img height="73" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ItalyFEMCACISL.jpg" width="100" alt=""/> <img height="62" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ITALYUILCEM.gif" width="110" alt=""/> <img height="122" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ITALYFILCEM.jpg" width="100" alt=""/>   
The unions contend that transfers of workers to service centres of up to 150 kilometres away from their current job locations will threaten their employment. The unions did negotiate with Eni over the restructuring, but those talks broke off when commitments were not made over which jobs would be retained, and which would be outsourced. 
 
Eni announced that its restructuring would take effect on 1 July. Besides keeping open only 12 service centres, the company would retain only two call centres, in Rome and in Turin.

Eni’s Gas Workers in Italy Protest Restructurings

<img height="48" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="120" alt=""/>
The ICEM, together with its Norwegian paperworkers’ union affiliate, Fellesforbundet, conducted its annual Norske Skog Global Framework Agreement review in Oslo on 21 May. The parties have been signatory to a Global Framework Agreement since June 2002, and the agreement was extended on 21 May for another two-year period. 
 
Chief among items discussed were proposals by the ICEM and Fellesforbundet for the agreement to incorporate the ILO’s Code of Practice on HIV/AIDS, and to initiate a consultation process between the company and its trade unions prior to management at particular worksites engaging contract labourers or agency labour providers.
<img height="103" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/icem-logo.jpg" width="120" alt=""/>
  
Another request put before senior managers of Norske Skog by the unions was to drop a lawsuit brought by managers at the Tasman paper mill in New Zealand against ICEM affiliate Manufacturing and Construction Workers’ Union. Members of the union did stop-work actions after managers failed to fully consult with the union over cost-cutting measures concerning the elimination of back-up shifts. Such elimination presents serious safety concerns for workers. 
 
Norske Skog is reviewing that situation. The company has pledged to fulfil a section of the Global Agreement which states that employment in the company “shall, as a main rule, be based on permanent employment. Temporary and part-time employees should as a main rule receive the same relative terms and conditions as full-time permanent employees.”

ICEM Conducts Global Agreement Review Meeting with Norske Skog

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ICEM’s Chemical Workers’ Union affiliate in Finland, Kemianliitto, has taken exception to the recent sale by the Finnish government of its stake in Kemira GrowHow to a Norwegian concern. 
 
In a statement issued immediately following Finland’s 24 May sale of its 30.05% stake in the phosphates and fertiliser company to Oslo-based Yara International ASA, Kemianliitto President Timo Vallittu said the sale sends the wrong kind of investment message concerning Finnish industry.
<img height="177" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMchemical2.jpg.JPG" width="180" alt=""/>
  
“With this decision to sell, it is very reasonable to ask why anybody would go on investing in Finnish industry when even the State abandons a holding of its own,” said Valliuto. 
 
The union was not critical of the sale price, or of the buyer, and vowed to hold both the State and Yara to commitments made in the 24 May announcement that jobs in Finland would be retained and production enhanced. 
 
Yara paid €12.12-per-share for the government’s stake in Kemira GrowHow, or €672 million. A Kemira stock market filing said Yara, which was spun off from Norsk Hydro in 2004, will continue business operations in Finland as usual and there would be no effects on personnel. The company would continue phosphate rock mining, phosphoric acid, and other production at Siilinjarvi and Uusikaupunki in Finland, and Yara would seriously consider opening phosphate production at the Sokli mine in Finnish Lapland. 
 
Yara is the world’s largest producer of nitrogen-based fertilisers, while Kemira GrowHow is a leader in feed phosphates with production facilities in eight countries. Under Finland’s Securities Market Act, Yara is now obligated to place tender offers for the remainder of Kemira GrowHow’s shares at €12.12-per-share, a 30% premium over the Finnish’s firm’s 23 May trading price. The merged company will control about 7% of the world’s fertiliser market.

Finnish Union Kemianliitto Displeased with State’s Sale of Kemira GrowHow

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