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French unions have promised more actions over the government&rsquo;s plan to partially privatise the country&rsquo;s electric and gas industries. Some 10,000 workers and supporters marched in Paris 29 June, the day the National Assembly passed a bill changing the statutes of the Electricit&eacute; de France and Gaz de France to limited liability companies. The French Senate must still vote on the proposed liberalization and implementation decrees also must be issued. ICEM affiliates FCE-CFDT and F&eacute;d&eacute;chimie CGT FO are leading the resistance.

French Unions March in Paris Over Electric, Gas Privatisation

Trade unions in Thailand&mdash;led by affiliate EGAT-LU&mdash;continue to resist the government&rsquo;s plan to privatise the electric and water services of the country. The ongoing stalemate will likely now be the key issue in government elections set for February 2005. Unions, now in their 119th consecutive day of protest at the headquarters of the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, have embarked on a &ldquo;Scattering Bees Strategy&rdquo; in which they will conduct educational forums and brochure drops in all parts of Thailand leading up to those elections.

Thai Government, EGAT-LU Stalemated Over Electric Privatisation

EGAT-LU, the heroic Thai affiliate that is fending off privatisation of the country&rsquo;s electric industry, has declared 24-28 May as &ldquo;International Week of Action&rdquo; against the government&rsquo;s rush to privatise. ICEM is central to accessing global action for the week, and more information will be posted this week through an ICEM Circular, with specific activities announced in an ICEM press release next week.

EGAT-LU Declares Week of Action Against Electric Privatisation

French affiliate FCE-CFDT and other electric power workers&rsquo; unions sent a strong message against privatisation 8 April with strikes in three French cities that shut down electric supplies. The strikes in Toulouse, Marseilles and Lille were response to the government&rsquo;s intent to spin off Electricit&eacute; de France (EDF) and Gas de France into private utilities. In northern France, workers also pulled the plug on power supplies for a brief period in four cities. And in Paris, demonstrators pelted EDF headquarters and France Conseil d&rsquo;Etat with used light bulbs. FCE-CFDT is calling for a full debate in Parliament over energy policy. It is advocating security of power supplies, promotion of renewables and reductions in general consumption.

French Affiliate FCE-CFDT Opposes EDF Privatisation

Application has been made to begin formal dialogue in the chemical sector of Europe. At a conference in Helsinki, Hubertus Schmoldt, president of both ICEM affiliate IGBCE and EMCEF (www.emcef.org), and Hans-Paul Frey, president of the European Chemical Employers&rsquo; Group, announced to trade unionists and employer representatives that dialogue between the social partners would begin this year. The chemical industry is Europe&rsquo;s second biggest industry, employing two million workers.

European Chemical Unions, EMCEF Seek Social Dialogue

The unaffiliated Bahamas Electrical Workers Union (BEMU) rallied last week and commenced industrial actions against government-run Bahamas Electricity Corporation. Industrial actions officially began on 1 September. About 150 of the union&rsquo;s 900 members rallied on that day outside the utility&rsquo;s headquarters in Nassau. The company has failed to reach compromise on five key issues separating the two sides: safety, a pension scheme, salary disparities, management of work hours, and contract breaches. The union, part of the National Congress of Trade Unions (NCTU) of The Bahamas, is now conducting sit-down actions, go-slow procedures, and action might escalate to power cuts if management remains unwilling to address the concerns of electrical workers

Electric Workers in The Bahamas Start Job Actions

About 400 members of ICEM affiliate Fiji Electricity Workers Association (FEWA) are preparing to strike this week over Fiji Electricity Authority&rsquo;s (FEA) refusal to address pay demands and grievances. The union gave managers a 28-day strike notice on 11 August and insisted that failure to enter meaningful negotiations would cause a walkout. Talks did occur last week, but FEA did not address the wage issue or failure to pay past cost-of-living increases that were due. Fiji&rsquo;s minister of Labour entered the dispute by issuing a letter declaring any strike illegal under the country&rsquo;s Trades Disputes Act, despite the fact that FEWA has been in compliance with all strike notice and secret ballot provisions.

Fiji Electric Workers Threaten Strike

The ICEM is sharply critical of labour practices being carried out by Goodyear Thailand Ltd., a subsidiary of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. of the United States. Local management at the 600-worker factory in Bangkok has systematically denied basic trade union rights to members and officers of ICEM affiliate Petroleum and Chemical Workers' Federation of Thailand (PCFT). 
<img height="188" alt="" src="" width="239" />
PCFT Branch Chairman Anan Pol-ung 
In March, managers fired the chairman of the Goodyear Thailand branch of the PCFT, Anan Pol-ung, for merely carrying out his lawful responsibilities in attempting to achieve social benefits for workers in the factory's rubber stock division. Many of these employees have worked at the plant for over ten years, but are employed under one-year, fixed-term contracts that deny them the same benefits as permanent employees. 
 
&quot;We call on the company to immediately reinstate Brother Anan,&quot; stated ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs. &quot;His dismissal by local managers was a blatant attempt to remove an effective voice for workers.&quot; 
 
Anan's dismissal was followed by Goodyear Thailand management denying him access to the plant in order to perform legitimate trade union functions. More recently, another union member in the plant's Quality Assurance Department has been dismissed without union consultation and the PCFT branch secretary has been given a &quot;last chance&quot; warning for merely taking sick leave. 
<img height="182" alt="" src="" width="300" />
Trade unionists at Goodyear Thailand 
support Anan at the Bangkok plant 
The ICEM also protests discriminatory pay practices at Goodyear Thailand in which workers employed in the same position, performing similar work, receive disparate wage rates. It was such practices that Anan and other leaders in the branch brought attention to that earned them disciplinary action. 
 
In an early April letter to Goodyear President, Chairman and CEO Robert Keegan at US headquarters in Akron, Ohio, Higgs wrote: &quot;The ICEM, a global union federation with 20 million members and 425 affiliates, believes these grievance matters are very serious, and in direct violation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement and Thai labour law. We also believe these labour relations practices are contrary to several ILO Core Conventions and, as well, do not conform to the Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).&quot; 
 
Goodyear has failed to respond to the letter, which asked senior leadership of the company to intervene and put a halt to the negative labour practices. 
 
Since, Thai management has unilaterally reduced wages and social benefits for some employees who perform the same work as others, a move that has created even more disparity between workers. 
 
The PCFT has taken the unfair violations to its collective agreement-including the illegal dismissal of Anan Pol-ung-before a Thai labour court. The matter of the employment status of the contract workers also was brought by the union before the labour court, and further hearings on both matters will occur in late July. 
 
&quot;We hope that corporate leadership of Goodyear in the United States recognizes the problems created by management,&quot; stated the ICEM's Higgs, &quot;and acts in a diligent and forthright manner to correct such ill-will toward our affiliate in Thailand. Such behaviour can only harm the company's reputation globally.&quot; 
 
The 40-year-old Bangkok factory produces tyres for automobiles, light trucks and larger vehicles, including heavy trucks and construction equipment, and can manufacture 6,500 units per day.

Goodyear Engaged in Union-Busting in Thailand

On the May Day weekend before Paris-based Imerys' Annual General Meeting, national industrial unions from the United Kingdom and United States, together with two major Trade Union federations jointly condemned the company's work practices at worksites in southwestern England and the American south. 
 
Unions representing Imerys workers in the two countries have been joined by the 20-million-member ICEM and the US national labour center AFL-CIO in condemning Imerys' anti-worker manner of labour relations. The international action also has the support of all five French trade unions that represent Imerys workers (CGT-FO, CFE-CGC, CFDT, CGT, CFTC ). 
 
In the UK, Imerys has unilaterally and unconscionably closed a pension scheme that will hit pocketbooks of some 2,500 workers in and around Cornwall and Devon. Most workers are represented by Transport &amp; General Workers Union (TGWU), and that union along with AMICUS and GMB begins industrial action balloting on 3 May, the same day Imerys holds its AGM. In the US, Imerys now has a five-year history of impeding unionization by PACE, now the United Steel Workers (USW), the largest industrial union in the US, and has developed a consistent pattern of punishing workers who display union membership. The union is in dispute with Imerys at two locations employing 650 workers. 
 
Additionally, last week USW levied race-bias complaints against Imerys charging managers in Sylacauga, Alabama, with disparate treatment between black workers and white workers. The complaint, with the US government's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleges white supervisors with enforcing work rules and imposing discipline more harshly on black employees, and cites management retaliation for those who have complained of the bias. The union has brought numerous unfair labour practice charges against Imerys dating back to 2002 and the US government has backed those charges by issuing formal violations against the company. 
 
Imerys has settled specific labour law violations with formal pledges of &quot;cease and desist&quot; language with the US labour board, but such settlements have done little to block Imerys from violating US labour code in other instances over the past five years. 
 
&quot;Imerys has never stopped its efforts to destroy our union,&quot; stated Keith Fulbright, the USW Local 3-0516 branch president at Sylacauga, Alabama. &quot;Imerys management purposely incites conflict and continually ignores US laws that protects workers against abuse, unsafe practices and racial discrimination.&quot; 
 
At the other US worksite, Dry Branch, Georgia, a labour agreement between Imerys and the USW local union expired last month, and the company is seeking unlimited ability to contract out union jobs. Leading up to the 31 March expiration, Imerys has set the tone for its anti-union agenda by transferring massive amounts of kaolin production to a non-union worksite also in the state of Georgia. In Dry Branch, Imerys managers have also committed labour law violations as judged by the US government's labour board. 
 
In the UK, Imerys in January unilaterally closed a final salary pension scheme to new employees, and dramatically downgraded benefit levels for existing workers. The unwillingness of management to engage in social dialogue with the British unions over the pension curtailments has caused the unions to initiate a ballot for industrial action. 
 
The T&amp;G said many workers would be forced to take pension reductions equivalent to one-third of the benefit value, while for some it will mean a 40% reduction. Such pain inflicted on retirement livelihoods of 2,500 workers was made worse considering Imerys took a three-year pension holiday from 2000-2003 and refused the advice of trustees in 2002 to start paying contributions again. 
 
&quot;Pensions are part of our members wages,&quot; said T&amp;G Convenor Malcolm Mellow. &quot;They are deferred until retirement, but Imerys has massively reduced these deferred wages without consultation with the union.&quot; 
 
Mellow added, &quot;The effect of this is severe and widespread. Not only on our members, their families and their lives, but on the surrounding area where reduced spending power from Imerys pensioners will become common.&quot; 
 
The ICEM, a global union federation linking Trade Unions in the Building Materials sector as well as other key industrial sectors, has repeatedly called on Imerys to stop its anti-worker, anti-union practices. &quot;Imerys now has a track record of arrogant and abusive worksite conduct, and has provoked labour disputes in two countries,&quot; stated ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs. &quot;Together with our American and British affiliates, we urge Imerys shareholders to recognise that such behaviour is not in their best interests.&quot; 
 
Both ICEM affiliates have requested that their respective governments conduct investigations on Imerys under the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.

ICEM, UK, US affiliates Take Imerys Work Practices to Shareholders

ICEM affiliated unions in the paper sector from South Africa, Europe and the United States came together 30-31 March and formed an ICEM Global Union Network of Sappi Workers. Representatives from a dozen paper mills of the Johannesburg-based paper concern met in Bad M&uuml;nder, Germany, to launch the Network, one of seven such ICEM workers' networks aimed at building cross-border solidarity and mutual support. 
 
The Network will be administered by the Chemical, Energy, Paper, Printing, Wood and Allied Workers' Union (CEPPWAWU) of South Africa, the ICEM affiliate representing both Sappi's paper and wood sector workers in its home country, and the union representing nearly half of Sappi's 10,000 unionised workers. CEPPWAWU General Secretary Welile Nolingo will serve as the Network's official administrator. 
 
The Network resolved at its founding conference to place initial focus on efforts by two unions-CEPPWAWU and the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, Energy (PACE) Workers Union of the U.S.-to forge better social conditions inside the company. The Network stated Sappi's hard-line bargaining posture in both countries has harmed workers and the communities in which they live. The Network cites Sappi with failing to give black workers full opportunities in South Africa despite moral and legal obligations to do so. 
 
In the U.S., PACE has been locked in a longstanding contract dispute with Sappi at a paper mill in Skowhegan, Maine. 
 
&quot;We're confident we can develop an extremely effective Network of Sappi workers and their unions which will coordinate our affiliates overall relations with Sappi,&quot; said ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs. 
 
&quot;The company inevitably will be aware of the launch of this Network and we hope they recognize the seriousness and determination of the union-organised workers that they employ across the world,&quot; Higgs added. 
 
Union representatives attending the founding Sappi Network meeting came from Austria, Belgium, Germany, and The Netherlands, in addition to the U.S. and South Africa. Germany's IGBCE, representing Sappi workers at two German paper mills, hosted the Network. Selected to the steering committee was Jan Staal of Algemene Centrale-Centrale G&eacute;n&eacute;rale (ACCG) of Belgium, representing Sappi's eight European paper mills; Keith Romig of PACE, representing the company's four U.S. mills; and Pasco Dyani of CEPPWAWU, covering Sappi's paper and wood sectors in South Africa. The ICEM's Paper Sector Officer will also sit on the Network's steering committee. 
 
Sappi is the world's largest producer of coated magazine papers with total employment worldwide of 16,000. The ICEM is a global union federation of 20 million workers, represented by over 400 affiliated unions in the energy, mining, chemicals and processed industries sectors, which includes paper, rubber, cement and ceramics. ICEM now has two global networks covering workers in pulp and paper sectors, the other among workers of U.S.-based multinational International Paper Co.

Global Unions Representing Sappi Paperworkers Come Together

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