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ICEM WOMEN’S BULLETIN N° 16

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Bargaining in the US tyre industry began on 9 June when the United Steelworkers (USW) kicked off talks when Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and America’s largest industrial union exchanged proposals in Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
USW also begins talks with Michelin’s North American subsidiary BF Goodrich this month, and bargaining with Bridgestone/Firestone begins on 14 June. The three companies represent the largest of the tyre firms which comprise the master rubber agreement in the US. The union represents some 17,000 Goodyear employees, 6,000 Bridgestone workers, and 4,000 at Michelin.
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USW is expected to select one of the three as the “target” company, in which it hopes to achieve a pattern contract that will be taken to the others. Current three-year contracts in the US tyre industry expire on 22 July.

US Tyre Talks Begin for 27,000 Workers

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ICEM Costa Rican affiliate Sindicato de Trabajadores Petroleros, Químicos y Afines (SITRAPEQUIA) has criticised the government of Dr Oscar Arias Sánchez for continuing rhetoric favouring privatisation of state oil company RECOPE. 
In a 15 June circular, the union points out that the company has operated effectively and efficiently since it was nationalised in 1974, a fact that finds other Central American governments attempting to replicate such management. 
 
“We don’t understand how our government can pretend to imitate the way these Central American governments have operated, meaning handing this important activity into the hands of multinational oil companies,” the statement read. 
SITRAPEQUIA’s strong rebuke comes as Arias is using political measures to ratify the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) with the US, an agreement which could lead to the sell-off of successful and highly-profitable state companies. The Costa Rican president made such overtures before an ILO audience in Geneva, Switzerland, on 7 June. 
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The union contends RECOPE has fulfilled its role on national development over the past decades, and that the oil company can serve to reduce poverty and as a means toward better redistribution of wealth. It also says that privatisation proposals of basic industries have consistently failed at the legislative level due to legitimate rejection by the public. 
 
SITRAPEQUIA union members massed with other Costa Rican trade unions affiliated to national centre Confederación de Trabajadores Rerum Novarum (CTRN) in a march and demonstration in the capital city of San Jose. 
The 7 June mass demonstration, numbering 10,000, was over both Arias’s intended remarks at the ILO, as well as over a constitutional court ruling that weakens union protections for public sector workers, an adjustment in accordance with CAFTA.

SITRAPEQUIA Out to Protect State-run, Costa Rican Oil Company

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ICEM affiliate in Germany, IGBCE, has taken deep exception to a report published by a research institute that all energy supplies be left to market forces.
The RWI, an economic research think tank supported by the Ministry of Economic Affairs for the state of North Rhine/Westphalia, proposes that all state subsidies for coal and other energy sources be removed.
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“Those who claim that energy supplies are not the state’s responsibility and should be left to markets, have lost all sense of reality,” said IGBCE President Hubertus Schmoldt. He added that the risks associated with an energy crisis is the concern of the entire Germany economy, stating that it is easy for those “in an ivory tower that is 80% funded by public monies” to preach such free market ideas. 
 
The IGBCE believes German policy for safe and secure energy supply cannot be left alone to markets.

IGBCE Disputes Research Institute’s Energy Supply Thesis

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A proposed European energy deal, conceived as a blocking move, received trade union attention and analysis last week in Brussels at EMCEF, the European Mine, Chemical and Energy Workers’ Federation. Attended by Spanish trade unions FIA-UGT and FM-CC.OO, Italian union UILCEM and German union IGBCE, the meeting was held to formulate a common trade union position on the bidding outcome for Spanish energy company Endesa. 
 
German E.ON recently outbid Spain’s Gas Natural for Endesa, and both E.ON and Gas Natural will have one further opportunity in a sealed-bid process under Spanish energy and market rules. EMCEF issued a statement following the 28 February meeting in Brussels calling for maintaining Endesa as it is today and avoiding the splitting of businesses, and not to contract out integrated parts of the company; no refinancing through sale of assets; and keeping on track investments for renewed production and for build up of new electrical capacities. 
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Regarding the social impact of any Endesa takeover, EMCEF and the unions insist on no redundancies or layoffs; continuation of all collective agreements; further investment and support for worker training; social dialogue with trade unions on all matters of industrial policy; and recognition of all existing national labour relations matters as part of the European social model.
The EMCEF statement also cites, as good practice, a model of mutual recognition and well-developed agreements on social issues between unions and companies, and said ICEM’s Global Agreement with Endesa is “one example of this good practice on the global level that needs to be incorporated also for other companies in the future.”

EMCEF, European Unions Announce Priorities on Endesa

A general strike last week by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and a pro-labour panel of lawmakers working inside a plenary session of South Korea’s National Assembly blocked three bills regarding non-regular workers from reaching final approval. 
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The strikes, in which 300,000 workers took part, occurred on Tuesday and Thursday, 28 February and 2 March. (1 March was an official Korean holiday.) The lawmakers, primarily from the progressive Democratic Labor Party, took over a parliamentary session on 2 March to temporarily derail passage. 
 
The bills were approved by the Assembly’s Environment and Labor Committee on 27 February, but action in the streets and inside the plenary session prevented final approval prior to the Assembly closing its session on 2 March. The issue is certain to meet further review and more public protests when the Assembly reconvenes on 20 March in an extraordinary session. 
 
The proposed legislation would do little to improve conditions for temporary and agency workers, but instead would give employers’ the flexibility to use hundreds of thousands more non-permanent workers and laying them off prior to the end of a proposed two-year period after which they must be made permanent. 
 
The ICEM congratulated KCTU on its strike and mobilisation. In an ICEM letter to KCTU President Cho Jun Ho, General Secretary Fred Higgs said it is “of immense importance that the main issue of your struggle is defending the basic rights of contract and agency workers. The substitution or limiting of permanent direct employment has clearly become a priority issue for countless workers and their trade unions, in every region of the world and every sector.”

Korean Temp Worker Bills Blocked for Now

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This Wednesday, 8 March, marks the 97th Anniversary of International Women’s Day, a day of action in the continuing fight for equality and justice for all women. The ICFTU is in a fourth year of a “Unions for Women, Women for Unions” campaign in which the aim is to significantly increase unionisation rates of women workers in the informal economy, among migrant women workers, young women, and women in export processing zones. 
 
The ICEM on 8 March calls attention to the appalling conditions of women workers in the developing world, the global pandemic of HIV/AIDS that finds women making up over half of those infected, and the rise of militarisation throughout the world that adversely affects women is so many ways. The ICEM urges all trade union affiliates to put in practice policies and initiatives for equality, opportunity and fairness not only for working women, but for women in all walks of life.

International Women’s Day Action Urged for 8 March

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Two jewellery workers from China and two gem polishers from India will travel to Basel, Switzerland, late this month to raise awareness of the deadly side effects of their jobs, particularly silicosis. 
The workers will attend a jewellery fair from 30 March to 4 April, and hope to have talks with a large number of organisations, including the ILO, in order to bring more preventative measures to their line of work. Silicosis kills workers slowly, often over long and painful illnesses. In the case of Asian workers, compensation is unheard of and most do not have the means to pay for medical bills. 
 
According to official Chinese figures, 440,000 workers—many of them migrant workers—have silicosis. Other estimates put that figure as ten times higher. The ICEM released a statement on the occasion of the Basel visit, which can be found at <a href="/index.php?id=5&la=EN&doc=1671" type="internal">/index.php?id=5&la=EN&doc=1671</a>.

Asian Jewellery Workers Visit Europe over Silicosis

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Even as German affiliate IGBCE came to acceptable terms with Continental Tyre over a plant downsizing in Hannover, two other ICEM-affiliated trade unions face difficulties with the company. In the US, United Steelworkers (USW) is fully engaged in achieving job protection measures in negotiations at a tyre plant in Charlotte, North Carolina. 
 
Continental North America announced last year that it would make redundant 510 of the plant’s 1,083 jobs this year, and then dropped a concession-ridden proposal on the union seeking US$32 million in costs savings that includes across-the-board 15% pay cuts. 
USW has criticized the “slash and burn proposal.” Union Executive Vice President Ron Hoover said, “There are absolutely zero job security provisions to maintain future productivity” in Continental’s proposal, a deviation from the master rubber contracts that Goodyear, Bridgestone-Firestone and BF Goodrich/Michelin operate under in the US. A labour agreement in place since 1999 at the Charlotte plant expires on 30 April 2006. 
 
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), meanwhile, has condemned Continental for failing to abide by a labour court ruling to reinstate workers at its Port Elizabeth plant. The workers were sacked after the company unilaterally changed working hours without consultations with NUMSA. The union has taken legal action, and is threatening a strike and a boycott of Conti products through its affiliation with COSATU, a South African national labour centre.

Continental Tyre Creating Problems in US, South Africa

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A five-day glass plant strike in Bulgaria by ICEM affiliate National Federation of Chemical Workers of Podkrepa ended 19 May. Some 700 workers, the majority of them members of the union, won a 17% increase in their total financial package, including a 10% raise in their basic salary. 
 
The strike action occurred at Turkish-owned Sisecam’s Trakya Glass Bulgaria (Shishejam), a new facility that only went into production in February 2006 in the town of Targovishte. The Chemical Workers’ Union had conducted a one-hour protest outside the factory on 8 May over local management’s refusal to address several issues. 
The flat-glass plant is the second of three plants that Sisecam has opened recently in Targovishte. A household glass plant opened for production in August 2005, while a potassium-glass plant and mirror operation will open in the northern Bulgarian town late in 2006.

Glass Strike Ends in Bulgaria with Wage Gains

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