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A strike that hit most of Turkey's tyre industry from 28 April onwards has been &quot;postponed&quot; by government decree. 
 
Under a frequently abused legal pretext, the Turkish cabinet claimed that the tyre strike was a threat to national security. 
 
It then invoked Article 33 of Turkey's Law on Collective Agreements, Strikes And Lock-Outs. This allows the government to suspend any strike or lock-out for sixty days if it is deemed to endanger &quot;public health or national security&quot;. 
 
To apply this law to a tyre strike is obviously absurd. The move will certainly damage the Turkish government's reputation at a time when it is trying to prove its democratic credentials in a bid to join the European Union. 
 
Moreover, &quot;postponement&quot; of a strike under this legislation usually amounts in practice to an indefinite ban, because Article 34 of the same law empowers the labour ministry to impose arbitration at the end of the sixty days, unless the parties have either come to an agreement or voluntarily sought arbitration. 
 
Turkey's official arbitrators rarely decide in a union's favour. 
 
The decree &quot;postpones&quot; strike action at the three main multinationals affected by the dispute - Pirelli, Goodyear and Bridgestone. It was signed on 5 May by President S&uuml;leyman Demirel, Prime Minister B&uuml;lent Ecevit and the entire Turkish cabinet. 
 
The Turkish rubber workers' union Lastik-Is had been negotiating with the tyre companies since last November for a new agreement covering this year and 2001. At the global level, the union is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), which organises tyre and rubber workers worldwide. 
 
The companies' final offer to Lastik-Is was a 22 percent pay increase for the first half of this year, followed by a further 6 percent in the second half, plus a small lump sum. For the year 2001, the companies proposed to make an additional payment dependent on the prevailing exchange rate between the US dollar and the Turkish lira at the time. 
 
This is a wholly inadequate offer, the union points out, in view of the steep rise in the cost of living. Turkey's inflation rate last year was 68.8 percent. The tyre workers would need a pay rise of the same order simply in order to restore their purchasing power. 
 
Altogether, some 5,000 workers are affected by the strike ban.

Turkish Tyre Strike Banned

The ICEM&rsquo;s 4th Bridgestone Workers&rsquo; Global Network meetings were held in Brazil last week and delegates came from Japan, Spain, South Africa, US and host country Brazil. Topics included health and safety, breakdown of company finances by region and division, and delegates met with the director of the Japanese firm&rsquo;s big Santa Andre tyre plant near Sao Paulo.

ICEM’s Bridgestone Network Meets in Brazil

US affiliate PACE criticized ExxonMobil for discriminatory practices against Native Americans in the state of New Mexico at a gas production site. After organizing with PACE two years ago, workers are still without a first collective agreement. ExxonMobil has denied the mostly Native American workforce a pay raise now for the second consecutive year. &ldquo;To single out Native Americans after a year in which ExxonMobil achieved US$21.5 billion in profits, its CEP garnered US$28.7 million in total compensation, and almost all ExxonMobil employees received some wage increase, to treat them differently from other workers appears overtly discriminatory to us,&rdquo; said PACE Executive Vice President Jim Pannell. He cited union data that the gas workers earn US$1.30-to-$2.66 per hour less than other company workers in the US.

PACE Takes on ExxonMobil Over Native American Rights

Hibernia offshore oil workers in Canada won yet another legal victory 28 April when the Supreme Court of Newfoundland held union certification with CEP legal. The ruling was another and hopefully final setback for lead company ExxonMobil at Hibernia. CEP President Brian Payne said, &ldquo;ExxonMobil has now run out of excuses and reasons&rdquo; for denying the 420 workers a collective agreement. Hibernia workers were the first North American offshore platform workers to unionise in October 2001, and ExxonMobil used legal appeals and delays to block a collective agreement up to now.

CEP Offshore Workers in Canada Win Case Against ExxonMobil

US affiliate PACE, together with national center AFL-CIO and a host of other ExxonMobil shareholders convinced the Texas-based company to include a statement of intent to uphold the ILO&rsquo;s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work in its 2004 Corporate Citizenship Report. The union, Amnesty International and other socially concerned stockholders, owning an accumulative 7.2 million shares, agreed to withdraw a shareholder proposal mandating the firm to adopt a workplace human rights policy based on the 1998 ILO Declaration.

PACE, Others Hold ExxonMobil Accountable on ILO’s Work Rights

The ICEM has signed yet another Global Framework Agreement. Together with Swedish affiliate Svenska Papersindustriarbetaref&ouml;rbundet, the ICEM on 15 April became signatory with Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget (SCA) to maintain high health, safety, environment and workers&rsquo; rights standards. SCA will formally launch the agreement in June with a public campaign, and will follow that by distributing the agreement in respective languages to all its global worksites.

ICEM, Swedish Pappers Union Sign Global Agreement with SCA

A candlelight vigil commemorating the 9th Workers&rsquo; Memorial Day will occur at ICEM in Brussels and at thousands of other unions worldwide on 28 April. This year&rsquo;s commemoration will have twin themes&mdash;Safe &amp; Healthy Work and Employer Accountability&mdash;to draw attention to reducing workplace accident and death rates. Avaible are&nbsp;death and injury rates throughout the world and&nbsp;fact sheets and other materials in three languages. ICEM affiliates recognizing 28 April in one form or another are encouraged to report their observance to Lucien Royer at royer@tuac.org.

Vigil Marks 9th Workers’ Memorial Day

Fallout over miners&rsquo; drinking water that had been used for processing uranium ore in Australia&rsquo;s Northern Territory continues some three weeks after a Rio Tinto subsidiary, Energy Resources of Australia Ltd., wrongly fitted a pipe with the contaminated water into drinking water supplies. Several workers at the Ranger mine in Kakadu National Park drank and showered in the water 23 March and were taken ill. The mine was closed as 150,000 liters of contaminated water 400 times the legal limit made its way into safe water supplies. Affiliate CFMEU is monitoring the health crisis at Australia&rsquo;s largest uranium processing site.

Rio Tinto’s Water Contamination Makes Australian Workers Ill

PACE, as lead union in ICEM&rsquo;s ExxonMobil Network, has an excellent website containing topical and informative data and news articles on the world&rsquo;s largest energy concern. It can be found at www.exxonmobil-solidarity.org.

PACE in US Establishes ExxonMobil Network Website

The USWA and Goodyear have resolved a potential dispute stemming from union-friendly language contained in last September&rsquo;s precedent-setting labour agreement. Goodyear announced 5 February that production of its new Assurance ComforTred tyre would go to a non-union plant in the state of Oklahoma. Specific job-security provisions in the labour agreement, however, state new tyre lines must go to a unionized plant. Goodyear acquiesced and the new tyre will be made in a Steelworker-represented plant in Gadsden, Alabama.

USWA Tyre Accord with Goodyear Brings Union Work

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