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<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39" alt=""/>
An ICEM affiliate in Finland, the Salaried Workers’ Union, or Toimihenkilöunioni (TU), completed a merger on Saturday, 11 December, with Suora and effective 1 January will become the 130,000-member union called Pro, a union for salaried workers in the private sector. 
 
TU covers some 250 member associations across Finland, and negotiates 47 collective agreements, while Suora represents workers in the finance and insurance industries, as well as white-collar workers in the gaming business and alcohol trades. 
<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1012.pro finland.jpg" width="256" height="163" alt=""/>
Antti Rinne and Riitta Suonpää Sign the Merger Document, Creating Pro
Rank-and-file members work in a multitude of sectors as salaried employees, hourly paid employees, foremen or supervisors, and in expert jobs. The new union will organize self-employed professionals as well. 
 
Antti Rinne, the President of the TU, was unanimously elected President of Pro. A 48-year-old lawyer, Rinne describes the current situation among Finnish trade unions as “the most critical period in history.” 
 
Suora’s President, Riitta Suonpää, will become the new union’s First Vice President, while Juha Kivistö was elected Second Vice President. 
 
The new union’s website can be found <a href="http://www.proliitto.fi ">here</a>.

Finnish Unions, TU and Suora, Merge to Become Pro

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
Plastics and packaging members of New Zealand’s Engineering, Printing, and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) won’t be taking further industrial action against Sealed Air’s Cryovac subsidiary. A week ago, on 22 November, 117 workers at a plastic bag and food packaging factory in Porirua ratified a two-year wage settlement that will bring them 3.19% pay gains for both 2010 and 2011. 
 
EPMU members had engaged in three weeks of industrial actions in late October and November that caught the attention of the ICEM. (An InBrief report from two weeks ago can be seen <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4109-EPMU-Members-Strike-Sealed-Air-Subsidiary-in-New-Zealand " type="internal">here</a>) 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1011.cryovac.Tim Awatere.jpg" width="222" height="148"/>
EPMU's Tim Awatere
Sealed Air’s original wage offer of 2% for a one-year contract drove workers to take strike actions, which included a one day walkout on 8 November and a ban on all short-notice overtime work. 
 
“This is a good outcome for EPMU members, highlighting the financial benefits of belonging to a union collective agreement,” said EPMU Organiser Mark James. “Our members took a stand to get a fair share in the company’s increasing profits so this is a result they can be proud of.” 
 
The Sealed Air Cryovac factory, on New Zealand’s North Island north of Wellington, produces plastic bags primarily for the meat industry, as well as packaging for other food manufacturing.

New Zealand EPMU Members Win Pay Gains with Sealed Air

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
ICEM Chilean oil worker affiliate Fenatrapech is protesting against attempts to cut 530 workers, an effort to weaken the trade union ahead of moves to privatise the state-owned ENAP (National Petroleum Company). Workers at the Bio Bio refinery in Central Chile held a 24-hour strike on 19 November to protest the management plan to cut its workforce by 15%, 530 of the total 3,380 employees. The Bio Bio refinery workers’ strike was followed by industrial action in the southern Magallanes region, where most of ENAP’s exploration and production activity is based. For workers in the Magallanes region, there are very few employment alternatives available. 
 
The company is offering unacceptably low compensation packages to departing workers. 
 
The national government of President Sebastian Piñera plans to privatise much of the country’s major industries, including the oil and gas producer ENAP. The latest job cuts are seen as a further step towards that privatisation. Earlier in the year, energy minister Ricardo Raineri said that ENAP could potentially follow the same model as Brazil's federal energy company Petrobras and sell a stake to private investors. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Jorge Matute.jpg" width="99" height="111"/>
Fenatrapech President Jorge Matute
ENAP employees are represented by ICEM affiliate Fenatrapech, the national federation of oil workers, headed by President Jorge Matute. Matute has lead attempts to negotiate the redundancy issue with management, while ENAP have refused to come to the table, instead pressing ahead with job cuts. The first 300 cuts of the 530 total are due to take place before the end of 2010. 
 
This is just an attempt to weaken the union at the company in order to advance with the privatization process in the short term," states Matute. 
 
The union reports that workers in the industry are currently enduring very hard times, for those workers to be informed that they are losing their jobs is difficult to accept, especially as it falls in the same week as ENAP executives signed renewed and improved contracts for oil exploration and production exploiting two oil fields in Ecuador. ENAP employees took pride in the new contracts of the company, and see them as direct achievement of the staff. 
 
The Bio Bio refinery processes 116,000 barrels of oil per day, while the Magdallanes around 10,000. ENAP was hard hit by an earthquake last February. 
 
View the ICEM solidarity letter to Fenatrapech in Spanish <a href="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/22%20Fenatrapech%20ICEM%2029%20Nov.pdf" type="internal">here</a>.

Chilean Oil Workers Fighting Job Cuts, Privatisation

<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Sustainable Tree.jpg" width="100" height="122" alt=""/>
Media Advisory 
 
Who: 
International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF) & International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine, and General Workers’ Union (ICEM) 
 
What: 
Cutting Emissions – Transforming Jobs 
 
Where: 
Room/SALAA - TRABAJO 
World of Work Pavilion 
Universidad del Sur 
Súper manzana 24, Manzana 15, Lote 10 
Av. Uxmal 
Cancún Quintana Roo 
Mexico 
 
When: 
7 December 2010 
15h30 to 17h00 
A unique panel entitled “The Links Between the Economic, Environmental, and Social Crises,” presenting lessons to preserve decent jobs in green public policy through sustainability and Just Transition. Featuring: Shoichiro Kaneko, IMF-JC/JBU, Japan; Michael O’Connor, National Secretary-elect, Construction, Forestry, Mining & Energy Union (CFMEU), Australia; and Anabella Rosemberg, Policy Officer, Climate Change, Sustainable Development and Occupational Health and Safety, International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), Belgium. 
 
Keynote Address (16h20): Jun Arima, Deputy Director General, Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI), Japan – “Importance of Sustainable Development in Manufacturing and Energy Industries: Job Creation Through Green Technology Innovation.” 
 
Contact: Kan Matsuzaki (IMF): +41 79 947 8618, (mobile), <a href="mailto:kmatsuzaki@imfmetal.org">kmatsuzaki@imfmetal.org</a>; Brian Kohler (ICEM): +41 79 734 9178 (mobile)

Press Advisory: Global Trade Unions’ COP16 Industrial Conference, 7 December, Cancún

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/CAL_en.jpg" width="110" height="50"/>
The ICEM’s Contract and Agency Labour (CAL) Regional Seminar for Sub-Saharan Africa took place in Accra, Ghana, on 8-9 November. The seminar brought together ICEM affiliates from Senegal, Guinea, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Namibia, Nigeria, Mauritius, Ghana, and Togo to discuss CAL developments in their countries. 
 
Representatives from SASK, the international arm of the Finnish national labour centre, which supports the Sub-Saharan Africa CAL project, and the ICEM CAL global and African coordinators also participated in the seminar. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1012.cal.joseph toe ghana.png" width="117" height="166"/>
Joseph Toe, CAL Sub-Saharan Africa Project Coordinator, at the Ghana seminar
Affiliates exchanged information on what steps they had taken in respect to their specific action plans developed during previous workshops. Many participants reported that dealing with the issue of short-term contract work or agency labour was becoming more and more challenging. This was the case expressed by those coming from Nigeria, where management attitudes are increasingly favouring the use of precarious employment. 
 
Although unions in Nigeria have been demanding that remuneration of contract staff should be determined by the industry in which the contract operates, so that workers receive equal pay for equal work, they have not managed to achieve this yet. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1012.cal. ghana group.png" width="240" height="135"/>
Matti Koskinen, from the Finnish Union of Salaried Employees, Toimihenkilöunioni (TU), made a presentation on how CAL is dealt with in Finland, and said that collective agreements mostly regulate the use of short-term labour. Matti also drew attention to the European Metalworkers’ Federation’s second common demand for more secure employment, against precarious work. Joseph Toe, the Sub-Saharan Africa CAL Project Coordinator, presented a paper on membership recruitment, which participants said would prove to be very helpful in their CAL organising campaigns. 
 
Looking to the future, affiliates proposed that they should concentrate more on collecting facts and figures relating to CAL, and that they should prioritise the organising of CAL workers. Affiliates also suggested that dedicated funds should be raised for CAL workers, and that there should be more capacity building for dealing with CAL workers.

Africa Regional CAL Seminar Takes Place in Ghana 

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/CAL_en.jpg" width="110" height="50"/>
The ICEM Contract and Agency Labour (CAL) Campaign has released a new country report focusing on CAL use in the Netherlands. The report, which was developed with the assistance of FNV Bondgenoten, highlights the fact that 1.9 million people in the Netherlands work for temporary employment agencies, are employed by fixed-term or on-call contracts, or are bogusly referred to as self-employed. 
 
See the full report <a href="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1012.cal_netherlands.country%20report.pdf" type="internal">here</a>. 
 
The Netherlands was deeply affected by the global economic crisis, and the economy shrunk by 4% in 2009. In 2010, the country has seen a weak recovery, with many of the jobs that are being created, for example in the chemical industry, are precarious jobs. 
 
As is the case in many countries, CAL workers in the Netherlands receive lower wages, fewer benefits, and have less social security than permanent, directly-employed workers. In the Netherlands, companies may only hire a worker on three fixed-term contracts of up to one year each before the worker must be offered a permanent position. This regulation is often circumvented by allowing a one month period of unemployment before rehiring the worker on a further fixed-term contract. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1012.cal.netherlands report.2.jpg" width="110" height="101"/>
The report details how Dutch trade unions have been active in challenging CAL, particularly the abuse common to workers hired through temporary employment agencies. This year alone, 12 new collective agreements have been negotiated by the national labour centre FNV, which include provisions that temporary workers may only be deployed in busy times and to cover for absences of other workers in case of illness, and that if they work longer than nine months in one year, they should be awarded permanency. There were also 34 new agreements signed which state that only certified employment agencies can be used. 
 
Dutch unions have also been active in bargaining for improvements for CAL workers at the sectoral level, and this year new collective agreements were signed with the two employers’ organizations representing temp agencies in the Netherlands: the ABU (ABU (Algemene Bond Uitzendondernemingen) and the NBBU (Nederlandse Bond van Bemiddelings-en Uitzendondernemingen). The most significant improvement in both collective agreements is that the training possibilities of people working through temp agencies have been expanded. Under the ABU collective agreement, workers are entitled to the same wages as employees of the hiring company after 26 weeks of employment. In the NBBU, the agreement states that workers receive equal pay for equal work from day one. 
 
A new foundation (the SNCU) was also established to monitor compliance with these collective agreements. The foundation - a partnership between employer and employee organisations in the temporary work sector – has the power to decertify temporary employment agencies which fail to respect the terms of the relevant labour agreement. 
 
The report also details the heroic efforts of CAL cleaners, who joined forces this year to assert their rights. Many cleaners in the Netherlands, including those contracted to work for companies such as Shell and Akzo Nobel, went on strike and organised protests for nine weeks. Their efforts ultimately resulted in a new collective agreement that provides better wages and more educational opportunities.

ICEM CAL Campaign Releases Country Report on the Netherlands 

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
The ICEM was saddened to learn of the passing of Madhav Neupane, a co-founder of affiliate General Federation of Nepalese Trade Unions (GEFONT). Comrade Neupane, 51, unexpectedly died on 29 October from tuberculosis, leaving his wife and two children behind. 
 
GEFONT released a statement on that day, saying, the “entire trade union movement of Nepal is now under deep grief. We have lost an always active leader of the movement.” 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1010.gefont.madhav.jpg" width="280" height="163"/>
Comrade Neupane was one of many democratic activists who were arrested during the autocratic Panchayati period of King Mahendra in the 1970s and beyond. It was then, as leader of the Nepal Independent Hotel Workers’ Union, that the NIHWU and three other unions formed GEFONT. He was currently a member of GEFONT’s Veterans’ Network. 
 
Following his funeral on 29 October, GEFONT’s National Executive Committee met and adopted a resolution of mourning that calls for lowering of the union federation’s flag to half-mast for three days throughout the country, as well as to organise a mass meeting to pay tribute to Madhav Neupane on the 13th day following his passing.

ICEM Mourns Co-Founder of Nepal’s GEFONT Federation

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
On the evening of 7 November, U.S. Steel Corp. locked out 900 members of the United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1005 at the American company’s Hamilton, Ontario, steel mill. The reason given: the union’s refusal to submit a concession-laden contract to members for a vote. 
 
In 2007, U.S. Steel bought Canadian steel producer Stelco Inc. and its two steel mills, the Hilton Works in Hamilton and Lake Erie Works in Nanticoke, Ontario, for US$1.1 billion. The 1985 Investment Canada Act contains a provision stating that foreign investment in Canadian enterprises must provide a “net benefit” to Canada. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1011.usw.lockout.jpg" width="238" height="158"/>
Photo: Cathie Coward/Hamilton Spectator
The lockout eight days ago frames that flawed premise. In fact, beginning in August 2009 and continuing for eight months, 1,000 steelworkers at the Lake Erie Works were locked out while U.S. Steel extracted pension cuts and other concessions. 
 
Now, in Hamilton, the situation is much the same. The American steelmaker is demanding closure of the defined benefit plan to new hires, an end to pension indexing for 9,000 Stelco retirees, cuts totalling 80% of the value of cost-of-living adjustments, and elimination of two weeks vacation time. 
 
A provincial mediator delivered these social cuts to Local 1005’s bargaining committee on 4 November, three months after a prior collective agreement expired. With the union refusing to adhere to a company demand to put the proposal to a vote, U.S. Steel imposed the lockout. Local 1005 seeks status quo in a new labour agreement. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1011.usw.lockout.2.jpg" width="204" height="151"/>
Photo: Cathie Coward/Hamilton Spectator
“These workers and their community were promised by their government and U.S. Steel that they would benefit from this foreign multinational’s takeover of Stelco,” stated USW Canadian National Director and ICEM Vice President Ken Neumann. “Instead, the takeover has resulted in pain and suffering for working families. U.S. Steel’s ‘net benefit’ has consisted of plant shutdowns, productions cuts, lost jobs, and labour disputes.” 
 
Twice in the past two years, U.S. Steel has defied the Investment Canada Act. Only five weeks ago, on 8 October, the company shut Hamilton’s blast furnace and idled all steel-making, citing weak customer orders. Although no workers were made redundant then, the shutdown was the harbinger to the 7 November lockout. 
 
From November 2008 to March 2009, a mere 15 months after buying Stelco, U.S. Steel laid off 1,500 of 2,000 workers at both operations as it moved production to steel mills in the US. The Canadian government is attempting to enforce the Investment Canada Act. It has brought a lawsuit in federal court against U.S. Steel for breaking job and production level promises with the 2008-2009 shutdowns. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/People/Ken.Neumann.USW.Canada[1].jpg" width="100" height="152"/>
USW Canadian National Director Ken Neumann
The government is seeking fines of up to C$10,000 per day for breaching the Act. 
 
But in court arguments, still underway, U.S. Steel used the economic recession to justify curtailments in Canadian steel production. Adding to production flight – and yet another slap at the Canadian law – near parity between the Canadian dollar and US dollar now has made a shift in production economical for the company. Slab steel made in both Hamilton and Nanticoke has been destined southward for finishing, and the weak American dollar has now made raw steel production cheaper in the US. 
 
Neumann has seen the Investment Canada Act trampled on too many times. “Whether it’s Vale in Sudbury and Labrador, or U.S. Steel in Hamilton and Nanticoke, foreign corporations show no qualms about breaking their commitments and inflicting economic pain,” he said. 
 
Neumann, the USW, and all Canadian industrial unions seek a re-write to the Investment Canada Act, revisions that give genuine social and economic guarantees to workers in the wake of corporate takeovers.

Flawed Investment Canada Act Again Seen in Steel Lockout

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
Leading negotiations from exile in Canada, General Secretary of ICEM-affiliate Los Mineros of Mexico, Napoleón Gómez Urrutia achieved wage gains for four locals of the union. Direct salaries were increased by 8% in each, apart from Section 269 in Guerrero, Mexico, where Los Mineros members saw their overall income increase 10%. 
 
The negotiations were conducted in direct dialogue with company management, with no involvement by the Federal Ministry of Labour, a further indication that the Ministry is not regarded as able to fulfil its role as a fair adjudicator. 
 
The 10% gains for Section 269 were achieved through bargaining with Canadian-owned Gold Corp, a producer of gold and silver. Direct salaries were increased 8% and additional social benefits were improved by 2%, including scholarships for workers’ children, among other advantages. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Napoleon.Gomez.Los.Mineros[1].jpg" width="205" height="137"/>
Los Mineros General Secretary Napoleón Gómez Urrutia
The 8% salary increases were achieved for members of Fraction 1 of Section 269 with employer Mineral Raw Materials in Puebla; members of Section 247, Western Jalisco, at Minera El Pilon; members of Section 16 in Coahuila, employed by coal producer Industrial Materials; and members of Section 274 at the Port of Lázaro Cárdenas at the Sadcom de Occidente company. 
 
The ICEM salutes these significant advances by Los Mineros for its members, in the face of continuing persecution by the government of Felipe Calderón. 
 
Elsewhere in Mexico, last week the ICEM-affiliated United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) launched a legal campaign, calling on the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OCHCHR) to investigate the continuing violation of Mexican workers’ rights to free association. The UE, together with the National Lawyers Guild and Canadian Association of Labour Lawyers, are soliciting letters of support from labour, legal organizations, and law firms. See more <a href="http://www.nlginternational.org/action/current.php#134">here</a>.  
 
The letters will be filed to coincide with the 100th Anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, on 20 November. 
 
View the ICEM’s letter <a href="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/138.ICEM.Mexico.OHCHR.15Nov.pdf" type="internal">here</a>, which can serve as a model letter.

Mexico’s Los Mineros Achieves Wage Gains Despite Persecution

<ul>
 <li>
 <div align="justify">Emphasis to remain on Sustainability and Just Transition work in cooperation with IMF and ITGLWF to ensure that the voice and views of Energy Industry workers continues to be heard in both intergovernmental discussions as well as in the formulation of general trade union policies on these issues. In cooperation with IMF and ITGLWF, ICEM will continue to emphasize the need for social, environmental, and economic sustainability in all energy industries including a "fair, ambitious and binding" agreement on global GHG emissions, accompanied by industrial policies that render existing industrial jobs more sustainable; create new, decent, sustainable industrial jobs; and ensure a Just Transition. </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div align="justify">Promotion of democratic energy policies</div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div align="justify">Focus on the changing energy mix (coal, oil, gas, nuclear, hydro, biofuels, solar, wind, etc.) at national and international levels. </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div align="justify">Solidarity and dialog between unions of exporting and importing countries of energy must be increased. Equally we need to strengthen cooperation at industrial and company level between energy producers and consumers as part of the process of building new international trade union structures for manufacturing industries. </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div align="justify">Expanding contacts and joint work between coal and uranium miners with the Energy Industries section </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div align="justify">Continued work on Global Framework Agreements aimed at both increasing the number of agreements and ensuring that the agreements we have are monitored and implemented more effectively. </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div align="justify">Continued support to the ICEM-INWUN Network of nuclear workers including its focus on the full nuclear “chain” from uranium mining to power generation and other uses such as medical isotopes. </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div align="justify">An increased focus on industrial networks at a regional and sub-regional level including Energy Industry-wide forums as well as individual oil, gas electric power and nuclear networks as deemed necessary and useful. Such work must be expanded in both Africa and Latin America. </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div align="justify">Support for Contract & Agency Labor expanded campaign </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div align="justify">Continued support to the ICEM-ITF Oil and Gas Workers Alliance aimed at both continuing and expanding work with the relevant Iraqi trade unions and extending the work to other countries and regions. </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div align="justify">ICEM to collect and analyze information on refinery expansions and cutbacks as well as refinery construction and closures globally with a view to a future campaign to ensure that any relocation that may be taking place is not to take advantage of reduced environmental and health and safety controls and legislation. In particular a study of refinery accidents causing serious injury or deaths needs to be carried out that also considers the impact of refinery age and use of contract or agency labour. </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div align="justify">Concentrate on women workers in the Energy Industries </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div align="justify">Focus on making work in the Energy Industries more attractive as a career choice for young people </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div align="justify">Mounting effective campaigns in support of affiliated trade unions faced with attacks by governments and employers. Iraq, Colombia and Mexico identified as immediate high priority countries for this work. </div>
 </li>
 <li>
 <div align="justify">Coordinating Global support and solidarity in organising drives in the energy sector and supporting other struggles by our affiliated trade unions against governments and employers. </div>
 </li>
</ul>

Action Plan - ICEM World Conference for the Energy Industries

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