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<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/CAL_en.jpg" width="146" height="66"/>
ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda used his plenary address on 8 June to the 100th session of the ILO’s International Labour Conference to denounce the labour practices of Swiss multinational Holcim, specifically against contract workers at two cement plants in India. 
 
Holcim subsidiaries ACC in Jamul and Ambuja Cement Limited in Rawaan are blatantly violating Indian labour legislation. The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act of India stipulates that contract workers may only be hired to perform non-core functions, and that those who perform the same or similar kinds of work as regular workers must receive equal treatment in terms of wages and conditions. However, contract workers in both plants are employed to carry out tasks which are fundamental to production, but receive only one third of permanent workers’ wages. 
 
Holcim-ACC has refused to respect a Chhattisgarh State High Court ruling that it is using “sham and bogus” contracts, and should regularise 27 contract workers. A recent report found that contract workers at the plant do not have basic personal protective equipment, such as gloves, boots and masks, and are denied access to medical facilities, including basic first aid, in the factory. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1106.manfred%20ilo.2.JPG" width="327" height="160"/>
Between September 2010 and March 2011, 80 members of Pragatisheel Cement Shramik Sangh (PCSS), the union representing the contract workers, were dismissed by Holcim-Ambuja. Management of the plant repeated refused to participate in conciliation efforts by the Regional Labour Commissioner at Raipur, and in early March the RLC directed the company to reinstate the workers by 25 March. Two days later, the company filed false criminal charges against leaders of the PCSS through two of its security officers. Addressing the ILO’s plenary, Warda said: “We demand that such malicious prosecution, which is an instance of union-busting and illegal labour practice under Indian labour law, be withdrawn and the management negotiate with the union on its justified demands, failing which we will be constrained to take action under international law.” 
 
Warda denounced as “deplorable” the refusal of the Labour Minister of the State of Chhattisgarth to meet with 250 Holcim workers who had travelled to Raipur to demand implementation of the High Court ruling and reversal of the criminal charges against the union leaders. 
 
The ICEM General Secretary also made clear that it is incumbent on the ILO to urgently address the trend towards precarious employment relationships that is undermining the effectiveness of ILO Conventions 87 and 98 for workers all around the globe. 
 
The <a href="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEM_Manfred_Warda_ILC_Plenary_Speech%20_8_June%20FINAL.pdf" type="internal">full text</a> of the speech is available here. 
More information about Holcim India’s practices can be found <a href="http://blogs.bwint.org/mnc/category/mnc-info/holcim/">here</a>.

ICEM General Secretary Spotlights Holcim as Contract Workers’ Abuser at ILO

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In late 2010, the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers’ Federation (ITGLWF) carried out research into working conditions in 83 sportswear-producing factories in Asia, together employing over 100,000 workers. One key finding of the research was that Contract and Agency Labour (CAL) is being routinely used by employers in the industry as a way to evade employment responsibilities. 
 
In Indonesia, ITGLWF affiliates SPN and Garteks found that agency workers are being denied basic entitlements including written contracts, pay when taking annual leave and sick pay. In factories supplying multinational sports brands, up to 80% of the entire workforce were found to be on fixed term contracts. 
 
In the Philippines, despite the fact that Article 280 of the Labour Code prohibits the use of contracts workers to perform core functions, a full 25% of workers were employed precariously. In one factory in Cavite, 50% of the workforce were employed on a contract basis. After five months, workers were forced to join the in-house manpower cooperative before being rehired on a new contract. The Filipino Labour Code prohibits the contracting out of work through an in-house agency. 
 
In both Indonesia and the Philippines, the vast majority of CAL workers were not union members. The workers who were interviewed told researchers that the main reason for this was fear that if management found out they had unionised their contract would not be renewed. 
 
A summary of the research findings is available <a href="http://www.itglwf.org/lang/en/documents/ITGLWFSportswearReport2011_000.pdf">here</a>.

ITGLWF Research Shows CAL rife in Sportswear Industry

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/CAL_en.jpg" width="146" height="66"/>
A new update has been published by the ICEM of its PowerPoint presentation on “Contract and Agency Labour and the ICEM CAL Campaign”. This regularly updated presentation, which can be used by anyone, contains not only a considerable number of updated key statistics on Contract and Agency Labour and other forms of precarious work, including the ICEM’s own statistics, but also a wide range of national and international “best practice examples,” highlighting, among other, what unions around the world have done successfully to counter the problem. 
 
The full-length English version of the <a href="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/11-05-19%20CAL%20ICEM%20PPT%20for%20website.2.ppt" type="internal">presentation</a> can be found - and downloaded - here.

New ICEM CAL Facts and Figures Overview

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ICEM-affiliated United Mine Workers’ of America (UMWA) members ratified a front-end loaded and pattern-setting US national coal collective agreement on 17 June. The contract with the Bituminous Coal Operators’ Association (BCOA) was ratified by 70% of miners voting at 125 UMWA local branches, and comes six months before expiry of an existing national contract. 
 
The five-and-a-half-year agreement replaces the existing one and takes effect on 1 July. It will cover 10,000 miners and preserves the long UMWA tradition of providing excellent salaries, pension benefits, and health care coverage to US miners and retired miners. 
 
The US$6-an-hour wage increases over the life of the contract will now serve as a national pattern in union and non-union mines across North America. More importantly, that pattern is extended to include pension benefits – including health care benefits – for tens of thousands of retired miners and for workers and retirees of many coal and energy companies outside of the BCOA. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/RobertsCecimwal.jpg" width="100" height="139"/>
UMWA President Cecil Roberts
“Our members will receive the largest pay increase in the 121-year history of our union,” said UMWA President Cecil Roberts. “In addition, we were able to preserve full health care benefits for active and retired members and their dependants, as well as preserve pensions for current and future retirees with no cuts in benefits.” 
 
The national accord includes two US$1-per-hour increases in the first six months of the new agreement, on 1 July and again on 1 January, which is an average 8.2% increase over current wages. Wages will be increased by US$1-per-hour on 1 January in each successive year until 2016. 
 
The UMWA preserved health care benefits for active and retired miners with no cuts. The agreement preserves a pension plan that sees a company-contributed US$5.50-man-hour-worked into a pension fund that ensures the benefits are paid in full. 
 
The UMWA posted several other improvements in the proposed agreement, including pay increases for shift work, increased sickness, accident, vision and dental benefits, and better life insurance terms. 
 
The ICEM termed the new collective accord exemplary on several fronts. “This contract again is verification of the tremendous power that UMWA holds for a social America,” said General Secretary Manfred Warda. “It deserves attention and wide applause.”

UMWA Wins Excellent Terms in US National Coal Talks

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Negotiations resume today and tomorrow, 20-21 June, for 4,000 Australian coal miners employed by the BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA), the world’s top exporter of metallurgical coal. Union allies, led by the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), conducted successful stop-work meetings last week that saw broad agreement among miners that they want job security and an end to work practices of Australia’s bygone WorkChoices era. 
 
The union alliance, called the Single Bargaining Unit and consisting of CFMEU, the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU) and the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union (CEPU), met yesterday to prepare for this week’s pivotal talks. 
 
The six-hour and longer stop-work meetings, held across seven BMA mines of the Bowen Basin, Queensland, from 14-17 June, saw miners vent frustration at BMA intransigence that has stalled bargaining, and company arrogance inside those talks. The two sides have been bargaining since December 2010. See ICEM <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4463-Aussie-Coal-Miners-Vote-92-to-Strike-BHP-Billiton-Mitsubishi-Alliance" type="internal">InBrief No. 182</a> report on this enterprise bargaining dispute here. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1106.cfmeu steve smyth.jpg" width="110" height="110"/>
Stephen Smyth
Union members are “sick and tired of the same rhetoric being spat out of the company’s PR machine,” said CFMEU District President Stephen Smyth to the Central Queensland News. Miners and export facility workers voted in May for lawful industrial action by better than 92%. They are vehemently opposed to BMA proposals on changes in work rosters and moves toward subcontracting that will cost jobs and equitable incomes. 
 
The stop-work meetings were attended by between 300 and 1,000 miners each in forums at BMA’s Broadmeadow and Saraji mines on 14 June, Blackwater and Gregory Crinum mines on 15 June, Goonyella Riverside and Norwich Park mines on 17 June, and Goonyella and Peak Downs mines on 18 June. BMA is a 10-year-old joint venture between two of the world’s industrial titans that produces 58 million tones annually of coking coal.

Stop-Work Meetings Raise Stakes in Queensland Coal Talks

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From the International Union of Food & Agriculture (IUF) Association
Business is doing well at Unilever’s personal products factory at Doom Dooma in the Indian state of Assam. But nearly four years after management tried to destroy the union with a punishing six-week lockout, and almost one year since the IUF and Unilever formally concluded an agreement to settle the dispute under the auspices of the UK government, the workers are still waiting for their union to be recognized as their collective bargaining agent. 
 
The workers’ mood is one of deepening frustration. How has this happened? 
 
On July 15, 2007 a dispute over the breach of a provision in the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) led to a lockout of 700 union members of the Hindustan Lever Workers’ Union. Management’s condition for ending the lockout was that the legitimate union disbands and that all workers transfer their membership to a hastily improvised construction dubbed the Hindustan Unilever Democratic Workers Union (HUSS). Workers were forced to sign forms to this effect as a condition for returning to work on September 3. Shortly after this, a CBA with the new organization was registered with the local authorities – and workers found that their union check-off was being paid to the sham union against their wishes. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0711Unileverlogo.jpg" width="150" height="161"/>
On December 5, 2007, the union protested this illegal subsidy to a non-representative trade union to management – together with a petition with 372 signatures, of names and employee numbers. 
 
In October 2007, the IUF followed a complaint about these union-busting practices with the UK National Contact Point (NCP) responsible for the OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises. Nothing happened, either in Doom Dooma or at the NCP. 
 
In June 2008, the NCP suspended the complaint because the legitimate union petitioned the Assam High Court to hold a state-supervised election to determine which organization represented the workers for collective bargaining purposes. The Court took its time. Unilever continued to illegally deduct the check-off subsidy for their own creation. 
 
In February 2010 the High Court finally got around to issuing a decision: it had no jurisdiction to supervise an election, but there was no legal obstacle to the parties agreeing on an election procedure outside the court. 
 
In July 2010, Unilever and the IUF agreed, under the auspices of the NCP, to do just that. The illegal dues check off would cease, the authorities would be asked to conduct an election under agreed conditions, and should the authorities refuse a procedure was agreed to hold voluntary elections under a third party. 
 
The deductions stopped for a month – and then resumed. Only in February this year, did illegal deductions to the yellow union definitely cease. But workers cannot use the check-off to support the work of their own union – there is no check-off. And the elections exist only on a paper signed in London, with one excuse after another invoked to explain why they don’t take place. 
 
For four long years, workers at the plant have been denied the right to support, with a contribution from their wages, the union they have repeatedly declared should represent them. By consistently refusing to implement an agreement signed by the IUF in good faith, Unilever has shown contempt for the Assam workers, for their union, for the IUF and for the UK National Contact Point. The IUF will take all necessary action in support of its members in Doom Dooma. 
 
See the full <a href="http://cms.iuf.org/?q=node/951">IUF report</a> here.

Patience Thin at Unilever-India as Company Evades Union Rights

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A strike by over 200 militants of the Metal and Allied Namibian Workers’ Union (MANWU) from 6-9 June succeeded in winning salary and housing increases at the companies of the Plastic Packaging Group, a polymer manufacturing and recycling chain of companies that operates in Namibia, Angola, and the Northern Cape of South Africa. 
 
At Namibian workplaces in Windhoek and Okahandja, striking MANWU workers forced company managers back to the bargaining table on 9 June, where they increased a previously unacceptable pay and housing allowance offer. The bargaining was aided by mediation from the Namibian Labour Commissioner’s office, which on 23 May had declared the collective agreement unresolved. 
<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Namibia.png" width="170" height="78" alt=""/>
The strike caused Plastic Packaging managers to raise a prior and combined 12% offer closer to the 19% demands of workers. The compromise agreement will give each worker an N$280 (€29) monthly pay and housing increase retroactive to March of this year. 
 
The dispute was fraught with charges and counter-charges of threats and intimidation on shop stewards who were calling for the strike. The Plastic Packaging Group is Namibia’s only maker and distributor of polymer packaging products. It consists of Plastic Packaging Namibia, Polyoak Packaging Namibia, and Namibia Polymer Recyclers, as well as Plastic Packaging Cape and Agno Plastics. 
 
MANWU is affiliated to the Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI) and the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF).

Metal, Allied Namibian Union Wins Pay, Housing Gains in Packaging Strike

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBriefAlert.jpg" width="110" height="54"/>
Branch leaders of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 7-669 in Metropolis, Illinois, took their 11-month lockout at a US uranium processing plant of Honeywell to Europe and won the support from major trade union federations. They also won support from Honeywell’s European Works Council (EWC) Chairman, who put Honeywell’s risky American lockout in front of the American company’s 30,000 European staff. 
 
The European Mine, Chemical, Energy Workers’ Federation (EMCEF), European Metalworkers’ Federation (EMF), and European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) all endorsed the struggle and called on global technology giant Honeywell to end the lockout. The plant employs 228 steelworkers, who convert yellow-cake uranium into uranium hexafluoride (UF6) for enrichment use in nuclear reactors. 
 
See a previous <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4120-Talks-Again-Fail-in-Honeywell-s-US-Lockout-of-Steelworkers" type="internal">ICEM news article</a> on this critical US labour dispute.  
 
USW Local 7-669 leaders John Paul Smith and Steven Lech, together with USW District Director Dan Flippo, were hosted by UK’s Unite the Union in Europe and met with national works council members in Germany and the European trade union federations in Belgium, as well as with members of Honeywell's EWC in Brussels. While in Germany, the USW delegation also met with leaders of ICEM affiliate IGBCE in Hannover.
The European trade union federations demand an end to the lockout, “with all workers welcomed back to their plant without reprisals, and with full agreement of the union the United Steelworkers.” 
 
The EWC member called out Honeywell’s careless contingency plan to operate the facility during the lockout, as did a Unite officer from the UK, Ian Tonks. “We believe the safety of the plant has been compromised on several occasions by the present temporary workforce,” Tonks and EWC Chairman Michael Petersen said jointly. 
 
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) gave Honeywell approval to re-start the conversion plant on 3 September 2010. Two days later, a hydrogen blast happened when accumulated hydrogen reacted with another gas during a venting process. The plant in southern Illinois also has seen uranium hexafluoride and hydrofluoric acid releases since replacement workers took up the jobs of skilled steelworkers in July 2010. The lockout started on 28 June. 
 
In Metropolis, the USW and Honeywell continue bargaining and talk more frequently than the once monthly set of negotiations in the first half of the lockout. But progress has been slow and Honeywell has been elusive and reprehensible at the bargaining table over the main issues in this long dispute – seniority, work rules, contracting out, a two-tier pension scheme, and health care costs. 
 
Following the last round of bargaining on 4 May, a Steelworkers spokesman told of the frustration: “Every time we address the company’s concerns, they say it’s not good enough and demand more. (They) change their position with respect to their own proposals, and we cannot bargain with a moving target.”

EMCEF, EMF, EPSU Condemn Honeywell Lockout in US

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
Today, the ICEM Presidium held its bi-annual meeting in Geneva, with the annual meeting of the Executive Committee scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, 24-25 May. The meetings are being held at the ILO. 
 
Besides presenting a Secretariat Report and preparations for ICEM’s Fifth Statutory Congress, the decision-making bodies will receive an ICEM Action Plan for the Congress and beyond. The Action Plan will be a working document through to the Congress, scheduled for 24-26 November 2011 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. 
 
On Wednesday afternoon, 25 May, the Executive Committees of ICEM, International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF) and the International Leather, Textile and Garment Workers’ Federation (ITGLWF) will meet in joint session to review the integration progress. IMF and ITGLWF statutory bodies are also meeting separately in Geneva this week. 
 
The three Global Union Federations (GUF) have been conducting joint task force deliberations to explore integration and to lay the groundwork for it. The task force has met four times since September 2010, with the most recent meeting – in Frankfurt on 5 May – producing a tangible outline for a new and dynamic industrial GUF. In Frankfurt, Nordic trade unions stepped forward and offered Copenhagen as the site for a founding Congress, likely to be held in 2012.

ICEM Statutory Bodies Meet in Geneva this Week

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The ICEM has decided to support the case of the Mexican union, Sindicato Único de Trabajadores de la Empresa Industria Vidriera del Potosí S.A. de C.V. (SUTEIVP) in a complaint about violations of trade union rights at the International Labour Organization (ILO). 
 
SUTEIVP represents workers employed by Industria Vidriera del Potosi S.A., (part of Grupo Modelo) a manufacturer of glass bottles used by Mexico's famous Corona beer. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1105.mex protection contract.jpg" width="125" height="160"/>
In early 2008, the company summarily dismissed 220 workers covered by a collective bargaining agreement, including the executive committee of SUTEIVP. The company then entered into "negotiations" with a "union" that they invited in to create a sub-standard agreement and to act as a shield to keep out the real union. Such practices are common in Mexico, and are known as employer protection contracts. The yellow union and its corrupt leadership are generally invisible - often unknown to the workers - until a real union attempts to organize the workforce. 
 
SUTEIVP attempted to file a complaint under the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Companies, using Mexico's OECD National Contact Point. In 2010, the Mexican NCP dismissed their case for "insufficient evidence". 
 
Manfred Warda, ICEM's General Secretary, will highlight the SUTEIVP situation in a speech to the upcoming International Labour Conference. The case will then be reviewed by ILO's Freedom of Association committee.

ICEM Support Mexican Glass Workers’ ILO Complaint

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