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UPM Kymmene in Canada has heightened the discord in a five-week strike at a kraft pulp mill and coated papers mill in Miramichi, New Brunswick. The Finnish company sought and won a court order in a New Brunswick court to limit the number of picketers at the mill&rsquo;s five gates. The 700 members of Communications, Energy and Paperworkers (CEP) Local 689 are holding strong in this threat to their livelihoods with strike pay from the national CEP, plus a supplement derived from contributions from other paper-sector members of the CEP. The strike was caused when UPM Kymmene refused to table the paper industry&rsquo;s pattern agreement for eastern Canada. No bargaining has been held since the 16 December strike began.

UPM Kymmene Intensifying Paper Strike in Canada

The Transport and General Workers&rsquo; Union of UK is polling 1,200 members at two Michelin plants for industrial action. Michelin&rsquo;s wage offer in December of either 3% or GBP 650 is inadequate, and separate polling of the two workforces will begin this week. The two sites are Stoke in the Midlands with 400 T&amp;G members and Ballymena in Northern Ireland employing 800.

Transport and General in UK Ready for Industrial Action at Michelin

German affiliate IGBCE proved instrumental in getting a tyre factory in Mexico reopened. The Continental AG plant in the western Mexican state of Jalisco was closed in 2001, idling 1,400. Working with several NGOs and the United Steelworkers of America (USWA), IGBCE convinced Continental to sell the plant to a group of Mexican investors and workers as a cooperative. The tyre plant, now called Western Tire Corp./El Salto Tire Factory, will employ between 600 and 700 workers.

Continental Tyre Plant in Mexico gets New Life Thanks to IGBCE

The Australian Federal Court today ordered mining and materials multinational BHP to cease offering and entering into individual contracts with members of its Pilbara workforce. 
 
The decision is a stunning victory for the Australian unions and for collective bargaining, with the court upholding all three grounds in the unions' case. 
 
The unions submitted that there was a &quot;serious arguable case&quot; that BHP had breached the law through its industrial bribery in the Pilbara by: 
 
- Prejudicing employees because of their union membership 
 
- Inducing employees to leave their union 
 
- Breaching a term of the Contract of Employment which provided that BHP should honour collective bargaining and not enter into individual contracts. 
 
The court's decision is the biggest victory for the Australian trade union movement since the waterfront dispute of 1998. 
 
&quot;BHP should immediately abandon its disastrous deunionisation campaign and respect the right of Australian workers to bargain collectively through their unions,&quot; commented Australian mining and allied workers' union the CFMEU today. 
 
At the global level, the CFMEU is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), which has been backing the campaign for labour rights at BHP.

BHP Must Halt Individual Job Contracts in Australia

A new website launched today highlights anti-union practices by ceramics, materials and construction multinational Imerys. 
 
American union the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers (PACE) and the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), jointly announced the start-up of the website on French-headquartered Imerys. PACE is an ICEM affiliate. 
 
&quot;The website allows Imerys workers and their unions throughout the world to communicate, share information and learn about the 'union-busting' practices of Imerys in the US,&quot; said PACE President Boyd Young. 
 
Imerys has been conducting a hostile campaign against union members and supporters at its plants in Georgia and Alabama. In Sylacauga, Alabama, Imerys management hired a professional &quot;union-buster', held mandatory anti-union meetings, and showed a film which implied that US unions are controlled by organised crime and that they cause plants to be closed. Imerys is also using a &quot;secret&quot; manual, uncovered by PACE, which instructs supervisors on how to conduct the anti-union campaign. 
 
PACE has filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board alleging that Imerys management harassed, threatened and spied on union supporters. Excerpts from the &quot;secret&quot; manual, a summary of legal charges, and an interactive message board are on the website. 
 
Fred Higgs, ICEM General Secretary, stated: &quot;Imerys so far has refused to stop its anti-union practices, and we will assist US workers who are battling for union representation in whatever way we can.&quot; 
 
The ICEM held a press conference on January 20 in Brussels, together with the Belgian General Labour Federation (FGTB/ABVV) and ICEM Belgian affiliate the Centrale Generale/Algemene Centrale, calling upon the Frere family to intervene. The Frere family controls 23 percent of Imerys shares through one of its many holding companies. The ICEM set up meetings with French and British union affiliates, who also represent workers at Imerys plants, and have pledged support for the campaign.

Imerys Campaign: Unions Launch Global Website

The Botswana court case in which diamond-mining company Debswana pressed forward in order to extract maximum punishment on some 450 workers who struck last August was dismissed 24 March. An Industrial Court judge issued a detailed, 79-page ruling that said the court had no jurisdiction over criminal matters. Debswana, jointly owned by DeBeers and the government of Botswana, is on a ruthless campaign to destroy the lives of these workers who struck after the company used a new labour law to declare any strike at the 6,000-worker mining operations illegal. Debswana has forcefully evicted the strikers from company housing, and has closed educational opportunities to children of strikers in company-sponsored schools.

Mining Union Wins Court Case Against Debswana in Botswana

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About 120,000 South Korean workers staged a four-hour strike Friday, 1 April, that should serve as a prelude to a larger, nationwide strike if the National Assembly passes legislation to liberalise the use of contract and agency labour. 
Some 231 workplaces took part in the four-hour shutdown called by the Korean Federation of Trade Unions. 
In addition to the bill on the use of non-regular workers, unions are calling on the government to come down hard on companies abusing South Korea&rsquo;s so-called &ldquo;anti-illegal dispatch law,&rdquo; meant as a control to illegal employment practices but a statute continually violated by multinational companies.

Korean Workers Strike Over Labour Reform Bill

Industrial action by Transport &amp; General workers at a Michelin tyre plant in Stoke, UK, ended last week when union members voted 75% to accept a revised pay offer from management. But the union warned that Michelin would now have much work to do to regain the trust and respect of workers. Managers raised threats on the future viability of the plant at the time workers took decisive industrial action. And after revising the pay offer two weeks into the job action, the company tried to impose a voting deadline on T&amp;G&rsquo;s branch, prompting the T&amp;G to call it &ldquo;an attempt to bully our members.&rdquo; Some 500 T&amp;G members engaged in the industrial action at the tyre plant in the Midlands.

Settlement Ends Industrial Action at Michelin in UK

ICEM affiliate Power Workers&rsquo; Union (PWU) of Canada is protesting the province of Ontario&rsquo;s decision to close five coal-fired power plants by 2007. The public-sector union took ad space in major provincial newspapers to say the US$8.2 billion in shutdown costs will be a further burden on price rates&mdash;already up 25% for most provincial customers&mdash;and the answer to Ontario&rsquo;s energy future is a combination of nuclear power and better clean-coal technologies.

Canadian Power Workers Seek to Keep Power Plants Open

As the world commemorates International Human Rights Day tomorrow on the 57th Anniversary of signing the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 20-million-member ICEM, the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions, cautions that the vision and promise of the Declaration is clouded in today's world of violence and social inequality. 
<img height="86" alt="" src="" width="100" />
&quot;We must stop to reflect on the language and the meaning of the 1948 Declaration,&quot; said ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs. &quot;We must strive to rid the world of sinister forces intent on domination and hear the voices of those not free from want, and of those facing insecurity brought by global strife.&quot; 
 
Higgs reminds ICEM affiliated trade unions, as well as the global community, that the UN proclaimed a World Program for Human Rights Education last year. &quot;Education, together with meaningful employment opportunities, is the key to remove poverty and intolerance that exists in many parts of the world today,&quot; said Higgs. 
 
On the 10 December observance of International Human Rights Day, the ICEM points to both rich and poor nations, many of which have repressive governmental regimes, for holding back the fulfilment of standards enshrined in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 
 
Upholding human rights applies as well to trade union rights, which are violated by a large number of countries. The UN Universal Declaration includes, in Article 23, that &quot;everyone has the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of his interests&quot;. 
 
The ICEM points to continued restrictions on political liberties and democratic rights in Nepal as one example. Early this year, King Gyanendra placed the Himalayan country in a state of emergency and suspended free speech and assembly in efforts to stamp our political dissent. 
 
The Global Union Federation also directs attention on the military leaders of Burma and to the multinational companies doing business with the country, where slave labour continues to be used at a large scale. Specifically, ICEM questions the recent and sudden shift by the military junta of administrative governmental services from Rangoon to a remote area in which thousands of civil servants were forced to relocate without adequate living and other conditions. 
 
The ICEM also calls for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. &quot;A solution must be found, giving the Palestinians a viable state and economic justice&quot; stated Higgs. 
 
&quot;The ICEM will continue to defend human rights across the world wherever we find abuses and injustices,&quot; added Higgs. 
 
On 10 December 1948, Member States of the UN proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights &quot;a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.&quot; The UN's charter itself set &quot;universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.&quot; Fifty-seven years later, we must ask ourselves how far we have come on that legacy.

ICEM Calls for a Real Focus on Human Rights

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