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The persecution of unions in Russia gives little cause for optimism. Interference by the authorities in the activities of workers' organizations is becoming more frequent and systematic. A particularly ominous trend has emerged of treating the unions as &quot;extremist&quot; groups, involving not only the procurator's office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but even the intelligence agencies. In this period of a financial crisis the state has been reducing rather than extending the protection of workers and union activists. While the employers have been increasingly aggressive in pushing for &quot;flexible&quot; employment relationships and deregulation of the labour market, the lower house of the Russian parliament, the Duma, and the Constitutional Court have repealed the provision of the Labour Code requiring the consent of the union for the dismissal of its leaders. That was one of the last legislative guarantees against discrimination which actually worked in court; with its elimination the unions have essentially lost their last defense against arbitrary action by the employers.But even so, worker activists have not given up the struggle. First and foremost, they are conducting an active battle in the courts, sometimes winning substantial victories. There have been quite a few decisions in favour of reinstating workers illegally dismissed. Another important area of activity is solidarity campaigns. Activists of the ITUA and other unions have organized mailings of protest letters through websites; they have been holding meetings and pickets, sometimes involving large numbers of participants, such as in Togliatti, where the ITUA union &quot;Unity&quot; managed to turn out 3,000 people. Finally, international support is of tremendous importance. Two years ago the IMF began a global campaign of solidarity with ITUA activists who been victims of physical violence. The latest complaint by the All-Russian Confederation of Labour to the ILO was also supported by the IMF. Despite everything, the protest movement in Russia is growing. According to official data, the number of mass actions rose to 4,900 in the first quarter of this year from 1,269 for the same period in 2009, that is an increase of 400 per cent. All totaled, almost 1.8 million people participated in them. The authorities themselves admit that the role of the unions in this action was by no means the least important. &quot;We never give up&quot; is a phrase with which Alexei Etmanov often concludes his speeches and commentaries. May it serve as a guide for the action of all trade unions in Russia.

"We never give up"Persecution of unions in Russia today

Complaint to the International Labour Organization

From the present to the future

The IMF regards protection contracts and the impact they have on workers as a violation of the right to freedom of association as enshrined in International Labour Organization Convention 87, since there is no question here of a decision freely made. Although the system of protection contracts has also been criticized by many labour lawyers in Mexico itself, the Mexican government has made no serious attempt to abolish it and to properly implement the principles of ILO Convention 87. Challenging the status of protection contracts is a controversial issue in Mexico as they are supported by local and federal government authorities and many existing trade union organizations. Of the high number of protection agreements, most involve the three largest Mexican trade union federations. These unions use protection contracts to prevent other unions from forming or negotiating a collective contract, giving complicit support to wide-spread corruption of the official Mexican trade union system. The IMF has been following the situation in Mexico with concern for some time. In response to continuous complaints from workers, trade unions in the process of formation, existing trade unions and non-governmental and human rights organizations, the IMF decided to lodge a complaint with the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association.The complaint (ILO Case No. 2694) was lodged by the IMF President in February 2009 and outlines how the labour laws and the way they are interpreted in Mexico are in violation of ILO Convention 87, a convention which all member countries are obliged to respect and one that Mexico has specifically ratified.The complaint sets out how the system of protection contracts is used in Mexico to deny workers their right to freedom of association and cites several examples, including the situation at Johnson Controls. While the complaint was lodged last year and will take some time to be considered by the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association, the problems continue in Mexico, as can be seen from the case of workers at Johnson Controls in Puebla.Many workers seek and want change so that all Mexican workers can form genuine trade unions. Just like our colleagues in COT-JC, Carmen and Jorge, who continue to work on their own account, attend training courses and fight for reinstatement to their jobs and a change in the labour situation. It is hoped that more people like Carmen and Jorge will come forward to play their part in building a transparent and democratic trade union movement in Mexico.

Mexico: The fight for a representative union

Why are 90 per cent of collective agreements in Mexico considered "protection contracts"?

The international fight against protection contracts

Complaint to the ILO

Carmen is 49 and was born and lives in Teolocholco, Tlaxcala. She has eight children, five girls and three boys, all teenagers, who either work or study. She has been married 28 years and has a secondary school education. She worked at Johnson Controls in Puebla for 11 years. She was dismissed because she joined an organizing coalition (COT-JC), refused to accept the demands being made on her on the production line, where managers want workers to work three times harder without proper remuneration, and criticized the existing union. When she was dismissed, she could not go to the union for help because the union is a paper union that is backed by the labour authorities. Companies use these unions to ensure cheap labour and no &quot;labour problems&quot;. Carmen now survives on what she earns from a few casual jobs and continues to attend training courses on issues such as women's rights and labour rights. She also works at a small family shop and lives with some support provided by her husband.Jorge is 33. He also lives in Teolocholco, Tlaxcala. He is married with three boys, all teenagers who are at present studying. Jorge has a secondary school education. He was dismissed by Johnson Controls one and a half years ago for calling on the trade union that claims to represent him to protect the workers from company harassment and arbitrary decisions made by management. Carmen and Jorge explained that employees sign individual contracts. They are told there is a collective agreement but they are never able to find out anything about it, let alone being able to have an input into negotiations about the terms of the agreement. This union has no articles of association, at least none that its members are aware of, and it never holds general meetings for the workers, although it has held occasional meetings on certain production lines or in certain departments.The union has a health and safety committee, but this committee never meets. The workers have average pay increases of two per cent per year and, according to Jorge, were given 1,000 pesos (US$82.36) as &quot;profit sharing&quot;. Carmen says: &quot;How is it possible when Chicles Adams pays its workers 40,000-60,000 pesos (US$3,290 - US$4,950) for &quot;profit sharing&quot;?&quot; Workers are entitled to six days annual holiday but many never take them because they prefer to work on those days in order to increase their incomes, however little the pay is. They also work on the bank holidays and obligatory rest days (such as national holidays) stipulated by labour laws, for the same reason - to obtain a few more measly pesos. Employees are covered by social security but the dismissed workers are not. The company pays an end of year bonus equivalent to more or less 20 days pay.There are never any elections to elect union leaders. These leaders just present themselves and tell the workers they are in charge. The union at Johnson Controls is affiliated to the Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana (CROM). Johnson Controls workers do not know how trade unions are supposed to conduct themselves but they know they want to organize themselves in order to protect themselves from the whims of their employer. That is why they want to join a union of their own choice, the Mexican Miners' and Metalworkers' union (SNTMMSRM). However the company has begun to take steps to intimidate workers to stop them from joining the SNTMMSRM.According to the Centro de Apoyo al Trabajador A.C. (CAT), a labour support centre, workers at the company have been fighting for more than two years and learning about human and labour rights, in order to be able to exercise their right to freedom of association. The workers have formed an organizing coalition at the company (COT-JC). In 2007, some workers participated in the Comisión Revisora del Reparto de Utilidades (Profit Sharing Review Committee) and also demanded a new collective agreement but were dismissed without valid reason in June 2007. The company and the &quot;paper&quot; union in place have continued to harass workers since then and more workers have been dismissed.CAT has revealed that the company is currently doing well. Production has increased and hours of work have increased to almost two full shifts. Some departments have begun to work on Sundays. The plant is working at 90 per cent of capacity, partly to ensure supply of parts for the new Volkswagen A6 model. The first hundred seats, made from leather, vinyl and cloth, came off the production line on April 16. The production managers, Jorge Sambrano and Ignacio Betz called a meeting with workers to thank them for their efforts and to encourage them to work harder in order to achieve the target of 1,200 units per day by the beginning of January 2011. Current production is 800 seats per day for VW and 200 seats per day for Nissan. Sergio Beltrán, secretary of the SNTMMSRM, said he was taking the steps necessary for workers at Johnson Controls to join the SNTMMSRM and hoped to be able to talk to company management. He said it was important for the international union federations, including the IMF, to act as mediators and arrange a meeting with the company.

&quot;Paper&quot; trade unions with no meetings or articles of association

The seriousness of this issue has led to international concern and a number of organizations are working to stop this practice at both the national and international levels. The International Campaign Against Protection Contracts in Mexico was created in March 2007 and its members include Mexican institutions such as the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and international trade union organizations like the IMF.The campaign's main objectives are to identify, denounce and eradicate protection contracts. The campaign's basic argument is that such practices lead to the establishment of bogus labour relations, bogus trade union organization and bogus collective agreements, a system in which control is exercised by pseudo-trade union leaders and corrupt employers. Trade union legislation makes this possible and makes illegitimate acts legal.Protection contracts damage the trade union movement's credibility and have a negative impact on living conditions. With no real union to represent them, the workers at Johnson Controls have not been able to effectively defend their interests. Johnson Controls in Puebla employed 800 workers two years ago but now employs 600. Half the workforce is now contracted by an outside agency called One DIGIT. Women have to stand all the time while working because there are no chairs on which to rest, and the working day is more than ten hours. One year ago, the company stopped the so-called &quot;lunch box&quot; of food provided when working late and do not allow workers to make telephone calls during working time. One year ago, one vehicle turned over while transporting workers from shift three, including pregnant women. This accident was caused by driver fatigue.

The situation at Johnson Controls is not an isolated case. More than 90 per cent of registered trade union agreements in the country are &quot;protection contracts&quot; signed by &quot;paper&quot; unions, providing protection for the company not the workers.&quot;Protection contracts&quot; are bogus collective agreements that prevent democratization and collective bargaining. They are signed behind the backs of the workers by employers and intermediaries that are registered by the labour authorities and whose main objective is to prevent the emergence of genuine and representative trade unions. They also keep pay and benefits low, restrict workers' rights and ensure labour relations that are advantageous to the company.Characteristics of protection contracts include: <ul><li><div align="left">They are reached between trade unions and employer representatives without being discussed or approved by the majority of workers covered by the same;</div></li><li><div align="left">They are reached by illegitimate parties that are not elected democratically by a majority of the workers they claim to represent;</div></li><li><div align="left">They are administered and/or revised without reference to a majority of the workers; and</div></li><li><div align="left">In some cases, workers are unaware that a &quot;trade union&quot; is representing them. </div></li></ul>Although Mexican law allows there to be more than one trade union in a single company, this is rare. The corrupt and anti-democratic system, combined with anti-trade union management policies, make genuine unionization impossible. The system perpetuates itself because trade unions are required to request official recognition from the appropriate Conciliation and Arbitration Board (JCA), which is composed of representatives of the government, employer and the existing &quot;trade unions&quot; that sign protection contracts. Board members have an interest in maintaining the status quo and they create many obstacles to the registration of new independent trade unions. Consequently, in practice it is impossible to replace these &quot;paper&quot; trade unions, even though they do not have the support of the workers they pretend to represent. More serious still, workers who try to set up an independent trade union are often subjected to reprisals, intimidation, threats, violence, dismissal and blacklisting.When establishing a new enterprise, many companies conclude a protection contract with a &quot;paper&quot; union before the first employee is even hired, effectively preventing employees from choosing the trade union of their preference. In most cases, these &quot;paper&quot; unions belong to a corporate lawyer who has officially registered the union. These &quot;paper&quot; unions are a legal simulation which defraud workers of their rights and represent a real obstacle to freedom of association. The &quot;paper&quot; unions go on to make a profit and earn money from the unprotected workers with companies paying between one to 3.5 per cent of the workers' salaries to the owners of the &quot;paper&quot; union.Protection contracts allow companies to take advantage of the absence of genuine trade unions and to exploit workers, violate their rights and maintain political and economic control over the workforce.Protection contracts in Mexico were not a neoliberal initiative. They are a manifestation of anti-trade union policies that date back to the beginning of the 19th century when the government began to introduce legislation to control the trade union movement. During the 1960s, a few genuine trade unions tried to extend the principles of autonomy, freedom of association and trade union democracy but were constantly prevented from doing so by the labour authorities and legislation. Protection contracts became prevalent with the arrival in recent times of the transnational companies and assembly (maquila) plants in the country.

Why are 90 per cent of collective agreements in Mexico considered &quot;protection contracts&quot;?

Text / Valeska Solis &amp; Julio Pomar Translation / Chris WhitehouseCarmen Sánchez Juárez and Jorge Isidoro Aguilar Lara are fighting to create an authentic trade union for themselves and their fellow workers at the United States transnational company Johnson Controls. They want a union that genuinely represents them, fights for them and with them, and does not simply pretend to do so, like the &quot;paper&quot; unions that for many years have operated at Johnson Controls and elsewhere in Mexico.Carmen, Jorge and six of their colleagues were dismissed by Johnson Controls one and a half years ago because they demanded a review of the pay provisions of the collective agreement covering workers at the company. They had also started to get informed about their rights and called on the trade union that claims to represent them to protect them against company harassment and arbitrary management decisions. They discovered that the collective contract was actually a protection contract and the union claiming to represent them was no more than a &quot;paper&quot; union. In response, the company claimed it was no longer able to continue paying these six workers, ignoring the fact that four of the workers concerned are single mothers in urgent need of an income, however low the pay is at Johnson Controls. Johnson Controls de Puebla is a subsidiary of a U.S. transnational company based in Milwaukee, which owns another 90 companies in the U.S., Mexico and other countries. In Puebla, the company manufactures seats for Volkswagen and this involves cutting and sewing cloth and leather, upholstering, making moulds and assembling polyurethane seat bases. The company employs about 600 workers in Puebla. Working conditions are poor and shifts are 12 hours long. Workers are contracted to work eight hour shifts but are forced to work longer hours from Monday to Saturday, while the company quibbles about overtime rates. Women receive lower pay than men for the same work. This serious discrimination against women is theoretically prohibited by the Mexican Constitution, the Federal Labour Law and the Anti-Discrimination Law but employers and labour authorities in every single state of the federation conspire to violate these laws, leaving no one to protect the victims of such workplace abuse. The company has a 5,000 peso (US$410) life insurance policy for every worker but contributions to this policy are automatically deducted from wages. In addition, trade union dues are automatically deducted from wages every week - 32 pesos (US$2.60) out of a daily wage of 198 pesos (US$16.25).

National trade union organizations, workers, non-governmental organizations and international trade union federations like the IMF are all fighting for trade unions that genuinely represent Mexican workers: unions that negotiate collective agreements, promote freedom of association and protect workers' interests.

GLOBAL: After years of strong criticism by trade unions, the World Bank has finally instructed its staff to stop using the labour indicators of its &quot;Doing Business&quot; flagship publication that gives higher rating to countries with the lowest workers&#039; protection. These have been used to push developing countries to adopt strict labour market deregulation policies as recipe for development and conditions for eligibility for loans and grants.At a time of global crisis, with the institutions of finance being severely criticised as part of the causes of the present problems that hit most severely workers in all countries of the South and the North, the World Bank is making a significant move that, if concretely translated quickly and effectively in its policy recommendations, can mark an important change with positive effects on employment policies in developing countries. The World Bank communiqué issued on April 27 stresses the importance of &quot;development goals&quot; such as &quot;social safety nets to shield vulnerable parts of society from intolerable risk and protection of rights for workers and households as well as for firms&quot;.The Bank is also scaling up its work on social safety nets, on &quot;issues of access to benefits such as unemployment insurance and social security&quot;. With regard to the Doing Business indicators, the Bank will adjust the scoring in its annual report &quot;regarding provisions for fixed term workers and standards for severance payment, mandatory days of rest and night work and holidays, and minimum wage levels, in order to accord favourable scores to worker protection policies that comply with the letter and spirit of the relevant ILO Conventions, recognizing that well-designed worker protections are of benefit to the society as a whole&quot;. Furthermore &quot;a guidance note will be issued clarifying that the indicators do not represent World Bank policy and should not be used as a basis for policy advice or in any country program documents that outline or evaluate the development strategy or assistance program for a recipient country.  The note will emphasize the importance of regulatory approaches that facilitate the creation of more formal sector jobs with adequate safeguards for employees&#039; rights and that guard against the shifting of risk from firms to workers and low-income families.....We will convene a working group including representatives from the ILO, as the international standard setting body, trade unions, businesses, academics and legal experts.....to advice on revising the EWI and on the establishment of a new worker protection indicator.......and on labour market and employment protection issues -- with a view to creating regulations that help build robust jobs with adequate protection in the formal sector that can withstand future crises.     The development of a new worker protection indicator (WPI).......could cover such matters as how a country is adhering to core labour standards and using law, regulation and other instruments of government to ensure that workers are adequately protected, including in the event of unemployment&quot;.The International Metalworkers Federation will actively monitor, together with the other global unions, the translation of these welcome developments into practice.

After years of strong criticism by trade unions, the World Bank has finally instructed its staff to stop using the labour indicators of its "Doing Business" flagship publication that gives higher rating to countries with the lowest workers' protection.

Surprise: labour market deregulation is no recipe for development!

A three year women's organizing project, developed by the International Metalworkers' Federation has led to greater increases in the number of women members, shop stewards and leaders of Serikat Pekerja Metal Indonesia (SPMI). <h3>Women's membership increases</h3>Widespread precarious employment conditions has resulted in rapid turnover of women workers. However, SPMI managed to increase the number of women members from 29,780 in 2003 to 42,272 in 2006 by organizing new plants and enlisting others into the union.SPMI also focused on changing its union structures to enable increased participation of women. At its Congress in December 2006, SPMI adopted new rules to allow for a minimum of 30 per cent representation of women at all levels of the union and elected women onto its National Board for the first time. The number of women leaders at the branch level also increased from 18 per cent in 2003 (8 out of 43) to 25 per cent in 2006 (27 out of 108). In addition, SPMI established a Women's Directorate to cater for the needs of women members.This IMF project was funded by the Swedish trade union centre LO-TCO and supported by IMF affiliates Sif and IF Metall.<object></object>

Organizing women workers in Indonesia

In 2002, metalworkers around the world took part in two coordinated global days of action calling for the release of more than fifty imprisoned Korean trade unionists, including Korean Metal Workers&#039; Federation (KMWF) President Mun Sung-hyan and the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) President and former metalworkers&#039; leader, Dan Byung-ho. <h3>Arrested for union activities</h3>In November 2001, Mun Sung-hyan took part in the International Metalworkers&#039; Federation&#039;s World Congress in Sydney, Australia. Soon after his return to Seoul he was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison. His alleged crime was that he had organised strikes and taken part in other trade union activities. Other Korean trade unionists were also jailed during the government crackdown.Together with its Korean affiliates, the IMF organised two days of action calling for the release of all trade unionists from Korean prisons.<h3>IMF affiliates unite around the globe</h3>An unprecedented level of action was taken by IMF affiliates around the globe including Seoul, Mumbai, Berlin, Washington, Pretoria, Sydney, Tokyo, Moscow, Rio de Janeiro and Bangkok. In total, metalworkers in 65 countries participated.Nine weeks after the first global day of action, Mun Sung-hyan was released from prison. One week after the second day of action the president of the Korean Daewoo autoworkers&#039; union, Kim Il-sup, and vice-president, Kim Sung-gap, were also set free.Early the following year Dan Byung-ho was also finally set free.The release of these trade unionists was a victory for workers around the world who took part in solidarity actions in support of Korean trade unions. Those who were freed went back to work, planning important actions to further the rights of Korean metalworkers.

Release Korean Unionists!

If you have questions about the International Metalworkers' Federation or require information about unions or metalworkers, please write to us. We strive to answer enquiries promptly. International Metalworkers&#039; Federation 54bis, route des Acacias Case Postale 1516 CH-1227 Geneva Switzerland Telephone: + 41 22 308 5050 Fax: + 41 22 308 5055 E-mail: <a href="mailto:info@imfmetal.org">info@imfmetal.org</a>

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