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A gas explosion early today in China has killed three and left 81 missing. The incident occurred at the Shenlong coal mine in Fukang city,Xinjiang province. Last week, two separate mine catastrophes killed 18 in China, and the week prior, a mine explosion killed 19. On 7 July at a licensed mine in Chishan township, Jiangxi province, a flood trapped 15 miners. A day earlier, three miners were killed due to a gas combustion explosion. That accident was at the Wangzifen coal mine in Chifeng city, North China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region. On 2 July, 19 of 24 miners working at the illegal Jiajiabao coal mine in Ningwu county, Shanxi province, died after a gas explosion rocked the mine.

Gas Blast in China Kills 81

As InBrief reported on 1 March that USWA was about to win its second card check organization with Goodyear, a majority of 350 workers at a plant in Asheboro, North Carolina, did choose the US’s leading steel and rubber union for representation. Per terms of the collective agreement between USWA and Goodyear, an independent arbitrator ruled 12 March that a majority did want the union. Goodyear manufactures steel wire for truck tyres at the plant.

USWA Wins Unionisation for Goodyear Workers through Accord

Fallout over miners’ drinking water that had been used for processing uranium ore in Australia’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’s largest uranium processing site.

Rio Tinto’s Water Contamination Makes Australian Workers Ill

Australian oil workers are battling the world’s largest energy concern to preserve a family’s way of life. Members of ICEM affiliates Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) and Communication, Electrical and Plumbing Union (CEPU) were informed by Esso, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil, and its contractors working the Bass Straight oil rigs off Victoria that it would shift to a two-week on, two-week off schedule, replacing the current seven-day roster. The unions are resisting the change. Contractors are seeking to terminate the enterprise bargaining agreement through Australia’s Industrial Relations Commission. The contract for oil rig workers expired last year and contractors backed by ExxonMobil refuse to discuss issues until workers agree to the 14 continuous days away from families.

Australian Affiliates Resist ExxonMobil’s Shift Changes

The initial conference of ICEM’s ExxonMobil Workers’ Global Network has been set for 3-4 November 2004 in the US city of Houston, Texas. US affiliate PACE is the lead union of the network. Unions representing ExxonMobil workforces are encouraged to attend. A call letter went out last month and trade union leaders can contact Gino Govender at ICEM or Keith Romig at PACE for further information.

First Global Meeting of ExxonMobil Network to Meet in US

A row is brewing between two Geneva-based international agencies over who is to codify worldwide occupational health and safety management norms. 
 
Workers' right to a global say on workplace health and safety could be under threat if the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) next month votes itself competent to tackle this complex issue. 
 
Any ISO efforts on this would cut across work already well under way within the UN's International Labour Organisation (ILO). And the ISO, unlike the ILO, excludes organised labour. 
 
The ILO sets ratifiable and binding international standards on a wide range of labour-related matters. Worker, employer and government representatives from all over the world meet on equal terms within this "tripartite" UN agency. All three groups draw up and adopt the ILO's standards, and all three monitor national governments' compliance with them once they are in force. 
 
Occupational health and safety is a major focus of these ILO norms, and organised labour has been one of the main driving forces behind the adoption and application of the standards. 
 
No such labour representation exists within the ISO, where strong corporate influence is brought to bear. The ISO is known mainly for two "families" of standards - ISO 9000 on quality management and ISO 14000 on environmental management. Through worldwide standardisation, ISO helps to speed the globalisation process by reducing "technical barriers to trade". 
 
Any ISO move into the health and safety field would also be market-driven. In fact, the voting proposal now before the ISO's national member organisations argues that it "will enable a faster response to market needs than could be met through the development of a standard in partnership with the ILO ..." 
 
The proposal comes from influential ISO member the British Standards Institute. BSI wants to set up an ISO technical committee on occupational health and safety management systems, with the aim of "developing a non-certifiable ISO standard based on [existing UK standard] BS 8800:1996". The ISO's national member organisations have until 10 March to vote on the British motion. 
 
BSI, meanwhile, got the industrialists on board by issuing a joint communique on 21 January with the multinational companies' Industry Cooperation on Standards and Conformity Assessment (ICSCA). "ILO, due to its scope and membership, is not an appropriate organisation to publish an international standard on occupational health and safety management systems," BSI and ICSCA jointly opined. "Instead, ILO is encouraged to participate actively in work in this area, through its liaison with ISO ..." 
 
If it gets the green light from its members, this will be the ISO's second attempt to wrest the health and safety brief from the ILO. 
 
At the beginning of 1997, the ISO decided to discontinue its previous efforts to to draw up occupational health and safety management system standards. This followed an ISO seminar which found that the ILO, precisely because of its tripartite structure, was the more appropriate forum. 
 
Subsequently, the ILO drafted non-mandatory guidelines on occupational health and safety management systems, drawing on a detailed review of standards and codes of practice worldwide. These guidelines are due to be tested this year. 
 
"The ILO is the proper forum for these efforts," declared Fred Higgs in Brussels today. Higgs is the General Secretary of the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), which has helped shape a number of major ILO health and safety initiatives. 
 
"We call upon ICEM member unions, and all others who believe that workers are entitled to a say on occupational health and safety management, to press their national ISO member organisations for a 'no' vote on this motion," Higgs said. 
 
"Global health and safety management standards in the workplace are not the sole prerogative of the big corporations," Higgs insisted. "Organised labour must have a full say on this vital standard-setting activity. When workplace health and safety are at stake, workers are experts."

World Health And Safety Norms: ILO or ISO

A complaint just issued by the official US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is the "first step toward possible prosecution" of Imerys, a leading materials, minerals and ceramics multinational. 
 
So says America's Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical & Energy Workers Union (PACE). The new NLRB complaint found merit in several charges lodged by the union. 
 
Imerys is the target of a global trade union campaign launched by PACE and the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). Organised labour worldwide is bolstering Imerys workers in Sylacauga, Alabama, as they fight to maintain union recognition there. The employer in Sylacauga is Imerys American subsidiary ECCA Calcium Carbonates, Inc. 
 
"Let there be no doubt - the company's vigorous effort to de-unionise even includes disdainful violation of US laws protecting workers from harassment," said Joe Drexler, PACE Director of Special Projects. "Our union allies at the company's operations in England and France can now see the stark contrast with the high-road industrial relations it practises closer to home." 
 
The NLRB complaint names ECCA Vice-President Ray Barker, Sylacauga Plant Manager Randy Sandrik and five other managers. The NLRB alleges that Barker instructed supervisors to maintain records of employees' union sentiments; that Sandrik threatened employees who supported union organising efforts; and that two supervisors interrogated employees about their union activities. All are violations of Section 8(a)(1) of the US National Labor Relations Act, which prohibits employer interference, restraint or coercion of employees exercising their rights to organise. 
 
ECCA is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Imerys USA, Inc., formed by the 1999 merger of Imetal and English China Clays, Inc. Prior to the merger, Imetal and ECC operated neighbouring plants in Sylacauga, with the Imetal facility represented by PACE. On the effective date of the companies' merger, Imerys withdrew recognition from PACE and repudiated the labour contract (collective agreement) signed by Imetal and PACE. 
 
"The issuance of this complaint by the Board puts the authority of the USA government behind the charges made by PACE and the Sylacauga employees beginning last September," said Attorney Robert Weaver, who filed the charges on behalf of PACE. "For months the company has said there was nothing to the charges, and more recently that the charges were 'insignificant.' The Board's investigation and this complaint show just how high up the corporate ladder the violations go." 
 
PACE and the ICEM have highlighted the company's hiring of professional union-busters in an aggressive drive against PACE efforts to organise workers in Alabama and elsewhere in the southeastern USA. 
 
The company drive includes obligatory meetings at which employees are shown anti-union videos, while not permitted to ask questions. In a recent trip to discuss the situation with European labour leaders, Sylacauga worker Keith Fulbright said the videos, the interrogation and company threats to cut wages and remove benefits have many workers "scared to death." 
 
The global labour campaign on Imerys is receiving strong support, notably from unions in France, where the company is headquartered and has production sites; in England, another big Imerys production centre; and in Belgium, where financiers the Frere family are major investors in the company. 
 
"Imerys is a chameleon corporation," said ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs in Brussels today. "It is preaching social partnership on one side of the Atlantic and bashing unions on the other. That is simply not on, and we have made this very clear to Imerys corporate management in Paris. Ultimately, the company's world headquarters bears the responsibility for the actions of its American management. We call upon Imerys to end immediately its anti-union campaign in the USA and to embark on a new, constructive relationship with the ICEM and its affiliated unions worldwide."

Imerys Could Be Prosecuted, US Union Says

Finnish chemical and energy workers ended their nationwide strike today, after their union Kemianliitto secured a substantial pay rise and a cut in working hours. 
 
International trade union solidarity played a major role in achieving the settlement, Kemianliitto's President Timo Vallittu said. 
 
Today, both Kemianliitto and the employers' Chemical Industry Federation approved the National Conciliator's proposal for a three-year national collective agreement, which covers around 15,000 workers in the oil, gas, chemical and pharmaceutical industries. 
 
The agreement ends a week-long strike by 5,000 workers. The union had targeted 22 key companies in a national dispute over pay and working hours. Had the conflict not been resolved by today, the union would have called out a further 8,000 workers in the plastics and chemical products sectors. 
 
Sympathy action pledged by Kemianliitto's sister union in Sweden, Industrifacket, played a key role in putting pressure on companies. From tomorrow, the Swedish union would have blocked all trade in industrial chemicals and gases between Sweden and Finland. This would have led to the closure of paper mills and metal industry plants from the weekend onwards due to a shortage of the chemicals and gases needed in processes. 
 
Industrifacket had backed Kemianliitto from the onset of the dispute, after the Swedes had been alerted by the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). Both Kemianliitto and Industrifacket are ICEM affiliates. 
 
In addition, the Finnish Transport Workers' Union and the Seafarers' Union would have blocked the transport of chemicals from tomorrow onwards. 
 
Earlier in the week, three companies in the sector had separately agreed to union demands in order to avoid losing orders and revenue. One of them had to disaffiliate from the employers' federation for breaking ranks. 
 
Kemianliitto has won wage increases of around 4 percent for its members, which is well over the general level of pay raises in this year's bargaining round in Finland. A reform of the wage structure will bring further increases in 2001 and 2002, on top of the general rises in manufacturing industry as a whole. 
 
Working hours will be cut by 8 hours or one shift annually without loss of pay. After the reduction, working hours in continuous shift work will be 34.6 hours a week, in semi-continuous shift work 35.8 hours, and in day work 36.2 hours. Further textual amendments improve the conditions for sick pay and tighten up on the use of subcontractors. 
 
Kemianliitto President Timo Vallittu praised the unity of his membership, which covers more than 90% of the blue-collar staff in Finnish oil, gas and chemical industries. He said that even though the advent of the single European currency will increase the pressure for harmonisation, the settlement proves that workers are entitled to have their share of good results in the industry, not only the executives in the form of share-option windfalls. 
 
"Special thanks go to our brothers and sisters in Sweden, " said Vallittu. "Their timely support destroyed the employers' attempts to prolong the dispute by importing from their plants in our neighbouring country to compensate for the loss of production. In today's globalised economy, we need practical international solidarity and co-ordination to ensure successful collective bargaining." 
 
The ICEM-affiliated Finnish paperworkers' union Paperiliitto is still in negotiations for a significant pay increase, shorter working hours and restrictions on the use of subcontractors.

Finnish Chemical, Energy Strike Wins Gains

In a new self-help move by some of the world's poorest workers, the National Union of Working Women (NUWW) last Friday launched a health protection scheme for its more than 300,000 informal sector workers in Chennai, India. The announcement came as the Asia-Pacific Women's Committee of the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM) was meeting there. The NUWW is an ICEM affiliate. 
 
Like most newly industrialising and developing countries, India has many "informal sector" workers who earn a pittance from unrecognised jobs on the fringes of the formal economy. The informal sector does not have access to social security or other public services. Nor is it covered by labour legislation. Overall, less than 10 percent of the Indian population have access to social security. 
 
Among the informal workforce are NUWW members working on the bottom rung of society. They do such jobs as making incense sticks, matchsticks and fireworks. Although they are making a contribution to society, they are still neglected. 
 
NUWW members pay 24 Rupees per year in subscriptions to their union. 
 
In 1981, a life insurance scheme was started. But it was discovered that, in fact, medical expenses are the biggest burden for the worst-off women workers in the informal sector. After childbirth, for example, they are heavily indebted. So the NUWW members decided to launch health programmes. They negotiated with an insurance company an annual premium of 70 Rupees, which provides coverage for up to 15,000 Rupees of medical expenses a year. It also provides them with good-quality health services and hospitalisation. 1,000 NUWW members have already registered for the scheme.

Indian Informal Workers Launch Health Scheme

Chemicals and pharmaceuticals multinational Novartis stands accused of anti-unionism and bad faith bargaining in Korea. 
 
Local subsidiary Novartis Agro Korea (NAK) has an "anti-labour business system and philosophy," says the Korean Chemical and Textile Workers' Federation (KCTF). At the global level, the KCTF is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). 
 
Last October, the KCTF organised a company-level union at NAK. The management responded by transferring all union activists away from the company's headquarters to remote branch offices. By the use of threats, it also forced 20 of the new union's original 76 members to withdraw from the union. 
 
Management then ignored all collective bargaining requests by the company-level union, which therefore mandated the KCTF to negotiate on its behalf. 
 
After a campaign which included protests from the company's customers, as represented by the Korean Farmers' Association, NAK reluctantly agreed to open negotiations with the KCTF. However, it still refused to recognise the company-level union. 
 
So union members in the sales department launched a strike on 6 March, and three days later this industrial action spread to the company's Iksan factory. After 14 days, NAK promised to bargain in good faith, and the strikers returned to work. 
 
In fact, though, the company tabled an offer below what it had proposed to the KCTF before the strike. The union reports that its members are now "getting angry" over the company's bad faith. 
 
Novartis Agro Korea's opposition to wage bargaining is in breach of Korean law, the KCTF says. 
 
NAK's reluctance to recognise the union is, the KCTF points out, partly due to the "abnormal employment system" in the Iksan factory. Only 69 of the workers there are on permanent contracts. The other 130 are temporary. This set-up is "against Korean business culture," the union says, and "reflects NAK's intention to hire and fire at will." 
 
The KCTF is continuing its campaign for real collective bargaining, and says it is confident of victory. It points out that a defeat for "NAK's illegal activities" would strengthen the hand of all Korean workers employed by multinationals.

Novartis' Bad Faith Sparked Korean Dispute

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