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Colombian trade unions, together with NGOs and indigenous people&rsquo;s groups convened the largest general strike in over a decade in the South American country on 12 October. 
The strike, called by the national trade union federation CUT, was over the proposed free trade agreement with the US, and a proposed amendment now before Colombia&rsquo;s Constitutional Court that would allow President Alvaro Uribe to stand for a second four-year term next May. 
Strikers also called for an end to consistent trade union repression by the Uribe government, and for the government to take decisive action against paramilitaries, who killed 99 trade union leaders in 2004. Thousands of Colombian judicial, transport and education workers walked off their jobs to join the strike, which forced closure of schools and government offices.

Colombia&#039;s Unions Wage Successful General Strike

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Some 1,300 members of United Steel Workers (USW) in Canada are back to work at Teck Cominco Ltd. following ratification 5 October of a new three-year collective agreement. Steelworkers had been on strike at the company&rsquo;s zinc and lead operations in Trail, British Colombia, since 19 July. 
The strike had been called in order to re-gain wage and pension ground given the company in the 1990s during economic hard times. The new contract has wage increases totaling 10% over the three years, pension gains of 12%, and a C$3,500 cash payment to each worker.

Strike Settled in Canada with Wage, Benefit Gains

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Per Capita Affiliation Fees: Effective 1 January 2004, annual per capita affiliation increases from CHF 2.1 to CHF 2.4. On 1 January in the following years: 2005, 2006, 2007; annual per capita affiliation fee increases with the rate of Belgian inflation effective in those years. 
Allocation of Regional Seats/Voting Procedures: Change Article 19 to reflect the distribution of allocated seats between countries within each Representative Region shall be by vote of the member unions within that region, voting on the basis of actual, paid up membership averaged over the three full calendar years prior to the year in which the Congress takes place, or pro rata for those organisations that have joined the International since the previous Congress. 
 
Time Period Between Congresses: That the next Congress, in 2007, revert back to the month of November. 
Minimum Affiliation Fees: Change Article 10 to remove the reference to minimum service fee payment under Category D of Affiliation fees. 
 
Central Europe Category Change: An emergency resolution that did receive the signatures of five affiliates from five separate countries, this resolution granted the move of Central Europe affiliates from Category B designation under Affiliation Fees to Category C. 
 
Nuclear Power: A general motion that the ICEM promote &ldquo;best practices&rdquo; in the nuclear energy industry to ensure the highest degree of health, safety and environmental protection, that was amended to include language adopted at the ICEM&rsquo;s Rome Energy Conference with reference to the ICEM shall turn to the Atomic Energy Agency and the ILO for unified standards within the industry. 
 
ICEM to be Part of the World Peace Movement: With an amendment, the ICEM will encourage its regions to forge alliances in campaigns for peace and social justice. The amendment calls for the ICEM&rsquo;s Executive to decide the guidelines concerning such regional alliances based on ILO Core Conventions and ICEM policies, and that the respective regions will keep the ICEM informed of developments. 
 
Labour Law in Peru: A general motion that states the ICEM supports immediate approval of the New General Labour Law of Peru and that the government adhere to specific labour standards including respecting the right to organize, engage in collective bargaining and the right to strike. It also calls on Peru to ratify ILO Convention 176 on health and safety in mining, that mining MNCs respect the environment and that the country&rsquo;s Mining Levy be distributed in its entirety to communities where the mineral deposits are extracted. 
 
ICEM&rsquo;s Rio Tinto Global Union Network: Resolution proclaiming that the Rio Tinto Network will continue working on behalf on Rio Tinto workers, and will continue the united front to protest the mining company&rsquo;s anti-union practices. 
 
World Poverty: That ICEM affiliates exert influence over their national governments to eradicate world poverty by increasing the means for development cooperation, specifically through support of a minimum levy on currency speculation. 
 
Solidarity Compact: With such mobility in the labour force at present, that the ICEM study and assess the need for introducing a system where workers transferring between one country and another have the ability to consult and join the respective trade union in the new country. 
 
Global Union Reserves: The ICEM strive to intensify global union contacts with a view to promoting cooperation between national union organisations in the manufacturing sector and that the union structure of the future be made a theme of discussion at global union conferences. Also, a special study be made to highlight successful trade union cooperative efforts and mergers, and that a draft proposal of such be drawn up for the next ICEM Executive. 
 
Global Solidarity Projects: That the ICEM initiate closer cooperation with donors and that the International prepare projects ever more carefully and that the experience of the various projects be disseminated to the appropriate partners. With such projects, priority is given to regional coordination for follow-up and trade unions be identified as partners for future coordination. 
 
Global Agreements: That the work of achieving Global Agreements be intensified and that new Trade union networks be created and existing ones reinforced. This resolution calls on greater responsibility be given the regions to monitor and follow up on Global Agreements. 
 
Young Workers: That the ICEM Presidium be directed to develop a strategy of organising and promoting involvement of young workers into ICEM activities and structures. The resolution also calls for establishment of an ICEM youth committee to thus encourage follow-up at local, regional and national levels. 
 
Education and Training Curriculum: That the ICEM Presidium and Executive consider whether or not to establish a small committee charged with carrying out project work as it relates education and training of various aspects of globalisation. 
 
Burma: A resolution from Japanese affiliates firmly putting the ICEM on record condemning the military junta for its repressive regime of forced labour and denying democratic rights, and pledges the ICEM to stand with other global union federations seeking the immediate release of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and other leaders in the National League for Democracy of Burma currently being retained. 
 
ICEM Solidarity to Goodyear Workers in Guatemala: Support to the Goodyear tyre workers in Guatemala. 
 
Post Congress Activities Working Group: Endorsement and adoption by the 3rd ICEM World Congress of the document entitled Post Congress Activities Working Group, detailing priorities of the Secretariat in the next four-year period. 
 
Resolution on Colombia (Referred from Congress to Presidium; Presidium passed resolution, 9/10/03): A broad resolution calling for ICEM and other GUFs to provide necessary resources to heighten awareness to murders of workers and union officials in Colombia; denouncing government&rsquo;s position at ILO in 2003 denying fact-finding commission; urging country&rsquo;s Ministry of Mines and Energy to change privitisation policy; to censure and urge company Union Fenosa in Electri Costa and Electri Caribe to halt union busting; and to create a glass network in preparation for a future Global Agreement.

ICEM Adopts Four-year Programme

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A deadly past several weeks has brought more deaths from China&rsquo;s mines. 
On 11 November, 19 perished due to a gas explosion at Bayinsai Coal Tar Co. in Wuhai city, Inner Mongolia. That was preceded by two separate gas blasts on 6 November, claiming a total of 52 miners. At the one in Xingtai County, Hebei province, three gypsum mines collapsed killing 36 and seriously injuring another 30. The other happened at the Taiping Coal Mine, Shanxi province, where 16 died in a gas blast. 
On 8 November in Qitai County in the autonomous region of Xinjiang Uygur, 14 died in a workers dormitory where an employee of Beitahsan Coal Mine was handling explosives. Sixteen coal miners died on 27 October due to an explosion inside the Zhongxing Coal Mine near Aksu city in northwest Xinjiang region. 
Drilling through a water-eroded cave brought death by drowning to 28 miners on 4 October at Guang&rsquo;an Energy Group&rsquo;s Longtan Coal Mine in Sichuan province. A day earlier in Henan province, 34 miners died from a gas explosion at the Henan Hebei Coal Co., a joint venture between the state and Thai-based Banpu plc. And on the evening of 2 October, ten people died when they were overcome by gas after sneaking into a molybdenum mine in Liaoning province to work illegally. 
China&rsquo;s State Administration of Coal Mine Safety will have closed 7,000 mines due to safety concerns by the end of the year, and another Chinese agency posted on its website that in order to qualify for financial incentives available for safe mining practices, managers must accompany workers into mines on each shift.

More Deaths Hit China’s Mines

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ICEM affiliate National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) won a labour court ruling late last month against Continental Tyre. The court ruled the company must reinstate 40 workers who were retrenched at a Port Elizabeth factory in July. 
The unilateral decision by the company to curtail weekend shift operations and manpower in some areas of the plant last summer brought ICEM intervention with the German Works Council of Continental. 
In a separate decision also issued in late October, a South African Labour Department inspector determined that Continental violated the Employment Equity Act that seeks to correct racial imbalances left over from the apartheid era. The inspector found that Continental&rsquo;s policies have failed to assimilate blacks and whites into common work practices. The Port Elizabeth tyre factory employs 1,200. 
Meanwhile in Germany, IGBCE has won a year&rsquo;s reprieve for 500 Continental Tyre workers at the St&uuml;cken plant in Hannover. The plant was scheduled to close at the end of 2006, but ICEM&rsquo;s German affiliate convinced the company to keep the plant operating until December 2007.

NUMSA Wins Court Ruling in Continental Tyre Dispute

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All in all, South Africa&rsquo;s National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) is pleased with DeBeers&rsquo; finalised Black Economic Empowerment plan. 
But one major flaw persists: a 15% set-aside for &ldquo;key&rdquo; employees has been inserted into the agreement that has weighted the 26% stake held by newly-created Ponahalo Investment Holdings. Conforming to statute, DeBeers spun that portion of its Consolidated Diamond Mines in South Africa into a minority stake that will be 50% owned by workers and former workers, and another 50% owned by community interests and business people. 
But &ldquo;spoiling the apple-pie,&rdquo; the NUM states, is the 15% set-aside of this latter stake to key employees, which could lead to patronage or even racism. 
NUM Gen. Sec. Gwede Mantashe singled out the positive fact that Ponahalo, or &ldquo;emergence&rdquo; in the Setswana language, will be headed by a former diamond worker and trade unionist. &ldquo;This new partnership with DeBeers will lead to the betterment of workers and the communities of diamond mineworkers,&rdquo; he said.

NUM Sees Flaw in DeBeers’ Black Empowerment Deal

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ICEM&rsquo;s Social Dialogue project in Colombia has seen its first direct positive result, and glassmaker Owens Illinois is the employer that made it happen. 
ICEM and Colombian affiliate Sintravidricol had lobbied the US company to bring multiple plants of its Peldar and Vildriera Fenicia subsidiaries under a common labour agreement. Through commitment to dialogue rather than confrontation, Sintravidricol and the company successfully negotiated separate but similar agreements at two of the plants. 
The ICEM applauds both the union and Owens Illinois managers in Colombia for charting a course of respectful collective bargaining. ICEM&rsquo;s Social Dialogue project in Colombia, launched in October 2004, is in place due to strong support of Swedish unions.

Social Dialogue Project Makes Headway in Colombia

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Heavy-handed tactics by management of Stora Enso ended an 11-day strike by workers at a newsprint and publications mill in Gent, Belgium, 8 November. 
Local managers at the company&rsquo;s Langerbrugge paper mill refused any honest discussions on workplace issues, and succeeded only in placing 330 angry and victimized workers back on paper machines and other equipment. 
ICEM Belgian affiliate ABBV-FGTB, though not the largest union in the mill, led the strike for better pay and dignity on the job. Fifty-six percent of workers voted to continue the strike on 8 November, but a rule called for at least 60% strike approval if the walkout was to continue.&nbsp;

Stora Enso Managers Break Belgian Paper Strike

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Tensions remain high between ICEM affiliate Communications, Electrical &amp; Plumbing Union (CEPU) of Australia and Western Power. The issue of outside contractors is central to the dispute. 
Western Power, citing potential blackouts, has petitioned the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to terminate the 600 line and maintenance workers&rsquo; right to strike. 
CEPU has implemented industrial actions over the pay, overtime and contracting dispute, but on 31 October called off a possible action because the utility had conceded a matter over discipline&mdash;whether or not workers were entitled to union representation. Days earlier, a Western Power confidential letter leaked, detailing outsourcing plans including dividing an entire grid into zones and then allocating maintenance of those zones to contractors. 
CEPU termed the strategy &ldquo;privatisation by stealth.&rdquo; CEPU Secretary Bill Game, quoted in a Perth newspaper, said, &ldquo;Our guys are saying it&rsquo;s clearly their core work that is being outsourced. Part of what we are trying to do is prepare the industry for young people coming in, so that they can have permanency and security and not having to run all over the place doing outsourcing work.&rdquo;

Ongoing Dispute in Australia Between CEPU and Western Power

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ICEM Australian affiliates AMWU and CFMEU, along with public health groups, picketed James Hardie&rsquo;s profit announcement meeting last week in Sydney because of company delays in signing a final compensation package for victims of asbestos-related diseases. 
After heavy pressure, the building products company agreed last December to sign an A$4.5 billion package over 40 years for workers inflicted with the deadly diseases. James Hardie was announcing a half-year&rsquo;s profit jump of 67%, or A$141 million. 
The company, meanwhile, instigated, a labour dispute at two Queensland plants beginning 26 October when it locked out 110 workers, represented by Australian Workers Union (AWU), at one of the plants. Some 120 workers at the other launched an immediate sympathy strike. The dispute is over James Hardie&rsquo;s intent to divide the common enterprise agreement shared by workers of the two plants. 
AWU calls the company action one of greed, timed to coincide with passage of proposed industrial relations reform that would, among other things, severely weaken enterprise agreements. 
The 26 October lockout and strike at Meeandah and Carole Park plants near Brisbane lasted 28 hours and have been repeated twice in the ensuing weeks. Managers at the two plants have also punished workers by withholding scheduled production bonuses, amounting to A$1,200 per worker.

James Hardie Still Problematic in Australia

Archive

Colombia's Unions Wage Successful General Strike

Strike Settled in Canada with Wage, Benefit Gains

ICEM Adopts Four-year Programme

More Deaths Hit China’s Mines

NUMSA Wins Court Ruling in Continental Tyre Dispute

NUM Sees Flaw in DeBeers’ Black Empowerment Deal

Social Dialogue Project Makes Headway in Colombia

Stora Enso Managers Break Belgian Paper Strike

Ongoing Dispute in Australia Between CEPU and Western Power

James Hardie Still Problematic in Australia

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