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<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39" alt=""/>
ICEM Nigerian affiliate the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) is demanding the immediate release of its 10 members who were aggressed and arrested at work at 10.30am last Thursday, 25 November. 
 
The employees of oil multinational Halliburton did not know who the armed men were who arrived at company offices in Lagos, after attacking the security guards at the entrance. The men were officers of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), investigating the bribery and corruption scandal around Halliburton and the multi-million dollar bribes paid to top government officials in exchange for the contract to build Africa's first liquefied natural gas plant in Bonny, Rivers state. 
<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0805BanatundeOgunPengPres1.jpg" width="100" height="150" alt=""/>
PENGASSAN President Babatunde Ogun
It is widely suspected that the bribery and corruption reached the very top levels of government and the establishment in Nigeria, including three former presidents. This is another reason why PENGASSAN are angered by the arrests of their members. 
 
PENGASSAN President, Comrade Babatunde Ogun said, “Many Nigerian names appeared on the Halliburton investigating list in the United States and Nigeria. Names of three former heads of states, Late Gen. Sani Abacha, Gen.Abdusalami Abubakar (rtd) and President Olusegun Obasanjo as well as the ministers of Petroleum under their regimes were implicated as recipients of bribes. Why is it that it is only innocent Nigerians that the EFCC picked?” 
 
Those arrested and brutalised by the EFCC are Jarvis Peter, Hans Kempeneers, Liliy Adiogu, Lawal Yakubu, Iseoluwa Ogundele, Efe Collins, Isa Saibu, Barnabas Iroegbulem, Chi-Ukpai, and Theodore Okonkwo. 
 
The association also condemned the barbaric nature with which the anti-corruption agency carried out its operations at Halliburton office on November 25, 2010, by beating the workers and molesting the female staff, which have been reported by Branch Chairman of the union Abel O. Agarin.

Police Brutally Arrest Innocent PENGASSAN Members

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
ICEM Swedish affiliate IF Metall launched a new campaign ‘Strong Together’, 20 November, to highlight the strength of their local trade union reps, and to illustrate that there is power in unity. That message was made with members picking up cars at the locals in the cities of Kiruna, Umeå, Eskilstuna, Trollhättan, Gothenburg and Malmö. 
 
“Alone you cannot lift a car, but together we can,” said Jan Thelin, a shop steward at LKAB mine in Kiruna, and one of the members who lifted a car. “Imagine what more members can do together!” 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1011.if metall campaign.png" width="141" height="146"/>
The campaign will be continued until the IF Metall Congress in June 2011. See videos of the events and further information on the campaign <a href="http://www.ifmetall.se/ifmetall/home/home.nsf/LUUnique/CADBBFCAB43A8C90C12577E000299F9D?OpenDocument">here</a>.  
 
The first group of IF Metall members to be the focus of the action was the 14,500-strong health and safety representatives. Those representatives conducted a hazard investigation before the lift.

IF Metall Campaign 'Stronger Together'

By a vote of 521 to 398 on 6 December, members of Sindicato de los Trabajadores de Collahuasi voted to end a 32-day strike against the world’s third largest copper miner, located in Chile. The Union of Workers of the Collahuasi Copper Mine and Doña Ines de Collahuasi, owned jointly through 44% stakes each by AngloAmerican and Xstrata, resumed talks early last week with help from Roman Catholic Prelate Marco Antonio Órdenes, Bishop of Iquique. 
 
The union's Second Director, Carlos Daniel Rojas, told the ICEM early today that Bishop Órdenes succeeded "in opening the door" with the company when there appeared little hope that talks would resume, and the union took it from there to work out a settlement. 
 
The final resolve came in negotiations over the weekend and early Monday, 6 December, with an acceptable compromise. 
 
The vote Monday night ends the longest private-sector Chilean copper strike, surpassing one of 26 days in 2006 at the Escondida mine, owned 57.5% by BHP Billiton and 30% by Rio Tinto. 
 
Terms of the settlement will give the 1,551 miners of Collahuasi a wage increase of 16.3% over a 42-month period, and a bonus payment of 14 million pesos (US$28,733). Other key issues in the strike, which began on 5 November, were company-paid health care and education costs for miners’ children. The union did make advances in both these areas from prior levels paid by the company. 
 
The strike was marked by a united workforce led by President Manuel Muñoz and Second Director Rojas. The miners of Collahuasi took up residency in the Santa María School in Iquique, and staged peaceful and near-daily manifestations in that city. Those demonstrations were strategic in order to draw attention to their cause of gaining adequate health coverage and educational stipends from an employer that posted net profits in 2009 of US$1.56 billion due to high copper pricing. 
 
Last night’s vote took place inside the Santa María School. Collahuasi miners were scheduled to return to work high in the Atacama desert of Chile’s northern Region I, some 285 kilometres from the port city of Iquique, today, 7 December. 
 
"The Collahuasi miners and their families showed strength and fortitude in a dignified and peaceful way against an enterprise intent on maintaining production and turning profits," said ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda. "For that, they have earned the pride and admiration of the world's mining unions." 
 
Coverage of this heroic strike, taken from the ICEM website, can be found <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4117-Chile’s-Collahuasi-Copper-Strike-Now-in-Crucial-Stage" type="internal">here</a> and <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4102-Miners-Dig-In-at-Chile’s-Collahuasi-Copper-Strike" type="internal">here</a>.

Strike Ends at Collahuasi Copper Mine in Chile

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/CAL_en.jpg" width="110" height="50"/>
A sit-in strike by contract workers at the Hyundai Motor factory in Ulsan, South Gyeongsang, South Korea, which at times turned violent, ended on 9 December. The 25-day strike ended when three unions, including one representing the contract workers, met and agreed to halt the strike on condition that management would negotiate in good-faith to make the workers full-time Hyundai staff. The strike and blockade of production was over the auto manufacturer’s refusal to grant permanent work status, in accord with a July Korean Supreme Court decision. (See related story <a href="/index.php?id=73&la=EN&doc=4149" type="internal">here</a>.) 
 
The workers, some 550 in total who are members of the Hyundai Motors Irregular Workers’ Union, began sit-in actions at Ulsan on 15 November and are demanding an end to discrimination in wages and job conditions. The militant strike action was started by some 30 workers after Hyundai sought to replace a terminated seat-assembly subcontracting company called Dongsung with another, and insisted that the contract workers sign individual contracts with the new company. 
 
In the weeks prior, some 1,900 contract workers at Hyundai, buoyed by the 22 July Supreme Court decision stating they must be made permanent and direct workers of the car producer after two years employment, joined the Korean Metal Workers’ Union (KMWU). With the change in subcontractors, Hyundai also attempted to coerce the workers to withdraw from the KMWU. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1012.CAL Korea Hyundai Motor.jpg" width="250" height="160"/>
The strike had been met by the use of beatings and tear gas by local police brought in by the world’s fifth largest car-maker. At the outset on 15 November, Hyundai managers attacked the sit-down strikers with heavy metal fittings and iron frames. Scores of contract workers have been arrested, and the company has filed both criminal and civil lawsuits against the strikers, including a civil one against 419 strikers seeking 16.2 billion (US$14.1 million) for lost production. One contract worker attempted to set himself on fire during a plant gate rally on 20 November. 
 
At times, three assembly lines had been blockaded by angry contract workers, costing Hyundai some 24,000 units of production. As of early last week, contract workers were occupying one line at Ulsan, the world’s largest integrated automobile manufacturing facility, thus cutting production of the company’s newly-unveiled Accent model, as well as Click and Verna subcompact models. 
 
Union leaders at Ulsan had been seeking dialogue with Hyundai Motor management in order to resolve the ever-growing number of issues, but reportedly senior management would not meet until the strike actions cease. 
 
The strike by contract workers did catch the attention of autoworkers throughout the world. On 6 December, the American United Auto Workers’ (UAW) Union held a manifestation attended by 150 people at the Hyundai-Kia America Technical Center in the US state of Michigan in support of the Korean autoworkers.

25-Day Sit-In Strike by Hyundai’s Contract Workers Ends 

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Last week, on 17 February, US-based International Paper Co. announced closure of its Inverurie mill following a 90-day consultation period with ICEM UK affiliate Unite the Union. The closure of the Aberdeenshire, Scotland, mill will happen at the end of March, and will cost 371 paperworkers their jobs. 
 
However, Unite and local politicians, during the mandatory consultation period, did find potential buyers for Britain’s last uncoated freesheet paper mill. But International Paper (IP) refused to even consider selling the mill. 
 
Unite Assistant General Secretary Tony Burke said it was IP’s intention all along to close the site and replace British paper production with paper made elsewhere. 

<img height="97" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0810PaperRollArt.jpg" width="160"/>
That also is the position of a former owner of the mill, Thomas Tait, whose family began papermaking in the village of Inverurie in 1852. Tait, who sold the mill to another American paper company in 1987, told an Aberdeen newspaper late last week that IP received an offer from another paper manufacturer that could have saved the jobs, and perhaps even created more job opportunities. 
 
“I know they were not willing to sell to another paper-making operation which made an offer,” said Tait, who also told the Aberdeen Evening Express he had been involved three times in various plans to re-purchase the mill. “It was an absolutely straightforward ‘No,’ no discussion whatsoever.” Tait said the Inverurie example should be used for a change in British legislation, mandating a sale to occur when a buyer intends to produce the same or a similar product. 
 
Meanwhile, IP presented Unite and Scottish paperworkers with an inferior redundancy package, pay and benefits and job retraining that the union would not consider bringing to union members. Talks on that issue between Unite and IP will continue this week. 
 
“International Paper is one of the biggest paper-making companies in the world and can afford to pay decent severance terms given the loyalty and dedication of our members,” stated Burke.

International Paper Ends Consultation, Announces Closure to Scottish Inverurie Mill

<img height="39" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" alt=""/>
South Africa’s National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) estimates that between 20,000 and 50,000 jobs will be lost in the country due to the world financial crisis. No mining sector has been spared, but perhaps worst hit is the platinum sector. 
 
In recent days, platinum mining house Lonmin announced 4,000 job cuts, 3,000 at its Western Platinum mine and 1,000 at the Eastern Platinum mine in Marikana. The mining house also plans to suspend operations at its Baobab shaft in Limpopo, causing untold job losses. 
 
These announcements were made by Lonmin CEO Ian Farmer, who claimed the redundancies had been agreed to with unions. But NUM spokesman Lesiba Seshoka countered that claim, saying it was false, accusing the company of bad planning in the run-up to the start of the crisis last September. 
 
In February, Anglo Platinum CEO Neville Nicolau hinted during a call related to the company’s financial results that 10,000 jobs would be cut because of the economic climate. Again, the NUM was critical, citing bad planning and the fact that corporate chieftains publicly proclaim job losses before even consulting with the union, which serves only to frighten miners. 

<img height="150" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0610NUMFransBaleni1.jpg" width="106" alt=""/>
Frans Beleni
“When platinum prices reached US$2,000 per ounce in May 2008, you could see the reckless spending perpetrated by management,” said NUM General Secretary Frans Baleni on a recent South African radio programme. “If true leadership prevailed, we could have prevented this bloodbath of job losses,” added Baleni. 
 
Platinum is currently selling for about US$1,070 per ounce. 
 
Under Section 189 of South Africa’s Labour Relations Act, termed the “retrenchments clause,” management must confer with labour in order to give an accounting of reasons behind any redundancies. An employer must prove there is a need to cut jobs, otherwise the matter lands in the courts. 
 
One successful intervention occurred at a Simmer & Jacks gold mine in Buffelsfontein in February. The junior miner sought to cull 500 jobs from a production staff of 5,000. But with the help of South Africa’s Commission for Conciliation, Mediation, and Arbitration, and full dialogue with trade unions, those cuts were reduced to five senior contract workers, with 65 other contract workers becoming permanent staff. 
 
In return, unions, led by the NUM, agreed to miners working one extra shift per month throughout 2009. 
 
In the gold mining sector last week, 4,000 NUM members at Pamodzi Gold went on strike at two mines over non-payment of wages. Miners at the Steyn mine in Free State and at a mine in East Rand began strike action on 6 March after receiving only 20% of their wages for February. 
 
It was the second time this year that Pamodzi faced a shut-down because of its financial outlook. In January, 2,000 miners stayed away from the Free State operation because water supplies had been cut due to unpaid bills. On 5 March, the company announced it was seeking to secure a bridge loan to pay its workers and creditors until its UK and German financiers came through with a loan.

South African Miners Hard Hit by Global Financial Crisis

<img height="39" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100"/>
A strike by 190 Turkish paperworkers, members of ICEM affiliate Tümka-İş, against Procter & Gamble is now 16 days old, with little progress made in recent negotiations. The wage dispute began 21 February at a factory in Gebze, just outside of Istanbul, where the American company manufactures paper towels, tissue, and hygiene products, including nappies. 
 
Strikers and supporters held a rally at plant gates on 26 February, where messages of support were read from a number of trade unions from around the world. The ICEM, which generated the support, also lodged a protest with Turkish management of the company. That letter can be found <a href="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0903.Turkey.p&g.pdf" type="internal">here</a>. 
 
On the day of the manifestation, managers revised upward their wage offer, but not significantly. They also told leaders of Tümka-İş they were content to allow paper products once marketed from the Gebze plant to originate from expanded Procter & Gamble operations in Poland. 

<img height="132" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0903ProcGamBTurkPix.jpg" width="180"/>
Gebze Manifestation, 26 February
A prior two-year labour agreement expired on 31 August 2008. 
 
The wage revision proposal 11 days ago saw the company move its offer from no increase to 2% for the first six months, followed by three increases, separated in six-month segments, of two-thirds the rate of Turkish inflation. The union is seeking an 8% increase for the first six months, and revised its proposal for the remaining three periods to match Turkey’s inflation rate. 
 
Tümka-İş General President Kemal Yilmaz and Ergün Tavşanoğlu, a union Executive Committee member who is the central Tümka-İş leader at the Procter & Gamble plant, expressed gratitude to the family of ICEM trade unions in the Paper and Packaging sector who extended their support at the outset of the strike.

Little Progress Made to Resolve Two-Week Procter & Gamble Strike in Turkey

<img height="39" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100"/>
The Serbian union, EPS Trade Union, has made a stand for some 7,200 displaced Kosovo workers, who lost their jobs from state-run Electric Power Industry of Serbia (EPS) in 1999 due to war. Since then, unemployed workers have received 60% of median wages from the utility. 
 
But beginning in January, a government decree from the Ministry of Energy and Mining ordered that amount reduced to the minimum state-level wage, reneging on an agreement it had with the union in a 2008 EPS business plan. On 19 February, 5,000 of those workers showed up in freezing temperatures and a sleet storm in Gracanica and Priluzje to protest the cuts. EPS Trade Union President Milan Đorđević intervened to block the rollbacks, and the union has pledged to be vigilant in retaining the 60%. 

<img height="142" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0902.Milan.Djordjevic.jpg" width="130"/>
Milan Đorđević
Separately, EPS Trade Union has issued a five-day deadline for earnest negotiations to begin with the government over several issues involving the public utility’s mines and businesses. One of the chief demands is fulfilment of an agreement signed with the government on 23 October 2008 and another is dialogue on the 2009 business plan. 
 
Other demands include full consultation on several operational issues, as well as possible privatisation plans by EPS. 
 
The union will hold a press conference tomorrow in Belgrade to discuss the government’s failure in February to address the demands and will follow that up with a protest on Thursday, 12 March, in front of the Government of Serbia building in Serbia’s capital city.

Serbian Union Preserves Wage Payments for Kosovo Electric Workers

<img height="39" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100"/>
Fair Work now will replace former Prime Minister John Howard’s draconian WorkChoices as the industrial relations law of the land in Australia. That was assured this past Friday, 20 March, when Parliament’s Senate passed the Labour Government initiative.
But it didn’t come without a political struggle. A compromise was struck between Labour and its allies and the Liberal Party, most notably over the definition of a small business and the inter-connected protection against unfair dismissals. 
The compromise sets the small business definition at 15 full-time workers, part-time workers not included for the first 18 months, or until 1 January 2011. But thereafter, workers with one year of service – no matter; full-time, part-time, or casual – will have protection. Under Howard’s WorkChoices, businesses with fewer than 100 workers were exempt from the unfair labour dismissal statute. 
<img height="75" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/AustraliaFLAG.gif" width="150"/>
The Labour Party also compromised on some restrictions to union access to worksites and union access to certain types of information. In all, 231 Senate amendments were submitted to a Fair Work House version, which passed in December 2008. But the new law is fairer and gives workers far better protections in an economic downturn than what was on the books under Howard. 
It creates ten national job standards, charters collective bargaining as the main tenet in labour-management relations, and creates a national industrial umpire with enforcement powers, the Fair Work Commission, thus replacing six Howard-era agencies that essentially were charged with removing workplace regulations. 
It also spells out workers’ rights to representation; access to arbitration; establishes a 38-hour workweek; grants four weeks annual leave; and allows the practice of flexible work schedules and conditions to take hold. Additionally, it sets out a standard process for regularly raising the minimum wage. 
The unfair dismissal statute, plus implementation of good-faith enterprise bargaining takes effect 1 July 2009, while the remainder of the provisions take effect 1 January 2010. 
<img height="113" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0811.sharon.burrow.jpg" width="85"/>
Sharon Burrow
Sharon Burrow, President of the Australian Council of Trades Unions (ACTU), called the Senate passage a “major step forward for working Australians,” marking “a historic moment in restoring workers’ rights. After a decade of attacks on working people by the Liberal and National Parties the tide has turned,” she said. “We can take pride in what we have achieved.”

Australia’s Senate Hammers Final Nail into WorkChoices Coffin

<img height="39" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" alt=""/>
The ICEM supports the actions of its Ukrainian affiliate, the Coal Mining Industry Workers’ Union of Ukraine (PRUPU), as it announced a series of mass rallies throughout the country, protesting the situation facing miners in an industry in crisis. 
 
The decision to commence with mass protest actions on 25 March was taken by the union’s Shop Stewards at the 3rd Plenary Meeting of PRUPU’s Central Committee, held on 27 February. Delegates resolved to launch the mass protest actions, starting this Wednesday, including the picketing of the seats of the state authorities in Kiev and other major coal-mining towns in the eastern Donbass region. 

<img height="100" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Victor Turmanov.jpg" width="100" alt=""/>
PRUPU President Victor Turmanov
Ukrainian miners face ongoing violations of their right to timely remuneration, significant wage arrears, and a reduction of 4.6 times of the budgetary allocations for the industry in 2009 over that of 2008. 
 
The Ukrainian Federation of Trade Unions, in a statement released 11 March, accused the country’s leadership of “ignoring the interests of the people to please international financial magnates.” 
 
In exchange for a US$2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund, the Ukrainian government agreed to restrictive conditions for the loan. Notable promises were the cancelling of social utility discounts for poor families, raising the retirement age by five years, and a six-fold increase in gas prices for Ukrainians.

Ukrainian Miners’ Union, PRUPU, to Launch Government Protest Rallies This Week

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