English

Español

Français

Aerospace

Automotive

Base metals

Chemical, pharmaceutical and bio-science

Energy

Glass, cement, ceramic and associated industries

ICT, electrical and electronics

Mechanical Engineering

Mining and DGOJP

Pulp and paper

Rubber

Shipbuilding and shipbreaking

Textile, garment, shoes, leather and textile services

Sectors

Action Plan 2025-2029

Action on textile and garment industry

Clean up shipbreaking

Ratify ILO C176

United for a just future - time to pay up!

Disinvest from Myanmar

Campaigns

Global Framework Agreements

Union building

White-collar workers

Health & safety

Industry 4.0

Women

Youth

LGBTQI+

Gender, equality, diversity and inclusion (GEDI)

Just Transition

Organizing with industriALL

What we do

Affiliates

Statutes

Elected Officials

Executive Committee

Geneva head office

South East Asia

Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus

Latin America and the Caribbean

Middle East and North Africa

South Asia

Sub-Saharan Africa

Regional offices

About us

Global worker No1 2022

Global worker No2 2022

Publications

Resources

Press

The UK Equality and Human Rights Commission recently published the damning results of an inquiry into the recruitment and treatment of agency workers in the meat and poultry processing sector in England and Wales. 
 
Although the investigation focused exclusively on the meat and poultry industry, it was said that &ldquo;...the Commission has no evidence to suggest that supply chain practices in the meat processing sector are more detrimental to workers than in any other sector that makes significant use of low-paid, agency migrant labour.&rdquo; 
 
The Commission found evidence of widespread poor treatment of agency workers, especially among those who are migrants or who are pregnant, both by agencies and by user enterprises. In particular, the Commission found evidence of practices that contravene legal requirements, ethical trading standards, and basic human rights. Other types of treatment were described as being &ldquo;an affront to dignity.&rdquo; 
 
One-third of agencies told the investigators that they had acted unlawfully by recruiting workers of particular nationalities, by giving preference to candidates with particular nationalities they judged the user firm would prefer, or by discriminating against certain nationalities at the direct request of the user firm. 
<img alt="" src="" width="237" height="60" />
While flexibility is often cited as being an advantage of agency work by the industry, only two workers cited the flexibility of agency work as a positive aspect. Almost all workers said they would prefer permanent work due to the security and rights it offers. More than 80% of the interviewees said that agency workers were treated worse than permanent workers in every aspect of their job. The agency workers said they received poorer pay, were allocated the worst jobs, and were treated like inferiors. Not a single interviewee thought that agency workers were treated better than their permanent counterparts. 
 
Workers reported being refused toilet breaks, and enduring physical and verbal abuse. Concerns about health and safety were raised in over half the interviews, and many interviewees expressed concern that their personal protective equipment was poor quality, ill fitting, shared with other workers, or missing altogether. 
 
The Commission found that abusive treatment was less common in organised factories, and said that &ldquo;In workplaces where unions are recognised, or have a strong presence, we found that they provide a significant degree of protection for workers.&rdquo; However, some workers reported that their right to Freedom of Association had been restricted and reported instances where hostility of companies towards union activities discouraged people from joining a union for fear of retribution. 
 
The report concludes with a set of recommendations to key bodies in the industry to &ldquo;encourage a systematic change in behaviour,&rdquo; and improve the operations of the Gangmaster Licensing Authority (GLA). Although outside of its remit, the Commission said &ldquo;...that there is a case for broadening the GLA&rsquo;s remit to include other sectors where low-paid agency workers are at risk of exploitation&rdquo; and urged the government to positively consider this proposal. 
 
Commenting on the findings, Nicola Smith, Senior Policy Officer at the UK&rsquo;s Trades Union Congress (TUC), said, &ldquo;This strongly evidenced based report demonstrates the scale of mistreatment that continues across low paid industries, where temporary workers with insecure employment status face some of the greatest risks. The TUC remains concerned that such exploitative practices are not confined to the meat processing sector.&rdquo;

Report on Abusive Treatment of Agency Workers in the UK

Lacking job security and decent working conditions creates a great deal of stress, particularly in people who are struggling to support a family. Medical researchers discovered, in the 1930s, that stress by itself could produce physical effects. Since then, there has been an ongoing effort to better understand the stress response. 
 
The strict scientific definition of stress is &quot;any stimulus, or group of stimuli, that provokes a physiological or psychological response.&quot; A more useful definition of stress in the work context might be &quot;conditions that exceed a person's normal coping capacity.&quot; In occupational health, we are particularly concerned with the stressful effects on workers of conditions in the workplace. 
 
What are the negative effects of excessive stress on health - and by health, we mean all aspects of physical, mental, and social well-being? 
 
The symptoms of stress are generally thought to arise from the &quot;fight or flight response.&quot; In our evolutionary history, human beings were adapted to respond to a threat by preparing to either fight, give chase, or run away. The body instinctively reacts in certain ways designed to prepare itself for a sudden, short-term, all-out effort to survive. 
<img alt="" src="" width="126" height="95" />
At first, the sense heightens, blood pressure goes up, heart rate accelerates, respiration increases, blood flow to the muscles is increase, muscles tense, and the digestive system shuts down. Your body temperature may change, provoking sweating. In our evolutionary past, these responses prepared you mentally and physically to meet a threat that would be resolved, for better or for worse, within a few minutes. 
 
The problem in modern terms is that our bodies seem unable to distinguish between the &quot;threat&quot; posed by a cave-bear, a bullying boss, or perpetual fear of job loss. The fight-or-flight response, maintained or repeated too often, results in chronic or long-term damage. These can include hypertension and cardiovascular disease, ulcers, colitis, compromised immune systems, headaches, and psychological changes. 
 
To further complicate things, different people respond to chronic stress in different ways and with different symptoms. Faced with the same workplace stressors, Jane may experience diseases of her digestive system while John may develop high blood pressure. These inconsistent symptoms have made it very difficult to get stress symptoms recognized as a legitimate occupational disease. 
 
All working people experience some degree of career stress; but workers who toiled under Contract and Agency Labour (CAL), who lack even minimal job security and often work for lower wages and in poorer conditions than their full-time counterparts, experience much more. Career stress should be thought of as adding to all the other stresses caused by every aspect of a person's life. 
 
To control stress in the workplace, the same hierarchy of controls that are considered in the control of any other hazard should be used. Control the hazard at the source, if possible; failing that, control the hazard before it reaches the worker (along the exposure path); and as a last resort, control the hazard at the worker. 
 
CAL workers have less scope to seek these controls. They may be subjected to heavy work demands, a poor workplace environment, harassment or bullying, shift work, role uncertainty, a lack of training, unrealistic expectations, lack of input or control over the work, poor ergonomic factors, a high degree of scrutiny or monitoring, and of course job insecurity. Stress at work can have a synergistic effect on stress away from work, capable both of exacerbating and being exacerbated by: family problems, financial problems, sleep and fatigue problems, financial problems, and a feeling of powerlessness and low self worth. 
 
Unlike full-time workers, who often experience a level of loyalty to their employer and their work, CAL workers can feel less commitment. In the long term, this can increase the risk of burn-out. Job performance will come to consist of doing just enough to get by, and this can spill over into personal life as the burned out worker fails to look after their own health, relationships, and families. 
 
Stress is not a trivial condition that can be dealt with simply by willing it away. It is a serious problem, and a proven cause of a wide range of medical conditions 
 
Control of the hazard at the source, would in this case mean the conversion of contract and agency jobs to secure, decent work. 
 
Contract and Agency Labour can and does make workers sick.

Contract and Agency Labour … and Stress

The Global Union Federation representing workers in the food, agriculture, and services sector, the International Union of Food and Allied Workers&rsquo; Association (IUF), has written to John Ruggie, UN Special Representative on Business and Human Rights, requesting that the relationship between precarious work and the effective realisation of human rights be incorporated into his investigations and recommendations as a matter of priority. 
 
In June 2008, Ruggie proposed a policy framework which was unanimously welcomed by the Human Rights Council. The &quot;Protect, Respect, Remedy&quot; framework is made up of three pillars: the state duty to protect against human rights abuses by third parties, including business; the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, by avoiding infringing on the rights of others; and greater access by victims to effective remedy, judicial and non-judicial. 
<img alt="" src="" width="145" height="73" />
John Ruggie 
In preparing to make operational the framework, Ruggie is currently consulting with a wide range of actors, including through an online consultation forum, that can be found <a href="http://www.srsgconsultation.org">here</a>, the forum for which the IUF used for its submission. 
 
In that submission, the IUF argues that a meaningful investigation of the relationship between business and human rights must address how the degeneration of traditional employment relationships has impacted on workers&rsquo; human rights. Non-traditional forms of working arrangements, such as agency work, contract work and bogus self-employment, are being used to undermine trade union organising and bargaining. Says the IUF, this is a &ldquo;fundamental human rights issue demanding a strong response rooted in a comprehensive human rights framework.&rdquo; 
 
The IUF draw attention to the ILO&rsquo;s 2008 report on industrial relations at Coca-Cola&rsquo;s Colombia bottlers, which found that the company was systematically denying and restricting the ability to join a union by outsourcing many core jobs. In order to redress this and ensure that workers are capable of fully exercising their rights the global union calls for urgent, systematic action by governments and business to restrict the use of precarious work.

IUF Urges UN Special Representative to Probe Precarious Work

The Zambian Labour and Social Security Minister, Austin Liato, has publically criticised some employers for using temporary workers to fill traditionally permanent positions simply to evade paying statutory employment benefits to workers. Speaking at the opening ceremony of the Mineworkers Union of Zambia&rsquo;s (MUZ) 12th quadrennial conference on 27 April, Mr. Liato said this trend is found not only in the mining industry but other sectors as well. 
<img alt="" src="" width="83" height="107" />
MP Austin Liato
Mr. Liato said that despite the Government&rsquo;s commitment to halt the casualisation of employment, the situation has not improved. &quot;The Government has always led a campaign against casualisation. This state of affairs can't be allowed to continue and I urge labour leaders to be vigilant. We should not turn permanent jobs to temporary jobs,&quot; he said.

Zambia’s Labour Minister Decries Labour Casualisation at MUZ Conference

In occupational health and safety, accidents are best described as the results of failures in those systems that ought to keep workers safe. These can include choices of materials, tools, equipment, processes; the design of specific tasks or the work process; level and competence of supervisory control; workplace environment including noise, dust, fumes, heat, cold, and conditions of floors, surfaces, lighting; and the characteristics of workers themselves, including experience, skills, training, and other human factors. 
 
When one or more of these systems fails, an accident can occur. Was an inappropriate tool provided? Was the task poorly designed to begin with? Were supervisors absent or negligent? Was the workplace environment inhospitable? Did the workers have the appropriate skills and capabilities to do the work safely? Systems failures that expose workers to hazards must be corrected at the source, with personal protective equipment used only where elimination at the source is not possible or practical. 
 
Unions demand three fundamental rights for workplace health and safety: the right to know about the hazards of the work; the right to participate in health and safety systems, and the right to refuse unsafe work. 
<img alt="" src="" width="146" height="66" />
The systems above are far more likely to be weak or absent entirely for Contract and Agency Labour (CAL) workers. The hazards they face are less likely to be corrected at the source, and more likely to be dealt with by providing personal protective equipment - if even this is provided. Finally, contract and agency workers are in a weak position to demand any of their three basic occupational health and safety rights, without the risk of losing their job. 
 
The vulnerability of CAL workers is reflected in accident statistics. Last year in Belgium, agency workers were twice as likely as permanent workers to suffer a workplace accident. The ICEM&rsquo;s Peruvian mining affiliate, FNTMMSP, reported that 49 miners died in the first nine months of 2009, 37 of whom were working for subcontracting companies. In Turkey, thousands of young migrants who work in jeans factories are likely to develop silicosis, following exposure to high levels of silica during the denim sandblasting process. Forty-four workers have already died this year and 550 have so far been diagnosed with the disease. 
 
Unions and decent work make work safer. Insecure contract and agency labour can and does injure workers.

Job Vulnerability Puts Health of Temp Workers at Risk

<img src="" width="100" height="39" alt="" />
ICEM affiliated trade unions in Central and Eastern Europe discussed challenges in the chemicals and pharmaceutical industries with a view to reinforcing representation, industrial relations, and social dialogue in an 8-9 June seminar in Bratislava, Slovak Republic. The meetings, hosted by ICEM&rsquo;s Slovakian affiliate, the Chemical and Energy Workers Union (ECHOZ), were supported by the German Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), one of the principal project partners in the world. 
 
The meeting was chaired by Juraj Blahak, ICEM&rsquo;s Vice President for Central Europe, who underlined the importance of the meeting for unions in chemicals who face restructurings, including privatisation that has had severe impacts on employment and trade unions. 
 
Clemens Rode, representing FES in the region, stressed the role of trade unions in shaping economic and social life in Central Europe. ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda gave specific attention to the togetherness of Central and Eastern European trade unions, calling exchanges of information and experience in restructurings as vitally important. Warda also made a specific presentation on precarious employment and ICEM&rsquo;s global Contract and Agency Labour (CAL) campaign. 

<img src="" width="256" height="192" alt="" />
 
Attended by around 30 trade union leaders from Slovakia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Hungary, Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Belorussia, and Tadjikistan, the meeting received an extensive report from the ICEM Chemicals and Rubber Industries&rsquo; Officer, Kemal &Ouml;zkan, on global chemical and pharmaceutical trends, with specifics on the Central and Eastern Regions and individual countries. 
 
The meeting also got a presentation from Mr. Roman Karlubik, President of the Association of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industry of the Slovak Republic, who drew the overall picture of the Slovak chemical industry and social dialogue with ECHOZ. 
 
The industry in Central and Eastern Europe suffered through the economic crisis in parallel to many economies in the region posting negative GDP growth, with some countries suffering near financial meltdown. Prior to the crisis, the region was seen as a good place to invest. For the pharmaceutical industry, generic medicines represent around half the industry in the region, with a number of number of companies including KRKA, Gedeon Richter, Polpharma, and Zentiva specifically focusing on generics. 
 
Central and Eastern European countries are projected to spend an estimated US$157.1 billion on healthcare in 2015, equal to 6.9% of total GDP. At present, only 30% of spending in the region is private, but over 85% of this is composed of out-of-pocket payments by people. 

<img src="" width="297" height="195" alt="" />
The Bratislava meeting agreed that in Central and Eastern Europe, chemical and pharmaceutical industries are still in the restructuring process, although levels differ from country to country. Restructuring occurs in ownership, particularly with privatisation, production, technology, and labour relations, which brings fear and challenges trade union recognition and survival. The participants agreed that there could an important exchange of experience on privatisation between Central and Eastern Europe, particularly for countries now undergoing privatisation, namely Belorussia. 
 
Another important point stressed was that the region&rsquo;s chemical industry is still under the dominance of basic chemicals, like fertilizers in Central Asia for example, which brings sustainability problems regarding jobs to workplaces. 
 
Occupational Health and Safety was specifically mentioned since current production systems create serious problems on this issue. A need for capacity building for unions in the region was underlined by the participants. 

<img src="" width="150" height="153" alt="" />
Participants also drew attention to the effects of the standards such as REACH and ETS, which regulates the environment where the chemical industry operates over employment. Outside of the European Union, there are also initiatives in the individual efforts of countries, such as Russia, to be able to harmonise their chemical legislations for survival of the industries. A need for a specific work about this particular area was mentioned by the participants. 
 
At the end of the meeting, it was agreed that networking, regular exchange of information and experience, capacity building on industry matters, collective bargaining, and trade union issues should be continued. 
 
&ldquo;The Bratislava meeting has clearly shown to us that Central and Eastern Europe is still the area where the ICEM needs to focus its activities in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry,&rdquo; said Kemal &Ouml;zkan. &ldquo;Coming just months before ICEM&rsquo;s World Chemical Conference in October 2010 in Istanbul, Turkey, the meeting has given us a great overview on what to do for having genuine global union activities in this industry.&rdquo; 
 
On 7 June 2010 a regional ICEM Central Europe Council meeting took place in Bratislava, Slovakia. Trade Union representatives from Hungary, Macedonia, Slovakia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia took part in the meeting. The meeting was headed by Juraj Blahak, ICEM Vice-President and President of the Central European regional Council.

Challenges to Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals Focus in Central, East Europe Forum

<img alt="" src="" width="100" height="39" />
Two sector-wide collective agreements in Turkey in tyre and glass industries have been concluded, with preservation of gained rights and improvements to salaries and social benefits realised. 
 
The tyre negotiations, which started on 5 February and cover over 4,000 members of the union of Lastik-Iş in four plants of three multi-national companies, namely Bridgestone Brisa, Goodyear, and Pirelli located in the cities of Izmit and Adapazari. 
 
The union&rsquo;s strategy was to preserve gained rights and improve current salaries and social benefits, while employers demanding some concessions on working conditions, such as flexibility of working hours, holidays, extended temporary work, and changing wage grades, particularly the gap between newly- hired workers and existing ones. 
 
The demands of employers were on the basis of the labour code, which recognises flexible working conditions at workplaces in Turkey. 

<img src="" width="261" height="189" alt="" />
Abdullah Karacan, President of Lastik-Is during voting for the CBA, in front of Goodyear plant, Izmit 
After the three-and-a-half-month period of negotiations, with disagreements on 21 provisions of the agreement still in play, Lastik-Iş moved to begin strike action on 9 June. Following a 12-hour bargaining session just hours before the strike was to begin, the two sides reached a two-year agreement covering the 2010-2011 period. 
 
Employers rescinded their concessionary proposals. In addition, wages and social benefits were adjusted in line with the Turkish inflation rate, thus managing to secure purchasing power of workers. The agreement was voted upon by the members of Lastik-Iş in each factory and approved unanimously. 
Commenting on the new agreement, &ldquo;During tough and tensioned negotiations, our members showed a great deal of decisiveness in securing their gained rights, thus the agreement has resulted in preserving past achievements,&rdquo; said Abdullah Karacan, President of Lastik-Iş. 
 
Another important sector-wide agreement was achieved in the glass sector by the ICEM affiliate Kristal-Iş, who negotiates with the Turkish Glass Employers&rsquo; Federation on behalf of over 5,000 members at the factories of Şişecam Group&rsquo;s Paşabah&ccedil;e Cam Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş. (plants at Kırklareli and Mersin); Anadolu Cam Sanayi A.Ş. (plants at Topkapı-Istanbul, Mersin, &Ccedil;ayırova-Kocaeli); Trakya Cam Sanayi A.Ş. (plants at Thrace and Mersin Fabrikası) and Cam Elyaf Sanayi A.Ş. 

<img src="" width="210" height="173" alt="" />
Bilal Cetintas, President of Kristal-Is
During negotiations, which started on 10 January as the twenty-second negotiation period for this industry, the Kristal-Iş primary aim was to keep patterns of working conditions intact, patterns existing in the plants for over 40 years. 
 
The union did put forward limitations on sub-contracting, which it defined as one of the most sensible issues in labour relations in the glass sector. The union, through the negotiations, aimed at reaching soıme principles with the employers on regulating this long-standing problem. For this Kristal-Iş proposed some tools to eliminate and minimise sub-contracting in glass factories where maintenance, cleaning, catering, and loading activities are done through sub-contractors. The union&rsquo;s first demand was to stop sub-contracting in maintenance and repair. 
 
Following a tough, ten-round set of negotiations, the two-year agreement was signed on 14 May and it preserves the gained rights and past settlements, as well as improving wages with increases. For the first year of the agreement, the hourly wage is increased 0.65 Turkish Liras (0.35euros) on average, while the second-year increase will be awarded at the level of inflation. Social benefits, such as education, marriage, death, and holiday benefits were also increased at levels higher than the current inflation rate.

Tyre, Glass Labour Agreements in Turkey Preserve Past Conventions

<img src="" width="100" height="39" alt="" />
Xstrata&rsquo;s abrasive reluctance to give coal miners represented by the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) of Australia a standard enterprise labour agreement caused another industrial action at the Tahmoor mine in New South Wales last week. Some 240 miners downed tools for 24 hours on 24-25 June to attend a union meeting in the town of Picton over the Swiss-based company&rsquo;s failure to reach pay and entitlement terms at Tahmoor with the CFMEU. 
 
The dispute at the colliery is now in its 16th month. CFMEU members have been frustrated at being denied a functioning enterprise agreement. Xstrata is seeking broad flexibility to write and re-write workplace polices and procedures, and wants a collective agreement that is void of any independent arbitration mechanism, as well as one in which the union, or any mutual disputes procedure, is absent from health and safety issues. 

<img alt="" src="" width="251" height="189" />
Locked out Xstrata workers at Tahmoor
Xstrata also seeks to have all future bonus schemes not be a subject of bargaining. 
 
The mining house has now informed the CFMEU that it intends to terminate the existing enterprise agreement and discontinue further talks with the union. 
 
The union is seeking only to retain current terms and conditions of its enterprise agreement, and uniformity in working standards with other collieries in the region. 
 
The CFMEU maintains a website called &ldquo;Xstrata Facts,&rdquo; which can be found <a href="http://www.xstratafacts.com/">here</a>.

Strike Actions by CFMEU at Xstrata’s Tahmoor Mine in Australia Continue

<img src="" width="100" height="39" alt="" />
Over 60 trade union leaders from 8 South-East European countries came to Opatia, Croatia, on 24 and 25 July, for an evaluation conference that was the final act of a 12-year long regional trade union support project. 
 
The project, which organised a total of 329 national and international seminars, workshops and conferences, trained and informed leaders of around 60 affiliates of both the ICEM and the IUF (International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Association) on a multitude of trade union topics. In addition, it provided practical solidarity and it encouraged unions to consider necessary organisational changes, in order to set up better and more efficient trade union structures. 
 
Participants spoke about how this project was one of the few initiatives that consistently and justly encouraged trade union cooperation and solidarity across borders in a region where that was not so evident. 

<img src="" width="241" height="181" alt="" />
Project Coordinator, Mato Lalic
Many provided examples on how they put lessons learned through the project to good practice, while others talked about how this project allowed them to engage in practical, useful and direct international work with unions in other countries, often in relation to privatisation struggles. 
 
Without exception, all that took the floor also expressed their gratitude towards the project coordination team in Zagreb, led by Mato Lalic and assisted by Teuta Krilic and Jacim Milunovic. In particular Mato, who has been involved in the project from the very beginning, was thanked for his tireless enthusiasm and never-ending persistence. 
 
Conclusions were not only drawn about the work done, past work was also coupled to future necessities. On that score, possibly the clearest conclusion was that, where a lot has already been done, there still is a lot more to do, in particular when it comes to the need for internal trade union structural change. Numerous unions stated, for example, that there is a growing urgency to redirect their trade union work towards the branch (or sectoral), regional and national levels, steering away from &ldquo;company unionism&rdquo;. Active organising and recruitment were listed as other vital priorities, including attracting women and young workers. 

<img src="" width="288" height="166" alt="" />
Peco Risteski, president of SIER, Macedonia
The evaluation conference was an end, but also a beginning, as it doubled as an opening event to discuss a new and different project for the region. Whereas the previous programme concentrated mainly on education, this new project, which will work with unions at different levels and different intensities in 9 different countries (Serbia, Kosovo, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia &amp; Herzegovina, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Romania and Slovenia) will also be focusing on other priorities. 
 
The new project is built on the conclusions that came out of an external evaluation of the previous project, which was carried out by Jochen Tholen, Professor at the University of Bremen. This evaluation can be found on the project&rsquo;s web-site here in different languages (English, German, Serbian and Bulgarian). 
<img src="" width="195" height="172" alt="" />
Jochen Tholen, Bremen University Professor,&nbsp;Paul Andela, former President of both IUF and EFFAT 
At the heart of the new project will be the effort to assist a limited number of trade unions in the region with adopting and implementing an individual organisational development plan. Once developed and adopted, the project will support unions with the implementation and monitoring of their plans. Additional work with a number of other unions, which have not been exposed to any prior project educational activities, will concentrate first at union building and education. 
The second main element of the project will be concentrating on organising international seminars and conferences, to discuss topics such as sectoral research and/or EU issues, to encourage international solidarity and to exchange information, but also to debate the best practice examples that are coming out of the &ldquo;organisational change work&rdquo;. 
 
Another novelty in this new project is that it will also work with trade unions from the metal sector, affiliates of the IMF and EMF (the International and European Metalworkers&rsquo; Federations), who will join the affiliates of the ICEM and its European counterpart EMCEF, as well as of the IUF and its European counterpart EFFAT. 
 
The new project will be supported by donors FES from Germany and FNV Mondiaal from the Netherlands, as well as by IGBCE and NGG in Germany, and FNV Bondgenoten from Holland.

Unions in South-East Europe Evaluate the Past and Look to the Future

Ref: ICEM10/EN LT70 
 
 
25 June 2010 
 
Mr Manzoor Nadir 
Minister of Labor, Human Services and Social Security 
Co-operative Republic of Guyana 
1 Water and Cornhill Streets 
Georgetown, Guyana 
 
Transmitted to e-mail <a href="mailto:manzoor.nadir@gmail.com">manzoor.nadir@gmail.com</a>&nbsp;and fax number +592 227 1308 
 
Dear Honourable Minister Nadir, 
 
I write to recap our meeting of 15 June 2010 in the offices of the ICEM in Geneva, Switzerland. Firstly, the ICEM Secretariat is grateful to you for initiating the meeting while you were in Geneva for the 99th gathering of the ILO&rsquo;s International Labour Conference. We agree with the assessment in your subsequent News Release that the meeting was cordial in nature and for the ICEM&rsquo;s part, we believe it could serve as an initial starting point to resolve the now seven-month dispute between the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers&rsquo; Union (GB&amp;GWU) and the Bauxite Company of Guyana Inc. (BCGI). 
 
The hard work of engagement through tripartite voluntary dialogue must now commence, and we were happy to hear of your willingness to facilitate this dialogue between GB&amp;GWU and BCGI. Therefore, as you agreed to in our 15 June meeting, we call on you to immediately call both parties together to start open and honest talks. 
 
As we mentioned in the meeting, ICEM is troubled by what we believe has been undue pressure by BCGI management to intimidate and coerce workers of the mining company to de-authorize the GB&amp;GWU from their legitimate role as workers&rsquo; representative. We sincerely feel it is the role of the Labour Ministry to ensure that this does not happen, and if the matter of union representation does go to a poll of workers, we insist that the Trade Union Recognition and Certification Board uphold global labour standards as set forth by the ILO, meaning that management of BCGI must not interfere in workers&rsquo; free choice for or against union representation. 
 
Besides attempting to reconcile the past difficulties between the two parties, ICEM stands hopeful that a facilitated meeting by you between GB&amp;GWU and BCGI can establish voluntary and mutually acceptable ground rules to be used in any recognition poll. For this, the ICEM sees unimpeded access to the workplace by GB&amp;GWU representatives to speak one-on-one with workers, as well as assuring that the 57 discharged workers, all union activists, have an opportunity to address fellow workers to tell their side of the firings. Since the government of Guyana retains 10% of this enterprise, we are hopeful that this can be guaranteed. 
 
As we told you in our meeting, the ICEM is ready and willing to participate in dialogue in Guyana to successfully resolve this dispute, or even to play the role of observer in a poll. I look forward to your response on this, and your follow-up to our meeting. 
 
Lastly, and as a separate issue from the GB&amp;GWU/BCGI dispute, we are encouraged by your willingness to introduce ILO Convention 176, the Safety and Health in Mines Convention, in your country, and to begin the internal process toward ratification. As we told you in our 15 June meeting, Guyana has much to gain on the international level by ratifying this important ILO Convention, particularly at a time when mining accidents and resulting deaths are escalating due to demand and rapid extraction of mineral resources. 
 
The ICEM stands ready to assist the government of Guyana in any possible way in this regard to make Guyana the 25th country worldwide to ratify ILO Convention 176. 
 
Again, we are grateful to you for initiating the 15 June meeting, and we are hopeful this will be a harbinger of better tripartite relations between your government, BCGI, and GB&amp;GWU. 
 
Sincerely, 
 
 
 
Manfred Warda 
General Secretary 
 
Cc: Leslie Gonsalves, GB&amp;GWU

ICEM Letter to Guyana Labour Minister Nadir

Archive