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United Steelworkers (USW) and Bridgestone-Firestone in the US reached tentative labour agreements on 8 June covering 6,000 workers at eight plants. The proposed agreements include the union’s master rubber contract for plants in Akron, Ohio, Des Moines, Iowa, LaVergne, Tennessee, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Noblesville, Indiana, and Russellville, Arkansas, and accords at plants in Bloomington, Illinois, and Warren County, Tennessee. Steelworker members at those locations will review and vote on the proposals over the next few weeks. 
The labour agreements will run until 23 July 2006. If ratified, the Bridgestone agreement will complete master rubber bargaining in America the USW, which represents 70,000 workers in the industry. Prior contracts were achieved with Goodyear, Michelin’s BF Goodrich tyre unit, and Yokohama Corp.

Steelworkers Reach Accord with Bridgestone in US

Multiple gold strikes by affiliate NUM in South Africa may have been tempered some by a court decree late last week declaring an end to one strike, Gold Fields involving 30,000 miners. But ongoing stoppages and potential strikes could still pull 100,000 NUM members out, shutting down the country’s gold mining industry. On 23 March, 21,000 NUM miners at Harmony Gold’s Free State mines struck after the company reneged on a labour agreement from last summer. Harmony unilaterally terminated that agreement and announced job cuts to 4,900 workers without NUM consultation, thus shredding an understanding between Harmony and NUM reached last July. 
The 30,000 Gold Fields miners could return to strike lines once NUM serves a legal notice. A key issue at Gold Fields is housing. The company still provides only common-sex hostels in mining areas, a throwback to apartheid days. Pay disparity between black workers and white workers also is an issue, as is the fact that white women receive maternity leave while black women do not. At the weekend, NUM worksite leaders from South Africa’s other third big gold mining house, AngloGold Ashanti, were meeting to consider their options.

Retrenchments Cause of Mining Strikes in South Africa

The government-imposed "sole administrator" has now left the headquarters of the Nigerian oilworkers' union NUPENG and the democratically elected union leadership has moved back in. This follows a NUPENG Congress and elections yesterday. 
 
The headquarters of the oilworkers' union PENGASSAN is also understood to be back in the union's control. The "sole administrator" there withdrew ahead of next week's PENGASSAN Congress and elections. 
 
The government administrators had been running the two unions ever since the late military dictator Sani Abacha ousted their real leaderships at gunpoint in 1994, as he moved to crush a nationwide oilworkers'strike. 
 
Re-elected as NUPENG General Secretary yesterday was Frank Kokori. The new NUPENG President is B.B. Awe. 
 
Kokori and PENGASSAN General Secretary Milton Dabibi were imprisoned without trial under the Abacha regime. Their release this June followed a sustained worldwide campaign led by the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), to which the two unions are affiliated. 
 
"The NUPENG headquarters has been left in a bad state," Kokori told ICEM UPDATE today. "My first task will be to get the basic infrastructure back in and put our administration back on its feet." 
 
The ICEM had continued to press for the ending of government intervention in the two unions. "Democratic control is essential to the revival of these two important Nigerian unions," commented ICEM General Secretary Vic Thorpe today. "We greatly welcome the freeing of PENGASSAN and NUPENG and look forward to working with them again for the good of workers in Nigeria and worldwide."

Nigeria: Oil Unions Back In Workers' Hands

French union and ICEM affiliate FCE-CFDT has all along suspected that the August 2004 takeover by Aventis of Sanofi-Synthelabo creating Sanofi- Aventis, the world’s third largest pharmaceutical maker, would have dire consequences on employment. The French union did not have to wait long for proof. In order to meet its goal for shedding €1.6 billion in operating costs by 2006, the merged firm’s first attack on workers will make redundant 431 pharmaceutical sales representatives and support staff, close Aventis’s Strasbourg headquarters idling 230 workers, and the spin-off of Research and Development of infectious diseases will cost even more jobs. FCE-CFDT says the company’s selective approach to early retirement is wrong, and the French company must negotiate with the union on age-related and across-the-board early-out packages.

Chemicals Merger Between Aventis and Sanofi Will Cost Jobs

The CEP of Canada is requesting the OECD undertake an investigation of labour practices against Finnish papermaker UPM Kymmene under the Parisbased organization’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. At UPM Kymmene’s lone Canadian mill in Miramichi, New Brunswick, the firm unilaterally announced closure of the pulp mill—chopping 400 jobs effective 31 January 2005—but also engaged in vicious anti-union behaviour. Management turned rabid after the CEP local union protested the closure on grounds the firm’s logging licenses for harvesting government lands mandates that it operate the mill. CEP charges UPM Kymmene with creating a “cold war” atmosphere of labour relations by suspending local union leaders for performing their statutory duties, monitoring and spying on workers’ activities with a hired security team, and refusing to negotiate with the union or to provide information pertinent to bargaining.

CEP of Canada Takes Paper Dispute to OECD

A court injunction 20 November ended a one-day strike by 100 oil workers, members of ICEM affiliate Engineering, Printing & Manufacturing Union (EPMU) of New Zealand. The EPMU members employed at five oil and gas rigs in Taranaki and Taupo struck over lack of progress in NZ’s Onshore Oil Exploration Drilling Rig Agreement, a multi-employer collective agreement. EPMU is seeking a 5% wage adjustment, better redundancy provisions, meal provisions, and changes to training time, which is currently done outside of regular work hours. NZ’s Employment Court will conduct a full hearing on the temporary injunction gotten by oil drilling employers on 24 November.

Oil Companies Get Injunction to End New Zealand Onshore Strike

That rebuilding effort, however, is proving as troublesome under the provisional Iraqi administration as it was under Saddam’s rule, according to the Workers’ Council of the National Company for Chemicals and Plastics Industries in Baghdad. A statement by the fledgling union says “the same fascistic policies of the former regime” are still in place including punishments, dismissals, threats and dismissals. The council is demanding raises in the minimum wage to match inflation, rescinding punishments and full pay for 25 workers, and distributing the yearly gains of the company to workers.

Iraqi Occupation Hindering Workplace Progress

Hubertus Schmoldt, president of ICEM German affiliate IGBCE, drew attention to the challenges and opportunities facing the union movement in an end-of-the-year message. Schmoldt noted that international competition has grown stiffer with no let up in sight and said global trade union work stressing solidarity is welcome, but unions are only at the beginning of such positive developments. He described biogenetics and nanotechnology as key industries for the future but—particularly in the case of gene technology— Germany may soon lose research, development and production capacities. Schmoldt stressed the importance of education and training from early childhood to university levels as key.

Germany’s IGBCE Gives Year-End Challenges

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in South Africa is targeting Hernic Ferrochrome following a 13 December underground mine disaster that crushed and then drowned seven miners in Brits, North West Province. Managers refused to allow NUM representatives to investigate South Africa’s deadliest 2004 mine disaster caused by a flood from a dislodged valve that brought a ventilation lattice wall down. “The behaviour of this company demonstrates absolute arrogance in the face of calamity,” said NUM Gen. Sec. Gwede Mantashe. “We will leave no stone unturned in our commitment to ensuring that families of these workers see justice being done.” The NUM will be present 15 February when an official Department of Minerals and Energy inquiry commences. Hernic, a high-carbon ferrochrome producer that is just now ramping production up at the Brits mine, is 53.2% owned by Japan’s Mitsubishi, 25% by the South African government’s Industrial Development Corp., 11.5% by Elg Hansel of Germany, and 7.5% by mine management.

South Africa’s NUM Takes On Hernic Ferrochrome Over Safety

A new website launched today highlights anti-union practices by ceramics, materials and construction multinational Imerys. 
 
American union the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers (PACE) and the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), jointly announced the start-up of the website on French-headquartered Imerys. PACE is an ICEM affiliate. 
 
"The website allows Imerys workers and their unions throughout the world to communicate, share information and learn about the 'union-busting' practices of Imerys in the US," said PACE President Boyd Young. 
 
Imerys has been conducting a hostile campaign against union members and supporters at its plants in Georgia and Alabama. In Sylacauga, Alabama, Imerys management hired a professional "union-buster', held mandatory anti-union meetings, and showed a film which implied that US unions are controlled by organised crime and that they cause plants to be closed. Imerys is also using a "secret" manual, uncovered by PACE, which instructs supervisors on how to conduct the anti-union campaign. 
 
PACE has filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board alleging that Imerys management harassed, threatened and spied on union supporters. Excerpts from the "secret" manual, a summary of legal charges, and an interactive message board are on the website. 
 
Fred Higgs, ICEM General Secretary, stated: "Imerys so far has refused to stop its anti-union practices, and we will assist US workers who are battling for union representation in whatever way we can." 
 
The ICEM held a press conference on January 20 in Brussels, together with the Belgian General Labour Federation (FGTB/ABVV) and ICEM Belgian affiliate the Centrale Generale/Algemene Centrale, calling upon the Frere family to intervene. The Frere family controls 23 percent of Imerys shares through one of its many holding companies. The ICEM set up meetings with French and British union affiliates, who also represent workers at Imerys plants, and have pledged support for the campaign.

Imerys Campaign: Unions Launch Global Website

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