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	Sintracarb&oacute;n at Carbones del Cerrej&oacute;n is held up as a strong example of positive industrial relations, with tough collective bargaining achieving considerable protections for 4,000 direct employees at Colombia&rsquo;s largest coal mines, and stable communications channels between workers and management. Sintracarb&oacute;n&rsquo;s fight now is over the basic rights of outsourced contract workers at the largest set of coal mines in the world, a joint venture of three multinational mining conglomerates, BHP Billiton, Xstrata and AngloAmerican.

	First adopting a policy to fight outsourcing in 2008, Sintracarb&oacute;n&rsquo;s initial research noted the strategic policies of multinational corporations (MNCs) to increasingly outsource employment and weaken workers&rsquo; job security, social benefits, wage levels, and ability to organise and bargain collectively.

	The research also discovered that over 50% of workers at MNCs operating in Colombia are employed through contract companies, and that these workers had considerably lower standards of employment and no collective agreements. Almost every attempt by Contract or Agency Labour (CAL) workers to reach a collective agreement in Colombia prior to 2008 had been met with mass dismissals.

	<img alt="" src="" style="width: 201px;height: 135px" width="390" />&nbsp;

	At Cerrej&oacute;n, 6,000 of the total 11,000 workers are precariously employed by contractors. In the 2011 collective bargaining agreement, Sintracarb&oacute;n achieved a clause stating that Carbones del Cerrej&oacute;n management is &ldquo;committed to ensuring respect for the unionisation of all workers, including CAL workers.&rdquo;

	The first attempt to organise CAL workers, in 2010, was at the company that provides transportation to the mine workers, SOTRANS. The effort of 500 members of SINTRANS was crushed with mass dismissals and harassment.

	The second attempt was at Chaneme, a company conducting maintenance of heavy machinery. This effort was successful and 50 workers remain under a CBA as members of Sintrachaneme.

	Through Sinaltrainal, a national union, employees of food supplier Aramark won a collective agreement for 200 workers in March 2011.

	Over recent months, mechanics at EPROFQ and ASEOCOLBA also have won struggles and achieved collective agreements. In the case, of EPROFQ the convention was signed after an eight-day strike.

	ICEM affiliates at glass supplier Ross and at Prodeco have also won victories over short-term, casual employment, bringing the total to 1,560 CAL workers organised in Colombia in ICEM sectors.

Sintracarbón, Colombian Unions Make Big Strides in Organising Against Outsourcing

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	There is increasingly wide recognition that contract and agency work is contributing to the destruction of permanent employment and to high levels of job insecurity.

	On 6th March unemployment figures were released in the Netherlands which revealed that only 2,000 people signed a permanent contract in 2011, as opposed to 83,000 in 2010. At the same time, according to the UWV the Dutch office for unemployment insurance, the use of fixed-term contracts has increased from 227,000 in 2010 to 368,000 in 2011, while the number of those classified as self-employed has doubled to 750,000 in 2011.&nbsp;

	<img alt="" src="" style="width: 259px;height: 121px" width="390" />

	Says Marcel Nuyten, Union Director for Temporary Workers at FNV Bondgenoten: &ldquo;Permanent contracts are abolished in the Netherlands. That&rsquo;s one of the results of the enormous flexibility and flex contracts in the Netherlands. We are the flex champions of the EU and we have the worst growth figures of the Northern European countries. Flexibility means total lack of security. That&rsquo;s what we see in the Netherlands&rdquo;. More information about <a href="http://cal.icem.org/index.php/en/marcel-nuyten">FNV Bondgenoten&rsquo;s campaign against CAL</a> is available here.

	A recent OECD document also highlighted how the use of CAL is contributing to employment insecurity in Spain. According to &lsquo;OECD Economic Outlook 2011 &ndash; How does Spain compare?&rsquo; since late 2007 almost 9 in 10 jobs lost in Spain were temporary jobs. Temporary employment in Spain has reduced by a third, compared with a 3% reduction in permanent employment. The OECD document attributes this to the fact that it is easier for employers to dismiss temporary workers than permanent workers.

CAL Destroying Permanent Jobs and Increasing Insecurity in Netherlands and Spain

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	The Global Unions have released an updated set of joint principles on temporary agency work. Although there are varying approaches taken by trade unions in different countries and sectors to dealing with temporary employment agencies, ranging from total bans to partial bans to strict regulation, all Global Unions agree on a number of key principles. They include: &bull; the primary form of employment should be permanent, open-ended and direct; &bull; agency workers should be covered under the same collective bargaining agreement as other workers in the user enterprise: &bull; temporary agency workers should receive equal treatment in all respects; &bull; the use of temporary agencies should not increase the gender gap on wages, social protections, and conditions; &bull; temporary work agencies must not be used to eliminate permanent and direct employment relationships; and &bull; the use of agency workers should never be used to weaken trade unions or to undermine organising or collective bargaining rights.

	<img alt="" src="" style="width: 253px;height: 160px" width="390" />

	Speaking about the revision of the joint principles Jim Baker, Coordinator of the Council of Global Unions, explained &ldquo;The major reason why the Work Relationships Group recommended amending the principles on temporary work agencies is that it was clear in ILO meetings that private employment agencies were being treated as a &ldquo;sector&rdquo; even though they supplied, and in many cases, employed workers in multiple economic sectors. In that context, &ldquo;sectoral&rdquo; collective bargaining might divide them from the sectors in which they were working; resulting in significant differences in salaries and conditions of temporary and permanent workers, who might be performing the same tasks and working side by side.&rdquo; The updated Principles make explicit that temporary work agencies do not constitute an economic sector and state that agency workers must be specifically guaranteed their right to negotiate the terms and conditions of employment with the user enterprises which effectively control them.

	Continued Baker: &ldquo;Another change is to make it clear that Global Unions are concerned about the effect on the rights of workers in triangular situations, where the worker does not have an employment relationship with the real employer, regardless of whether the workers are employed on a temporary or permanent basis&rdquo;.

	The updated <a href="http://cal.icem.org/images/documents/10-03-31%20Amended%20draft%20version%20of%20the%20Global%20Union%20Principles%20on%20Temporary%20Work%20Agencies%20as%20updated%20PR.doc">Global Union Principles on Temporary Work Agencies</a> are available here.

Updated Global Union Principles on Temporary Work Agencies

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	Over 8,000 trade unionists and supporters rallied in Alma, Qu&eacute;bec, Saturday, 31 March, on behalf of locked-out workers belonging to Syndicat des M&eacute;tallos d&rsquo;Alma Local 9490, an affiliate of the United Steelworkers (USW). Some 780 workers at an aluminium smelter of Rio Tinto&rsquo;s Alcan subsidiary have been ruthlessly locked out of their livelihoods now for 14 weeks, and the economic stranglehold Rio Tinto has on the Saguenay-lac-Saint-Jean region of Qu&eacute;bec is clear to all.

	Bus-loads of union militants from across Canada&rsquo;s only French-speaking province converged on Alma, a community of 30,000, to stand with the victimised Alma steelworkers. And the USW organised convoys and buses as well from elsewhere in Canada, including Toronto, Hamilton and other industrial cities in Ontario province.

	Some 50 international trade unionists also attended, representing workers employed at Rio Tinto or Alcan in Australia, France, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the UK, US, and other nations. A day prior to the manifestation, the ICEM held its bi-annual North American regional meeting in Alma as a global signal to the 780 Alma workers that they are not alone in their struggle for fairness on the job.

	<img alt="" src="" style="width: 302px;height: 160px" width="390" />

	The well-organised rally started with speeches at an Alma shopping mall, before a march complete with sound truck playing working-class music wound its way through the streets of the city to an amphitheatre. There, political and union leaders continued to chastise the world&rsquo;s second largest resources company for delivering economic devastation to workers&rsquo; doorsteps in central Qu&eacute;bec.

	ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda pledged that global labour will mobilise Rio Tinto workers across the globe in this struggle.

	&ldquo;If the ruthless social agenda of Rio Tinto cannot be defeated here in Qu&eacute;bec, there will be little hope that it can be stopped when others face company attacks,&rdquo; Warda said. Rest assured, &ldquo;we will take the indignities committed by Rio Tinto Alcan here throughout the world until this company agrees to stop the attacks against your community and your union.&rdquo;

	Jyrki Raina, General Secretary of the International Metalworkers&rsquo; Federation (IMF), said Rio Tinto must &ldquo;show respect for current and future workers and stop callously cutting labour costs and decent jobs without regard for the local economy.

	&nbsp;&nbsp;<img alt="" src="" style="width: 190px;height: 143px" width="390">&nbsp; <img alt="" src="" style="width: 190px;height: 143px" width="390">&nbsp;&nbsp;

	Manfred Warda, Jyrki Raina address Alma rally

	&ldquo;If Rio Tinto wants to prosper, it cannot break the delicate balance that connects it to the community,&rdquo; said Raina.

	ICEM Vice President and USW Canadian National Director Ken Neumann had a message for the Conservative government of Stephen Harper in his country, where the federal government has turned a deaf ear to several attacks by multinationals on Canadian workers.

	&ldquo;Stephen Harper clearly fell short of his task by failing to impose conditions on the sale of Alcan to Rio Tinto in 2007 and to protect jobs,&rdquo; said Neumann. &ldquo;For someone who is so bent on involving himself in labour relations, why doesn&rsquo;t he intervene with Rio Tinto to put an end to this abhorrent lockout?&rdquo;

	That lockout was brought about by Local 9490&rsquo;s rightful effort to stop erosion of permanent jobs that pay a living wage of C$34-an-hour against Alcan&rsquo;s labour plan, which is aimed at replacing those jobs with outsourced work that pays half that amount.

	By late afternoon on Saturday, about an hour after the final speeches were given at Parc le Festiv Alma, Rio Tinto Alcan issued a defensive statement criticising the &nbsp;USW event, and saying&nbsp; a &ldquo;calmer climate&rdquo; was necessary in order to carry on with negotiations.

	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<img alt="" src="" style="width: 212px;height: 159px" width="390" />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

	Turkish mineworkers solidarity for Alma locked-out Steelworkers

	But for nearly three months &ndash; until 19 March when Qu&eacute;bec public pressure mounted primarily because Alcan was capitalising on the lockout by selling excess hydro-electric power back to the province &ndash; the company shunned bargaining, preferring instead to operate the modern and low-cost Alma smelter at reduced capacity while waiting for global aluminium prices to rise. (See <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4943-Negotiations-Restart-between-USW-Rio-Tinto-Alcan-in-Canadian-Lockout">ICEM report</a> from 21 March.)

	Syndicat des M&eacute;tallos Local 9490 and Alcan did return to talks for two days in March, with the help of provincial mediators, and two more days of negotiations occurred on 28-29 March. The two sides will in all likelihood meet again this week.

	But ever since the company prematurely halted negotiations and imposed the lockout on 30 December before a majority of workplace issues could even be tabled, Rio Tinto has been content to rob the Saguenay-lac-Saint-Jean region of C$1.8 million per week in lost salaries and benefits.

	With or without a settlement to the Alma lockout, the 31 March manifestation will stand as the prelude to a global fight against Rio Tinto to resist its anti-social agenda that has become all too common everywhere it does business.

Thousands March, Manifest in Alma, Canada, for Locked-out Steelworkers

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	Indonesia&rsquo;s largest coal producer, PT Kaltim Prima Coal (KPC), through its mine services contractor Thiess Pty. Ltd. of Australia, has brutally attacked members of two ICEM-affiliated mine unions through police and military force. The dispute dates to the fourth quarter of 2011 when miners working for KPC, part of Indonesia&rsquo;s Bumi Resources, first took strike action when it became obvious that neither Thiess nor KPC intended to grant a renewal collective agreement.

	But the dispute at KPC&rsquo;s Sangatta mine in Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo turned violent on 24 March when 400 striking workers gathered at the coal company&rsquo;s office in East Kutai district on the counsel of a local citizens group to offer themselves back to work following a second strike dating to last November.

	They were immediately attacked by a regional military brigade serving the interests of Thiess and KPC. Twenty miners were severely beaten and hospitalised. Another 12 were immediately detained and throughout the night of 24 March and into the next day, police and military rounded up another four union leaders and jailed them.

	By this weekend, most of the unionists had been released but police and regional military are still holding two union leaders, the Vice President of the local branch of ICEM affiliate Chemical, Energy, Mines, Oil &amp; Gas Workers&rsquo; Union of FSP-KEP, Sumardi, and the Secretary, Maxi.

	The leader of FSP-KEP, D. Patombong Sjaiful, called the situation now &ldquo;critical&rdquo; and pleaded that global trade union attention is given this grievous repression by brute force. In the second time in a fortnight, Jakarta-based FSP-KEP today dispatched a mission to east Kalimantan province, this time to win the freedom of the two remaining unionists.

	The other ICEM-affiliated organisation with membership at KPC is the regional mining and energy union FPE, part of the Indonesian confederation SBSI. Some 2,200 miners work at KPC&rsquo;s two open-cast thermal coal mines of Sangatta. FSP-KEP has some 1,400 members, while FPE has 200. KPC also consists of five smaller mines at the nearby Bengalon mine.

	The dispute began following the expiration of a two-year agreement on 5 October 2011. Thiess Indonesia management foretold its strategy to eliminate the collective agreement by telling the unions a new agreement would not be valid until after negotiations were complete. And then the stalling began.

	The mineworkers&rsquo; only choice was to strike and the first work stoppage occurred from 10 November to 27 December, from which six union leaders were sacked. When the two sides finally did return to bargaining on 28 January 2012, union leaders were summoned to police offices in East Kutai district where they were surprised to see that the police commander representing the company in talks.

	Two days earlier, KPC sent a letter that the status of the six union leaders would not be on the agenda. Miners began a work slowdown resulting in 264 workers getting the sack that, in turn, caused a second strike.

	When Sjaiful and other FSP-KEP leaders visited in mid-March, an agreement was sorted out between the police, a local parliamentarian, and the citizens&rsquo; group calling for the strike to cease, recall of the dismissed workers, and a return to negotiations.

	But Thiesse and KPC rejected that. When strikers came to the company&rsquo;s offices then on 24 March, they were met by police and the mobile brigade wielding batons and other instruments of force.

	The ICEM condemns Thiess, part of Australian Leighton Holdings Ltd. (LEI), whose ultimate parent is the German global construction giant Hochtief AG, for utilising police and military intervention to avert legitimate collective negotiations. It also holds Bumi Resources accountable for this contemptible display of anti-social conduct in its home country.

Thiess, Operating in Indonesia, Uses Police to Bludgeon Striking Coal Miners

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	In calling attention to jobs creation as equivalent economic growth, working people across Europe on 29 February, led by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), manifested in a Day of Action against the European Council&rsquo;s adoption of a budget discipline treaty.

	The decentralised mobilisations occurred in scores of cities and worksites with a common theme pointed at EU governments and decision-makers: &ldquo;Enough is enough! There are alternatives to austerity. Employment and social justice are the number one priorities.&rdquo;

	The 29 February ETUC Day of Action took the form of demonstrations, work stoppages and information postings inside workplaces, as well as government institutions and stated that the European summit&rsquo;s Treaty on Stability, Co-ordination and Governance is a &ldquo;straightjacket&rdquo; that will plunge the Eurozone into free-fall recession.

	&nbsp;<img alt="" src="" style="width: 154px;height: 160px" width="390">&nbsp;

	The actions included two demonstrations in Brussels, site of the European Council&rsquo;s 1-2 March summit where the misguided treaty will intrinsically slash wages and social protections, restrict collective bargaining, and provide even more neo-liberal policies, hardly the remedies for economic growth to assure a sustainable future.

	Union leaders, led by ETUC General Secretary Bernadette S&eacute;gol, met 29 February with Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Parliament President Martin Schulz in Brussels, while a mass rally took place at the European Council building. Members of all Belgian trade unions united in protest on 29 February, and targeted their manifestation outside the Belgian National Bank.

	A sampling of other actions on 29 February included a mass demonstration organised by the Romanian national trade union centres at Victoria Square in Bucharest. In Rome, Italian labour federations CGIL, CISL and UIL demonstrated at Pantheon Place, while Hungarian trade unions held a press conference and manifestation.

	In Greece, trade unions undertook a three-hour work stoppage, while even in Georgia trade unions protested ETUC&rsquo;s Day of Action with a rally at Parliament in Tbilisi. This protest was against their government&rsquo;s utter failure to adopt a fair labour code, all the while developing trade with European markets.

	In the UK, British trade unions used the day to gear up their defense of the National Health Service (NHS), which happens massively today, 7 March, across Britain. Both the ETUC and Trades Union Congress (TUC) denounce austerity measures that &ldquo;fall hardest on the shoulders of the weakest&rdquo; when public services are slashed.

ETUC Holds Day of Protest against Europe’s ‘Straitjacket’ Treaty

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	With 95% approval yesterday, Local 27 members of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) ratified a closure agreement with Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD), part of Caterpillar Inc.&rsquo;s Progress Rail Services, in London, Ontario. The sizeable financial settlement ends a morbid chapter of labour relations abuse by a company, and leaves an economic wound befitting the worst corporate ill-will that can be served up.

	The loss of 465 union jobs is tragedy enough in London, Ontario. EMD proposed in collective negotiations that CAW members reduce wages from C$35-per-hour to C$16-18, and give up a 50% equivalent of all benefits. When workers said no, on 1 January Caterpillar and EMD locked them off their jobs at a rail locomotive manufacturing plant.

	Thirty-four days later Caterpillar/EMD announced it would close the operation, move production to a start-up plant in the low-wage &ndash; US$12-16-an-hour &ndash; city of Muncie, Indiana, six hours to the south of London, where Caterpillar had already assembled a virulently anti-union management team.

	&nbsp;&nbsp;<img alt="" height="159" src="" width="156" />

	Ken Lewenza

	Angry Canadians could only beg the answer to the question: What are our federal and provincial governments doing on such brazen desecration of our manufacturing base. Caterpillar had bought the London plant in third quarter 2010 and it came with a bed of government tax breaks. Eighteen months later, the plant is shuttered and Canadian-made machinery and technical know-how is now leaving the country.

	CAW President Ken Lewenza said Canada is in desperate need of a manufacturing jobs strategy. He stated that the free movement of global capital from country to country must be stopped because it is undercutting workers&rsquo; wages.

	Severance packages exceeded what were required by law, partly driven by public indignation of Caterpillar&rsquo;s conduct and mostly by CAW&rsquo;s resolve to get the best possible close-out deals for workers. EMD workers will get three weeks&rsquo; pay for each year of service and a C$1,500 lump sum payment. (See the <a href="http://www.caw.ca/assets/images/EMC_RATIFICATION_(2).pdf">CAW closure agreement </a>here.)

	For one-third of the workforce, that means severance payments of 60 weeks&rsquo; pay or more, while many will average 20-25 weeks. Workers will gain a measure of extended health care coverage, their pension fund will be fully funded, and EMD agreed to settle all claims and grievances with CAW Local 27. That will amount to a C$350,000 payment to the union within 30 days of yesterday.

	Province of Ontario law says that workers with five years of work service must get one week&rsquo;s pay for each year worked, with a cap of 26 weeks. In a company statement on the closure and severance agreement, Caterpillar/EMD boasted that 75 workers, who would not receive pay-outs under the Ontario minimum, will do so now in the negotiated agreement.

	That hollow boast fades in juxtaposition to the wider swath of economic carnage Caterpillar has left on southwestern Ontario. Besides the 670 union, clerical and management direct jobs lost, CAW expects the plant closure to impact another 2,100 peripheral jobs.

	(See previous ICEM 2012 reports on Caterpillar in London, Ontario, <a href="-Caterpillar-to-Close-Canadian-Train-Locomotive-Plant">here</a>, <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4851-15-000-Manifests-for-Canadian-Auto-Workers-in-Lockout-By-Caterpillar">here</a>&nbsp;and <a href="/en/27-North-America/4823-CAW-Members-Victimized-in-Lockout-by-Caterpillar-s-Rail-Division">here</a>.)

Severance Deal Reached in Stained Caterpillar Rail Diesel Closure

<img alt="" src="" style="width: 100px;height: 39px" width="390" />

	The Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) is demanding that labour and regulatory law in the province of Ontario be toughened in the wake of the social calamity perpetrated by Caterpillar Inc. in the recent lockout/closure of a rail electric diesel factory in the south-western provincial city of London.

	With that nearly all labour law in Canada is governed by the provinces, CAW demanded in a 29 February letter to Labour Minister Linda Jeffrey that Ontario toughen its labour statutes as remedy to lax investment regulations. Specifically, the CAW demands that more powers be granted the Ontario Labour Relations Board to stamp out bad-faith bargaining strategies.

	The CAW is campaigning for a stronger and more modernized labour code in Ontario because of Caterpillar&rsquo;s subsidiary, Electro-Motive Diesel, blackmailing workers and a community in choosing between non-liveable wages and a major plant closure. (See prior <a href="-Caterpillar-to-Close-Canadian-Train-Locomotive-Plant">ICEM report</a> here.)

	&nbsp;<img alt="" src="" style="width: 100px;height: 145px" width="390" />&nbsp;

	Ken Lewenza

	In the letter, CAW President Ken Lewenza said, &ldquo;The company&rsquo;s unjustifiable behaviour &ndash; and the resulting devastation now being brought to bear on workers and the community &ndash; has touched a nerve with Canadians and triggered broad public support.&rdquo;

	The CAW is proposing powers of expedited interest arbitration in pitched labour disputes, as well as new provisions to prevent employers from evading collective agreements by using a lockout.

	Also put forward is a ban on scab replacement workers during a dispute, and restoring workers&rsquo; plant closing rights to negotiate adjustment plans. The CAW also says fairness demands the lengthening of time for giving plant closing notice, and a minimum two weeks&rsquo; pay for each year of service, with elimination of the five-year service tie-in.

	The <a href="http://www.caw.ca/en/10986.htm">CAW letter</a> also calls for an Industrial Inquiry Commission, as stipulated in Section 37, Ontario Labour Relations Act, in order to investigate Caterpillar carnage on workers in the province and the city of London.

	&ldquo;The Caterpillar debacle demonstrates all too well the ease with which an employer can stall out the negotiation process, bargain in bad faith with impunity and manufacture a dispute in an attempt to evade contractual obligations,&rdquo; Lewenza stated.

	&ldquo;Caterpillar did not misjudge or misinterpret Ontario&rsquo;s labour laws; rather, they understood them all too well, and exploited the laws&rsquo; weaknesses as a key part of their overall strategy.&rdquo;

CAW Demands Change in Ontario’s Labour Laws

<img alt="" src="" style="width: 100px;height: 39px" width="390" />

	If anyone needs further proof to Vale&rsquo;s global social neglect, it comes in a pair of dirty deeds committed by the Brazilian mining company in and after the bitter 2009-10 strike at a major nickel and copper operation in Sudbury, Ontario.

	One involves circumstances surrounding two deaths inside Vale&rsquo;s Frood-Stobie Mine on 8 June 2011 and the other is added legal proof that Vale&rsquo;s strong-arm tactics in firing union activists during the United Steelworkers (USW) strike was meant to hinder legal collective bargaining.

	An extensive report issued 29 February by the USW over the June 2011 deaths of Jordan Fram, 26, an equipment operator, and Jason Chenier, 35, a supervisor, was done because Vale refused the offer of the USW to investigate the accident jointly. USW blames negligent water drainage maintenance directly tied to lax and &ldquo;little experience or training&rdquo; of front-line supervisors.

	Fram and Chenier were buried 900 metres underground by an overflow of muck, a term for an avalanche of wet rock, gravel, sand, water washing down a mine shaft. With USW Local 6500 the legitimate bargaining representative, the report notes, &ldquo;Vale officials refused to be interviewed by members of the USW team&rdquo; even though union members &ldquo;cooperated fully in management&rsquo;s investigation.&rdquo;

	&nbsp;<img alt="" src="" style="width: 347px;height: 138px" width="390" />&nbsp;

	USW Local 6500 Union Meeting

	The <a href="http://www.uswlocal6500.ca/reports/exectsum.pdf">Executive Summary</a> and the full <a href="http://www.uswlocal6500.ca/reports/dfinvest.doc">207-page USW Report</a> are here.

	The week before USW issued the report, the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB) ruled that Vale violated provincial labour law by maintaining a &ldquo;patently unreasonable&rdquo; stance over nine workers Vale fired for strike activity. The OLRB agreed with the USW that the nine trade unionists were denied rights to third-party arbitration by the company, and further cited Vale for &ldquo;troubling&rdquo; labour relations conduct across several areas.

	In January, the <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4838-Ontario-Labour-Board-Rules-Discharged-USW-Sudbury-Leader-has-Worksite-Access">OLRB cited Vale with union interference</a> for denying entry onto company property for one of the nine discharged workers is the elected head of Local 6500&rsquo;s Grievance Committee. The USW is now confident that arbitrated decisions will prevail and the nine workers will return to their rightful jobs.

	The USW District Director for Ontario and the Atlantic Region, Wayne Fraser, said the OLRB&rsquo;s 24 February ruling &ldquo;should give Vale pause to consider the hardship inflicted on families,&rdquo; adding that the unlawful conduct &ldquo;prolonged the suffering and uncertainty for families in our community.&rdquo;

	Vale&rsquo;s safety record in Canada was tarnished again on 29 January 2012 when 47-year-old Stephen Perry, an explosives worker, was crushed to death when a rock face collapsed on him while he was working in a lift basket. This death occurred 1,300 metres inside Vale&rsquo;s Coleman nickel mine near Sudbury.

	A fourth Canadian Vale death in 2011 occurred on 19 October when 51-year-old scooptram operator Greg Leason was killed when his machine fell 40 metres into a cavern inside the T-3 Mine in Thompson, Manitoba.

	Historically, the four 2011 deaths at Vale in Canada are atypical because the USW is a vigilant proponent of joint labour-management process safety procedures that prevent workplace accidents. But with Vale&rsquo;s hostile labour relations still simmering some 20 months after the strike, no cooperation with the union over health and safety issues is proving detrimental to workplace safety.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Continued Canadian Contempt by Vale to Sudbury’s USW Miners

<img alt="" src="" style="width: 100px;height: 39px" width="390" />

	The ICEM, International Metalworkers&rsquo; Federation (IMF), and the International Textile, Garment, &nbsp;Leather Workers&rsquo; Federation (ITGLWF) on Monday rebuked the government of Egypt over a 26 February court decree there that sentenced labour activist Kamal Abbas to six months imprisonment for comments he made last June at the ILO Conference in Geneva.

	The Helwan Misdemeanour Court sentenced him in absentia for insulting a public official, a former leader of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation. Abbas is General Coordinator of the Center for Trade Unions and Workers&rsquo; Services (CTUWS) of Egypt.

	<img alt="" src="" style="width: 80px;height: 120px" width="390" />

	ICEM, IMF and ITGLWF demanded that the Egyptian government vacate the sentence and withdraw the charges, and expressed extreme concern on the &ldquo;implications for Freedom of Association as well as Freedom of Expression within the confines of the ILC (International Labour Conference).&rdquo; Read the letter <a href="/wp-content/migration/icem/Egypt--Judgement%20against%20Kamal%20Abbas.pdf">here</a>.

	Abbas attended last June&rsquo;s ILO conference as a representative of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). &ldquo;We cannot accept this judgement,&rdquo; said ITIC General Secretary Sharan Burrow. &ldquo;Following the Egyptian revolution in February 2011, the ITUC gave the authorities every chance to respect fundamental workers&rsquo; rights. Our patience has run out.&rdquo;

	Abbas said that the six-month prison sentence amounts to return of practices of the ousted regime. During the Mubarak era, Kamal Abbas faced a similar one-year prison term over a confrontation with a state-sponsored union official.

ICEM, IMF, ITGLWF Protest Jail Sentence on Egypt’s Kamal Abbas

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