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Some 600 members of ICEM affiliate National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in South African struck gold acquisition and producing company Centurion Gold Holdings Inc. in Germiston, near Johannesburg, on 7 December. Several hundred miners at the company&rsquo;s Primrose mine and ore processing plant went on strike because management reneged on a pledge to keep all standing agreements intact from a previous employer, according to the South African Press Association. 
 
Miners are also seeking a doubling of their salaries. Miners at the Primrose mine are some of the lowest paid in the Central Rand gold belt, with monthly salaries totalling only R1,000 per month. Since Johannesburg-based Centurion bought the mine and processing plant from privately-held Glencairn Mining Co. in February 2004, the company has doubled production and has begun processing ore at Primrose from two other gold mines it owns in South Africa. 

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The company has refused to bargain with the NUM branch union over conditions, and a union spokesman said the NUM has taken the matter to South Africa&rsquo;s labour courts. Miners have seen a rollback in the number of annual leave days that they received under Glencairn, as well as a death benefit, and other working conditions have worsened as well. 
 
Centurion has indicated it would evict strikers from company-owned hostels, and the NUM is petitioning the courts to prevent that. The NUM national Executive Committee, meeting on Friday, 8 December, gave the strike and Centurion&rsquo;s callous behaviour over union recognition and inferior work conditions its full attention.&nbsp; 
&nbsp;
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Centurion was formed in 2003 to acquire and operate mine properties in South Africa and elsewhere. The company boosts that it was formed to &ldquo;exploit&rdquo; South African legislation passed in 2004 that cedes mining claims back to the public trust if they go undeveloped within a designated time frame. 
The company, publicly traded in the US, carries out prospecting and development of mining lands. Besides Primrose, it operates the Omaruru gold mine in Mpumulanga, the Sellies gold mine near Johannesburg, as well as a chrome-bearing mining operation. It is also currently involved in development of the Naboom platinum project in South Africa.

South African Miners Strike Gold Mine to Retain Work Standards

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The International Metalworkers&rsquo; Federation (IMF) has marked today, 11 December, as an international Day of Action in support of Napoleon G&oacute;mez Urrutia, the trade union official from the Mexican National Miners and Metalworkers&rsquo; Union (SNTMMSRM) who has been removed by the federal government. 
The IMF&rsquo;s &ldquo;Call for Justice&rdquo; campaign includes demonstrations and actions at Mexican embassies and consulates throughout the world, backing up a mass march in Mexico City and industrial actions around the country. 
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G&oacute;mez, who was elected General Secretary of SNTMMSRM in 2002, was unpopular with a large part of the ruling elite as he organised a free and democratic union. 
On 19 February 2006, an explosion occurred at the Grupo M&eacute;xico&rsquo;s Pasta de Conchos coal mine in the northern Mexican State of Coahuilla. Information on the cause of the explosion, which killed 65 miners, including 40 contract workers, was scarce and inconsistent. G&oacute;mez then termed the disaster an &ldquo;industrial homicide&rdquo; and charged both company and government safety officials with neglect for Mexico&rsquo;s worst mine tragedy this year. 
 
Just two days before the explosion, the Mexican government had &ldquo;withdrawn recognition&rdquo; of G&oacute;mez as General Secretary of the union, after it received an unauthenticated request from supposed members of the union&rsquo;s Vigilance and Justice Committee to remove him. 
 
G&oacute;mez was accused of corruption in relation to a trust fund, and removed from his post by the Labour Ministry. He was replaced by Elias Morales, a person close not only to officials inside the Labour Ministry, but also to officials of Grupo M&eacute;xico. Many members of SNTMMSRM refuse to accept the allegations against G&oacute;mez, and numerous strikes broke out in support of him. During a police intervention in one such strike in April, two miners were killed. 
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The facts behind the fraud and corruption case appear to be inconsistent. For example, one of the suspicious and alleged unauthorised transfers of money abroad was the payment of affiliation fees to the IMF. The IMF is calling for &ldquo;efforts to be made to inform the public about the use of the trust fund.&rdquo; 
 
The removal of Napoleon G&oacute;mez from his post is clearly a breach of the union&rsquo;s autonomy and needs to be seen as a violation of the ILO Convention No. 87 on freedom of association, which has been ratified by Mexico. Any decision to remove the trade union leader from duty is up to the SNTMMSRM and its democratic structures. 
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Napoleon G&oacute;mez has the active support of ICEM North American affiliate United Steelworkers (USW). In a press communication last month, the USW stated, &ldquo;The government of Mexico violated the NAFTA labour side agreement when it removed the leader of the National Mineworkers&rsquo; Union from office.&rdquo; The USW has had a solidarity pact with the Mexican Mineworkers since 2004, and solidly supports the return of G&oacute;mez to his rightful union leadership position. 
 
More information, including a report of a fact-finding mission to Mexico, can be found on the IMF&rsquo;s website at this link: <a href="http://www.imfmetal.org/main/index.cfm?n=47&amp;l=2&amp;c=14233">http://www.imfmetal.org/main/index.cfm?n=47&amp;l=2&amp;c=14233</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;

IMF Supports Mexican Mining Leader Napoleon Gómez in ‘Day of Action’

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It took a four-month-long struggle, but workers at the F&aacute;brica Neum&aacute;ticos de Avanzada (NA), a competition-tyre making company in C&oacute;rdoba, Argentina, finally reached an agreement with their company. Workers were represented by ICEM affiliate Sindicato &Uacute;nico de Trabajadores del Neum&aacute;tico Argentino (SUTNA) throughout the dispute. 
 
As reported in Issue 67 of InBrief, from 16 October, (<a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/1991-SUTNA-Rubber-Dispute-in-Argentina-Hardens">/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/1991-SUTNA-Rubber-Dispute-in-Argentina-Hardens</a>), trade union representatives and their family members had been threatened, harassed, and intimated after the company, in early August, sacked 25 SUTNA members.
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The bitter dispute followed a historic agreement, signed last summer, between SUTNA and the country&rsquo;s rubber employers&rsquo; association, which covers the entire rubber sector. NA refused to go along with the accord, and began discriminating against workers who were SUTNA members. 
 
With the support of SUTNA, workers at NA now have their rights fully recognised. The agreement includes the reinstatement of two dismissed workers, as well as full compensation payments for all workers that were dismissed. 
 
Pedro Wasiejko, General Secretary of SUTNA, welcomes the step forward, but also said that the union &ldquo;will continue to take action on the accusations of intimidation against workers during the dispute, so that measures can be taken against those responsible for these inadmissible acts.&rdquo;

Argentinean Rubber Workers Reach Agreement with Specialty Tyre-maker

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Nigeria&rsquo;s two oil workers&rsquo; unions, ICEM affiliates NUPENG and PENGASSAN, last week condemned the management of state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. (NNPC) for the unilateral and irregular dismissal of 3,000 staff, the majority of whom are members of the blue-collar and white-collar unions. 
 
In a statement, PENGASSAN General Secretary Bago Olowoshile blasted senior management of the company for failing to engage in a dialogue with the unions and breaching proper protocol by excluding members of the unions&rsquo; NNPC Group Executive Council in redundancy deliberations. 
<img height="119" alt="" src="" width="115" />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;<img height="105" alt="" src="" width="100" />
The two unions called the sackings &ldquo;premature and ill-timed&rdquo;, forcing &ldquo;unplanned severance&rdquo; on to the affected workers and their dependents. The sudden downsizing appears to be a furthering of reforms to NNPC and part of an overall privatisation process. NUPENGASSAN, the cooperative and effective aegis of the two labour unions, is insistent that management of NNPC and all Nigerian officials, especially those inside the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), be made to &ldquo;put a human face&rdquo; on all privatisation matters. 
 
But the voice of public reason in Nigeria was critical and forthright on NNPC&rsquo;s latest closed-door decision making. 
 
&ldquo;The failure of NNPC to involve the National Secretariat of the two Unions as the situation demands is nothing but a flagrant violation of our grievance and Trade Dispute processes and a serious attempt to provoke and incite the members of both NUPENG and PENGASSAN on this damning posture and its ripple effects on the entire oil and gas industry,&rdquo; read the statement. 
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The two unions called for NNPC to live up to the specific language contained in the Disengagement Package as outlined in the 13 October 2005 collective agreement, which was signed by all parties. 
 
In August, the two unions heavily criticised DPE and NNPC for failing to abide by transparent and common good practices in selling state asset Eleme Petro Chemical Ltd., a subsidiary of NNPC. The Nigerian state seriously undervalued the olefins refinery in Port Harcourt when it sold the polyethylene and polypropylene refinery to a Thailand-based investment start-up called Indorama.

NUPENGASSAN Condemns Sacking of 3,000 NNPC Workers

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On 30 November, the Conseil Constitutionnel in France took a decision that postpones the merger plans of two European energy giants, Gaz de France (GDF) and Suez Group, by at least another seven months. The constitutional court ruled that, since GDF is a public service, the merger cannot go forward before 1 July 2007, which is when the French gas market opens up for competition. 
 
French trade unions had already managed, through earlier legal encounters, to postpone the merger until 2007. (See: <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/2047-Unions-Win-Important-Legal-Battle-in-GDF-Suez-Merger-Saga">/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/2047-Unions-Win-Important-Legal-Battle-in-GDF-Suez-Merger-Saga</a>) 
<img height="99" alt="" src="" width="100" />
Many observers and experts, including large portions of the investment community, now believe that the GDF-Suez merger may not happen at all. One major reason behind this thinking is that this latest court decision postpones a possible merger until well after the presidential elections in France, which take place in the spring of 2007. The French Socialist Party, currently in opposition, has said it will stop the merger if it wins.
The Constitutional Council did, however, validate the article of the energy law that allows GDF to be privatised. FNME-CGT, the majority trade union at GDF, now seeks another reading of that law before the French Parliament. The union argues that the Council changed the text of the law, which means it is no longer the same text that had been adopted by Parliament. 
 
Unions in France have been resisting the privatisation of GDF through the merger with Suez from the very beginning. The State of France currently holds 80.2% of GDF. In the event of a merger with Franco-Belgian Suez Group, that ownership stake would be reduced to 34%.

GDF-Suez Merger Further Delayed by Court Ruling

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UK ICEM affiliate Amicus denounced French multinational Saint-Gobain&rsquo;s decision to reduce the number of workers at its Stanton Iron Works plant in Ikeston, Derbyshire. The company announced on 5 December that is was cutting 220 of 400 jobs, beginning in April 2007, citing price increases in scrap steel and high energy costs. 
 
Amicus called the holiday-season announcement &ldquo;a heavy blow to the workers who face an uncertain few months ahead,&rdquo; and the union immediately scheduled meetings with management to discuss the need for redundancies and to begin enhanced severance talks. 
Saint-Gobain&rsquo;s announcement said it would retain flange pipe making at Stanton, and keep customer servicing staff based in Derbyshire. But the community loses the production of water pipes, which it has been supplying to the UK&rsquo;s water-delivery system for decades. The Paris-based company said the work will now be done in France and Germany. 
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Amicus said that the loss of 220 jobs in Ikeston will lift November&rsquo;s job-loss totals in the East Midlands to nearly 1,000. Amicus has been campaigning and lobbying the government to introduce better employment laws that protects UK workers and assist more in alternative job placements. 
 
Amicus has also been calling for a statutory entitlement to be established that provides workers with a skills and training agenda, as well as for a statutory employer investment fund for training. Amicus says the current tone and level of the debate over jobs and training is &ldquo;largely irrelevant&rdquo; next to the tens of thousands of high-skilled and well-paid jobs that have left the UK. 
 
Amicus Assistant General Secretary Tony Burke provided a stark reminder on why the UK was in such a jobs crisis: &ldquo;Employers have neglected to invest in the skills of their workforces for decades. This under-investment means that we now have to run to stand still in terms of up-skilling.&rdquo;

Amicus Refutes Saint-Gobain’s 50% Reductions in UK Pipe Manufacturing

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In a display of political manoeuvring that will have a devastating effect on millions of contract workers, South Korea&rsquo;s Grand National Party (GNP) and Uri Party combined to pass a series of bills in the final days of the most current National Assembly session. 
Included among those bills were three so-called &ldquo;irregular workers&rsquo; bills,&rdquo; which will give Korean employers a virtual unlimited license to use and discard contract and agency workers. 
 
The contract workers&rsquo; bills, along with hundreds of other bills, had been held up by the GNP throughout the current 100-day legislative session over opposition to South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun&rsquo;s choice for president of the country&rsquo;s highest court, the Constitutional Court. 
<img height="142" alt="" src="" width="100" />
But in mid-November, Roh withdrew the nomination of his close friend, Chon Hyo-suk, and two weeks later, on 30 November, GNP members inside the Assembly sided with Roh&rsquo;s Uri Party members to push into law the liberalisation of contract workers. 
 
GNP support for the measures meant that the Uri Party&rsquo;s 139 members had the necessary majority in the 297-seat Assembly for passage. But passage did not come without controversy. The Uri Party Speaker of the Assembly bypassed a key committee and took the bills straight to a plenary session for final vote. Passage occurred despite vehement opposition from South Korea&rsquo;s two labour federations, and members of the Democratic Labor Party. 
 
The new irregular workers&rsquo; law will, beginning in July 2007, allow employers with 300 workers or more to utilise contract or agency workers for up to two years before they must be made permanent. The same policy becomes effective in July 2008 for companies with 100 to 299 workers. For companies with fewer than 100 workers, the two-year period takes effect in September 2008. 
<img height="115" alt="" src="" width="250" />
&ldquo;South Korea has effectively opened a revolving door for the use of contract and agency workers,&rdquo; said ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs. &ldquo;Employers can now use, abuse, and then discard contract workers within a two-year time period, which certainly will prove to be detrimental to sustainable and family-supporting full-time direct employment inside the country.&rdquo; 
 
South Korea currently is one of the highest ranking OECD countries in terms of contract workers, with estimates of up to 50%, or 8.5 million workers, engaged in work in part-time or temporary status. 
 
In another legislative action before the National Assembly, a committee late last week passed a controversial labour reform measure which includes the three-year suspension of a pay ban for full-time union members, as well as allowing multiple unions to take hold inside a workplace, effective in December 2009. 
The reform bill, passed by the labour committee on 8 December, must now go before the judiciary committee before it is expected to be voted on in plenary session this week.

Korea’s National Assembly Passes Regressive Contract and Agency Labour Regulations

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<ul>
 <li>Sustainability / Acceptability policy to be submitted to the next ICEM congress 
 </li>
 <li>Education / Training / Skill development 
 </li>
 <li>Workers&rsquo; voice for democratic energy policies 
 </li>
 <li>Solidarity and dialog between unions of exporting and importing countries 
 </li>
 <li>Endorsement of the ICEM Nuclear Workers Unions Network (INWUN) with a clear reference to the ICEM Congress policy decisions 
 </li>
 <li>Expanding contacts between coal miners and the energy section 
 </li>
 <li>Adding value locally for development 
 </li>
 <li>ICEM-ITF Working Group on HS in the oil and gas transportation sector with particular attention to remote and hostile environments 
 </li>
 <li>Global Framework Agreements 
 </li>
 <li>Support for Contract &amp; Agency Labor expanded campaign </li>
</ul>

Action Plan - ICEM World Conference for the Energy Industries

Letter of Solidarity to the German Miners Defending Their Jobs 

 
The ICEM World Conference for the Energy Industries supports the German miners, who today demonstrate with IG BCE in Dresden during the CDU party convention to keep their jobs and to keep the German hard-coal mining alive. 
 
The German government and the delegates of today&rsquo;s CDU convention in Dresden are expected to maintain future employment in German hard-coal mining. 
 
The energy report presented to the ICEM World Conference for the Energy Industries outlines the competitiveness of coal as a fuel source and the increasing demand for it. 
A future for European coal-fired electricity generation without indigenous coal would be inconceivable. The ICEM World Conference for the Energy Industries supports the European affiliates struggling for the future of hard-coal mining in their countries.

German miners&#039; Resolution to the ICEM World Conference for the Energy Industries

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1. Increasing of our efforts to sign more global framework agreements not only with companies but also with international branch organisations, like for example CropLife and IFPMA 
 
2. Using the SAICM process to build up a stronger influence on chemicals management, safety and occupational health and safety on a national and regional and global level 
 
3. Organizing of an international exchange of experience dealing with Mergers &amp; Acquisitions (M&amp;A), including the development of a proposal on how to get better involved in the M&amp;A process. 
 
4. Continue the fight against precarious employment and strengthen the common efforts of all ICEM member organisations and all global trade union federations, in order to prevent a further erosion of employee and trade union rights within companies (CAL project) 
 
5. Starting a &ldquo;social dialogue&rdquo; with employers on a global level (for example ILO or global framework agreements with International Employers&rsquo; Organisations) 
 
6. Actively seek to promote the 1990 ILO Safety in the Use of Chemicals at Work Convention 170 and the Globally Harmonized System of Chemical Classification and Labelling (GHS), and engage with the International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA) regarding trade union involvement in the Responsible Care programme. 
 
7. All ICEM activities will put a serious effort into improving the workplace environment of the chemical industry for women, and improve the possibilities of combining work and private life for men and women. We also ask our affiliates to make sure that the participation of female delegates on international conferences get an appropriate share, and minimally contains one woman (as concluded on last executive meeting).

Action Plan - ICEM World Conference for the Chemical Industries

Archive

South African Miners Strike Gold Mine to Retain Work Standards

IMF Supports Mexican Mining Leader Napoleon Gómez in ‘Day of Action’

Argentinean Rubber Workers Reach Agreement with Specialty Tyre-maker

NUPENGASSAN Condemns Sacking of 3,000 NNPC Workers

GDF-Suez Merger Further Delayed by Court Ruling

Amicus Refutes Saint-Gobain’s 50% Reductions in UK Pipe Manufacturing

Korea’s National Assembly Passes Regressive Contract and Agency Labour Regulations

Action Plan - ICEM World Conference for the Energy Industries

German miners' Resolution to the ICEM World Conference for the Energy Industries

Action Plan - ICEM World Conference for the Chemical Industries

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