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A strike by glass workers in New Zealand enters its second week today. About a dozen night-shift workers at Pilkington Glass in the Auckland suburb of Mt. Wellington began the strike late on 30 August. They were joined by the plant&rsquo;s 50 other workers the next morning. 
 
The glass workers are represented by ICEM affiliate Engineering, Printing &amp; Manufacturing Union (EPMU). Workers are seeking the standard 5% contained in nearly all EPMU-negotiated collective agreements, but Pilkington, now a subsidiary of Nippon Sheet Glass, is offering only 4%. Union members are also seeking an increase in the daily shift allowance from NZ$3.25 to NZ$10.00. 
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EPMU National Secretary Andrew Little
&ldquo;(Workers) claims are quite modest &ndash; nothing more than the going rate,&rdquo; stated EPMU National Secretary Andrew Little. &ldquo;The company says it can&rsquo;t afford it, but the New Zealand operation made a NZ$14 million net profit in the year up to March 2005, with a global profit of more than NZ$600 million.&rdquo; 
 
The 60 glass workers started industrial action during the week of 7 August when they conducted two stop-work actions. The next week saw EPMU members begin a ban on all overtime work.

Pilkington Glass Workers in New Zealand Strike for 5% Pay Gains

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The mining world&rsquo;s largest stop-work action so far in 2006 ended on 31 August when Chilean copper miners of the Escondida Workers&rsquo; Union No. 1 voted, 1,607 to 121, to accept a 40-month collective agreement. 
A settlement, which ended the 25-day strike, occurred the day before when the union and BHP Billiton, the lead company in Minera Escondida Ltda., agreed to salary and bonus terms with the regional Labour Ministry serving as mediator. The Escondida mine is located in Chile&rsquo;s northern Region II. 
 
Miners won a satisfactory share of the huge profits made by the world&rsquo;s biggest copper producer. The union&rsquo;s 2,052 miners will receive a salary increase of 5% above Chile&rsquo;s inflation rate, or 8%, and a one-off bonus of US$17,000 per miner. The union had amended its demands in last week&rsquo;s bargaining to 8% above the inflation rate and a bonus of US$29,000. 
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The new agreement also includes universal health care coverage, education allowances, and interest-free loans, totalling about US$4,000 per miner. Workers began returning to their jobs late last week, with full production expected by the end of this week. 
 
Under Chilean labour law, workers can sign individual contracts and return to work after 16 strike days. BHP Billiton was hoping this would occur as it called for strike-breakers and a return to normal production. However, the company&rsquo;s scab plan failed and it increased a final pay offer when it became apparent that only a handful of miners &ndash; estimated at 20 &ndash; abandoned the strike. 
 
BHP Billiton, a 57.5% stakeholder in Minera Escondida, said in a statement that it is &ldquo;convinced that the final result of this large process will prove beneficial to both sides.&rdquo; The company and other stakeholders have seen profits triple from Escondida during the first six months of 2006, from US$936.9 million in the first half of 2005 to US$2.92 billion. The strike at the operation producing 8% of the world&rsquo;s copper supply stoked fears of a global shortage of the red metal. The current copper market is one of high demand, causing high pricing. 
 
The settlement will now loom large in negotiations between Chilean state-run copper company Corporacion Nacional del Cobre (Codelco) and its unions, covering 17,000 miners. Codelco&rsquo;s workers are among the lowest paid miners in Chile, while Escondida workers are now the highest. Negotiations between Codelco and unions at three of its four divisions begin in October 2006, with contract expirations coming on 30 November and 31 December. 
 
Codelco stands as the world&rsquo;s biggest copper company, with huge reserves at its Andina, Norte, El Salvador, and El Teniente mines. Some 25% of the world&rsquo;s total supply of copper originates from Chile.

Chile’s Copper Strike at BHP Billiton’s Minera Escondida Ends

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Several French trade unions are resisting the government&rsquo;s forced privatisation of Gaz de France through a merger with French-Belgian water and power concern, Suez Group. Three salaried administrators on the company&rsquo;s board, representing the trade union CGT, were successful last week before an Appeals Court in Paris in ordering the utility&rsquo;s management to hold an extraordinary board meeting to discuss anti-trust concerns raised on 18 August by the European Commission. 
 
That board meeting was held on 1 September, six days before French parliamentarians will take the matter up in the National Assembly. All four unions represented on Gaz de France&rsquo;s board, including FO, CFE-CGC and ICEM affiliate FCE-CFDT, claim that the objections by the European Commission present serious warning signs and warrant full disclosure. 
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The government-brokered merger deal was set in motion last spring by French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin to block a hostile takeover of Suez by Italian energy company Enel. If a Gaz de France-Suez merger were to become a reality, it would break a pledge contained in a 2004 French law which states that at least 70% of Gaz de France would remain in the state&rsquo;s hands. The proposed &euro;72 billion merger would mean the government&rsquo;s stake in the combined company would be diluted to 34%.
The CGT is threatening a strike sometime in September if the proposal in the National Assembly to validate the merger isn&rsquo;t defeated. In addition, CGT, FO and CFTC have called for national mobilisations on 12 September against the privatisation. 
 
FCE-CFDT is hostile to privatising Gaz de France and believes the state must continue to be the major shareholder of the utility. But the union is not opposed to closer cooperation between Gaz de France and Suez.

French Unions Press Issue on Gaz de France Privatisation

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The Mineworkers&rsquo; Union of Namibia (MUN) has scored an important victory for fixed-term contract workers at a diamond-cutting and polishing factory in the capital city of Windhoek. Last week, ICEM affiliate MUN successfully completed negotiations with the Namibian managers of Israel-based Lev Leviev Diamonds LLD. The agreement will make 356 mainly young workers into permanent employees, complete with rights and benefits. 
 
&ldquo;Workers are happy about the fact they have representation,&rdquo; MUN General Secretary Joseph Hengari told the ICEM. &ldquo;There have been many shortcomings in work procedures since this factory started and our duty now is to bring these technicalities to a close to the benefit of workers.&rdquo; 
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In late July, about a quarter of the workers at the Lev Leviev enterprise struck after they were given an ultimatum by managers to sign new 12-month-long individual contracts for the third time. Strike leaders contacted the MUN, whose intervention ended the strike and began collective negotiations with the company. 
 
MUN&rsquo;s involvement also proves beneficial to the company, which had been operating without knowledge of local laws, without a functioning human resources department, and without a proper method of salary calculations. In fact, one major grievance that led to the 27 July strike was the fact that individual contracts disqualified the workers from getting a basic salary unless they reached certain production quotas. 
 
MUN will soon become the official bargaining representative at the Lev Leviev plant. During two weeks of intense negotiations in August that covered a number of employment issues including salary and remuneration, MUN and the company agreed to make the 356 workers permanent effective 1 September. All 356 applied for membership to the MUN. In addition, another 56 were classified as trainees, but will progress from that status to permanent workers in the near future. The company also says it intends to bring another 120 trainees into the plant, with the aim of having a total of over 500 permanent workers. 
 
The diamond-cutting and polishing operation opened in mid-2004 and has a capacity to produce 25,000 carats of polished stones monthly. The factory currently is dependent on rough stones mined from another Lev Leviev enterprise, the Sakawa Mining Corporation of The Netherlands, located in offshore areas of southern Namibia. But the company is attempting to convince the Namdeb Diamond Corporation, the country&rsquo;s joint venture with DeBeers, to supply rough stones to the factory in order to fully promote local beneficiation of Namibian diamonds.

ICEM Namibian Affiliate Succeeds in Making Diamond Polishing Jobs Permanent

Nigerian oil workers&rsquo; unions NUPENG and PENGASSAN demand the immediate release of a comrade recently kidnapped in Bayelsa State. Nelson Ujeya, the Community Liaison Officer for Shell Petroleum Development Company Ltd, a trade union member of white-collar PENGASSAN, was abducted on 8 August following an official visit to the Letugbene community to examine community projects. 
 
A NUPENGASSAN union communiqu&eacute; said the kidnapping occurred &ldquo;in the full glare of a team of senior Bayelsa State Government officials&rdquo; following the coordinated visit with officials to Letugbene. 
The two ICEM affiliates demanded in the statement &ldquo;that the Government and good people of Bayelsa should immediately produce our member whom they invited to a Community-related assignment.&rdquo; 
<img height="135" alt="" src="" width="130" />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <img height="126" alt="" src="" width="120" />
&ldquo;On our part, considering the escalation of kidnapping and other violent acts in the Niger Delta Region, we are under tremendous pressure to take action that will guarantee the safety of lives and properties of our members.&rdquo; 
 
In Nigeria, NUPENG and PENGASSAN have been consistent in the call for a stop to the senseless kidnappings of oil workers&rsquo; of any nationality, but also for state and federal governments, as well as oil industry enterprises, to do more inside Niger Delta communities. 
 
The two unions, operating under the aegis NUPENGASSAN, call for education and skill development, and other meaningful social protections that improve the quality of life in these oil-rich areas. The ICEM stands behind the efforts of NUPENGASSAN, and applauds their trade union voice on this extremely serious problem in the global oil industry.

Call for Release of Kidnapped PENGASSAN Member in Nigeria

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Two UK trade unions, the Transport &amp; General Workers&rsquo; Union (TGWU) and Amicus, received a new pay offer last week after they issued a date for a one-day work stoppage. Pirelli of Italy increased its pay offer made to 1,100 tyre workers in the British Midlands to 3%, after attempting to force an unacceptable 2.2% raise on workers. 
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Workers and their union leaders at a Pirelli tyre plant in Carlisle and at another facility in Burton-on-Trent chose this coming Friday, 24 August, for industrial action. TGWU and Amicus members will now consider the offer in consultations. A Pirelli spokesman said the company was hoping to &ldquo;move forward from our national dispute&rdquo; to an agreement. 
 
The company offered 1.1% when bargaining began in April. Workers voted for industrial action by 75% after the company had revised the pay offer to 2.2%. TGWU represents most workers at the two Pirelli worksites, including the auto and light truck tyre plant in Carlisle.

Pirelli Heads Off UK Industrial Action with New Tyre Offer

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In a meeting with French building materials company Imerys last week, British trade union Transport &amp; General Workers&rsquo; Union (TGWU) asked the company to reconsider its plans to cut 800 jobs by the beginning of 2008 in Cornwall, Devon, and Lee Moor in the country&rsquo;s South West. 
 
TGWU said the job cuts, which would bring economic devastation to the region, are &ldquo;totally unjustified&rdquo; and said the company must give serious consideration to counter proposals put forward at the 15 August meeting. 
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&ldquo;The company is in a strong position to have a bright future in Cornwall, and everything should be done to persuade them to stay,&rdquo; said TGWU National Secretary Jennie Formby. &ldquo;(Imerys has) a hardworking, long-serving workforce who deserve better than being dismissed with massive job cuts and a redundancy offer that will in no way compensate for their lost employment.&rdquo; 
 
Added Malcolm Mellow, TGWU Convenor at Imerys in the South West: &ldquo;Members have been rocked by the news that they will lose their jobs after devoting years of loyal service to Imerys. The workforce and their families deserve better.&rdquo; 
 
Imerys cut some jobs in the region in 2004, but promised then that the remaining 800 jobs would be secure. That pledge was breached early in July 2006 when a proposed restructuring plan surfaced saying the vast majority of jobs in kaolin mining and processing at former English China Clay operations would be lost, and the work transferred to Brazil. Imerys bought English China Clay in 1999. 
 
The ICEM is working with affiliate TGWU, as well as with UK affiliated trade union Amicus, which represents a smaller number of Imerys workers in the South West, to preserve the jobs and the region&rsquo;s economic viability.

UK’s TGWU Meets with Imerys to Dissuade Job Cuts

An alliance between two Global Union Federations (GUFs) covering oil and gas workers became stronger this week when delegates to the International Transport Workers&rsquo; Federation (ITF) Congress in Durban, South Africa, gave rousing support to the ICEM/ITF Global Oil and Gas Industry Trade Union Alliance. The ITF and the International Chemical, Energy, Mine &amp; General Workers&rsquo; Unions (ICEM) have been jointly operating workers&rsquo; rights efforts in various parts of the world over the past two years. 
 
The ITF represents 4.5 million transport and logistics workers from 624 affiliated trade unions in 142 countries. The ICEM represents 20 million trade unionists from 379 affiliates in 123 countries.&nbsp;The ITF is&nbsp;based in London, while the ICEM is headquartered in Brussels.&nbsp; 
 
The two-year cooperative arrangement between the GUFs has mostly centered on the offshore portion of the industries. The official launch of the ICEM/ITF Global Oil and Gas Industry Trade Union Alliance now means that onshore work, from extraction and refining to distribution will get equal attention. 
 
&ldquo;The success that we&rsquo;ve had over the past two years demonstrates the strong synergies that exist between the two organisations,&rdquo; stated ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs. &ldquo;Today&rsquo;s energy market and its inter-connecting infrastructure make this alliance a natural for workers&rsquo; and their trade unions to have far more power and influence at the very highest international levels of the major companies controlling these crucial markets.&rdquo; 
 
The union federations will organise on issues from the &ldquo;wellhead to the wheel,&rdquo; the motto adopted during the two-year-old project. It means forging a common bond of all workers engaged in work in the oil and gas sectors, from exploration, refining, to manufacture &ndash; ICEM&rsquo;s traditional sectors &ndash; through to distribution, including sea, road, rail, and pipeline, ITF&rsquo;s areas. 
 
The two GUFs have put in place a joint structure that includes affiliated trade unions of both organisations. Besides cooperating effectively on strategic issues that have arisen in such places as the Timor Sea, the Caspian Region, and Nigeria and West Africa, the alliance has mapped trade unions that exist across several oil companies and their major service contractors. The alliance will utilise ICEM&rsquo;s existing Global Framework Agreements to include transport services, and it will place a special emphasis on extending job protections to the massive number of contract workers employed throughout the oil and gas sectors. 

Contact: Dick Blin, ICEM Information Officer 
+32 2 626 2026 
+32 4 74 88 00 54 (mobile)

‘From Wellhead to Wheel,’ Global Oil and Gas Trade Union Alliance Surfaces

ICEM WOMEN&#039;S BULLETIN No. 14 - August 2006

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A highly successful ICEM women&rsquo;s conference for the Asia-Pacific Region was held 27-28 July in Bangkok, Thailand. Attended by 22 trade unionists from six countries, the conference generated much discussion and several ideas for communicating effective practices related to gender issues globally. 
 
Topics discussed included maintaining a manageable work-life balance, work inside Asia&rsquo;s pharmaceuticals industry, and maternity issues. Related to the latter, participants debated and devised model standards for trade unionists on maternity leave. 
 
ICEM affiliated trade unions attending came from India, Japan, Nepal, Pakistan, Singapore, and Thailand. ICEM-JAF of Japan helped to sponsor the two-day discussions.

Asia-Pacific Women’s Conference Fosters Maternity Leave Guide

Archive

Pilkington Glass Workers in New Zealand Strike for 5% Pay Gains

Chile’s Copper Strike at BHP Billiton’s Minera Escondida Ends

French Unions Press Issue on Gaz de France Privatisation

ICEM Namibian Affiliate Succeeds in Making Diamond Polishing Jobs Permanent

Call for Release of Kidnapped PENGASSAN Member in Nigeria

Pirelli Heads Off UK Industrial Action with New Tyre Offer

UK’s TGWU Meets with Imerys to Dissuade Job Cuts

‘From Wellhead to Wheel,’ Global Oil and Gas Trade Union Alliance Surfaces

ICEM WOMEN'S BULLETIN No. 14 - August 2006

Asia-Pacific Women’s Conference Fosters Maternity Leave Guide

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