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Belgian unions FGTB/ABVV and CSC/ACV have boosted their joint project in Colombia to draw attention to human and trade union rights. The unions now have a petition drive underway on the project&rsquo;s website, aimed at the government of Colombia, including members of Parliament. The petition drive also addresses the management of both Colombian and multinational companies to take action. 
The project, called Syndicol, is operated by the two Belgian unions, in full cooperation with all three Colombian national labour centres, CUT, CGT, and CTC. A number of ICEM&rsquo;s Colombian affiliates are directly involved in the project.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
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Syndicol&rsquo;s action plan is to bring aid and solidarity to the workers of Colombia. Its aim is to build broad campaigns of information around the abuses of human and trade union rights in the South American country, including the many assassinations of trade union leaders. 
The current petition, located on Syndicol&rsquo;s French language website at <a href="http://www.syndicol.be/Petition">http://www.syndicol.be/Petition</a>, states that over 3,000 trade unionists have been assassinated since 1990, and calls on government and business leaders to take immediate action to end this state of terror. 
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&ldquo;The flagrant and inadmissible violations of human rights and, in particular, of the rights and trade union freedoms are a denial of justice, and disgraceful for those who commit the crimes, as well as their protectors. The systematic assassination of trade unionists and human rights defenders is a throwback to another age and what&rsquo;s worse, the perpetrators enjoy impunity from the Colombian legal system and the country&rsquo;s authorities.&rdquo; 
 
ICEM affiliates and activists are encouraged to visit the website to sign the petition.

Belgian Unions Team on Colombia Petition Drive

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Three gold miners, jailed on 17 December, for illegal gold mining in the southern Zimbabwe region of Matabeleland, died six days after their arrest from exhaustion and starvation. The three died after days of filling trenches without being given food or enough water by the police forces of Robert Mugabe&rsquo;s government. 
 
In a country with 80% unemployment and an inflation rate that hit a new high of 1,281% in December, the three miners were arrested with 12 other gold diggers as part of the government&rsquo;s crackdown on illegal mining, called Operation Makorokoza Zvakwana by the Mugabe police forces. 
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One police officer told ZimOnline, Zimbabwe&rsquo;s independent news agency, that when the workers tried to resist the continuous trench filling, or complained of hunger, they were beaten &ldquo;because that&rsquo;s how our bosses had instructed us to treat them.&rdquo; 
 
The three died at separate times on 24 December after experiencing extreme dizziness before collapsing. 
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe&rsquo;s labour leaders, who were severely beaten in September after police forces broke up an anti-poverty rally, have sued top Mugabe aides for unlawful arrests and injuries incurred to them. Zimbabwe Council of Trade Unions (ZCTU) Sec. Gen. Wellington Chibebe and 14 other labour leaders sued Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi, Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri, and several other police officers for Z$1.34 billion (US$9.13 million), which includes general damages, and unlawful arrest and deprivation of liberty. 
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ZCTU Secretary General Wellington Chibebe 
In the lawsuit, attorneys for the labour leaders cite violations of the Zimbabwe constitution, Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 5 of the African Charter for Human and People&rsquo;s Rights, Article 10 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel Treatments. 
The labour leaders, on 12 and 13 September, were subjected to beatings that caused bone fractures, serious cranial/facial bruising, and head injuries. Some 256 ZCTU activists were arrested at the time. 
 
The current economic crisis in Zimbabwe, which saw the inflation rate jump a full 182% from November to December 2006, has caused mass labour strikes in the health care and education sectors, not to mention in mining and energy industries, because salaries have become miniscule compared to the vast inflation jumps. For example, staff of the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority staged a two-day strike on 3-4 January, when an internal memo was released stating that salaries would only increase by 50%.

Mugabe Regime Starves Jailed Gold Miners

The 86-day strike by members of the United Steelworkers (USW) at 12 Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. plants in the US ended 29 December, after rubber workers voted to approve a new accord at America&rsquo;s biggest tyre producer by a two-to-one margin. USW announced yesterday that 10,000 of 14,000 striking union members voted in balloting, and that approval of the new three-year labour agreement was gained by a majority of members at all 12 branch locals.
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Some 500 Canadian USW members at four rubber accessory plants in the province of Ontario are voting on a separate contract proposal. Both the US and Canadian Goodyear workers have been on strike since 5 October 2006. 
 
&quot;It took a strike, but we achieved a fair and equitable contract that protects quality health care for active and retired members,&rdquo; said USW Executive Vice President Ron Hoover. &quot;And by winning major capital investment expenditures, it secures our jobs for the future.&quot; 

The strike in the US centered on heath care coverage and job security. USW won a guarantee from Goodyear that it would commit US$550 million in capitalisation investments at the 12 plants over the next three years. 

The union also pushed Goodyear in week-long talks beginning on 19 December to increase a health care trust fund for active workers and retirees. The US-based company agreed to place US$1 billion in a Voluntary Employees&rsquo; Beneficiary Association, from which medical and prescription drug benefits for current and future retirees will come. Future contributions into this fund will include diverted cost-of-living payments and profit-sharing plants. 
During the strike, Goodyear announced that it would close a tyre plant in Tyler, Texas, in 2007, thus making 1,100 workers redundant. USW and Goodyear agreed in the December talks that closure would occur no sooner than 2008, and the union won sizeable retirement buy-outs, enhanced severance packages, and medical coverage for Texas workers for a full two years beyond closure of the private-label tyre operation. It also won a guarantee that future manufacture of such tyres will be done in a plant that had been on strike. 
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The 12-week strike was marked by the company circumventing the union and appealing directly to USW members to abandon the walk-out and return to work. But there were few defections among the nearly 15,000 strikers, and that fact no doubt forced Goodyear to compromise its original demands. 

&ldquo;The credit really belongs to our members and their families, whose solidarity prevented the company from short-changing them, despite all of its attempts,&rdquo; stated USW President Leo Gerard. 
 
This week&rsquo;s contract ratification means workers will return to work on 2 January at both tyre and engineered rubber product plants in Akron, Ohio; St. Marys, Ohio; Marysville, Ohio; Gadsden, Alabama; Buffalo, New York; Lincoln, Nebraska; Topeka, Kansas; Fayetteville, North Carolina; Danville, Virginia; Tyler, Texas; Sun Prairie, Wisconsin; and, Union City, Tennessee.

USW Ends US Goodyear Strike after Membership Vote Approval

ICEM WOMEN’S BULLETIN N° 18

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ICEM affiliate FUB/FS, Brazilian rubber workers union, invited delegates from several Latin American rubber workers&rsquo; unions to the recent conference of FUTINAL (Frente &Uacute;nico de Los Trabajadores en Las Ind&uacute;strias de Neum&aacute;ticos y Afines de Latinoamerica) at Praia Grande/Sao Paulo, from 5 to 7 December 2007. 
 
Roughly 100 delegates, mostly from ICEM affiliates, including from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and the USA held discussions,&nbsp;among other things&nbsp;on the need to set up more trade union networks for multinational companies. The USW explained&nbsp;the situation surrounding the Goodyear strike in the US and Michael Wolters, ICEM Rubber Industry Officer, reported on the last developments in the rubber sector as well as on the main strategies by the major global tire companies. 
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Unions organising Continental AG plants in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and USA, used the time to coordinate their ideas and activities for the coming International Action Day for all Continental tyre unions from the western hemisphere (13 December 2006) 
 
At the end of the conference, an action plan was adopted for future work. 
<a href="/wp-content/migration/icem/0612pptMichaelSaoPaulo.ppt">Click here for the ICEM's Presentation at the conference</a>

Latin American Rubber Workers Hold Conference

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In Iran, Mansour Osanloo was arrested again, on 19 November. Osanloo is the head of the trade union of Workers of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company,. 
 
He was detained outside his home, by plain-clothed security officials, a day before he was summoned to appear in court. Officials beat him and forced him, at gunpoint, into a car. Osanloo is said to be held at the Evin Prison, where he may be in need of urgent medical treatment. He had had eye-surgery only days before he was detained, the result of injuries suffered during his previous arrest, earlier this year. 
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On 26 November, Osanloo appeared before an Iranian court, in the absence of his lawyer. No specific charges were cited, however. Osanloo had been released in August 2006, after an international campaign led by the International Transport Workers&rsquo; Federation (ITF). See: <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/1661-Iranian-Bus-Drivers-Given-Global-Union-Support">/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/1661-Iranian-Bus-Drivers-Given-Global-Union-Support</a>. 
 
According to a press communiqu&eacute; by the Tehran union, also known as Sherkat-e Vahed, three other unionists were also arrested on 3 December: Seyyed Davoud Razavi and Abdolreza Taraazi, members of the Executive Board, and Gholamreza Gholam-Hosseini, a union activist. The three men were detained as they were distributing leaflets. The first two were released later the same day. Gholamreza Gholam-Hosseini was only released this weekend. 
 
The three men are among the 50 bus workers that are currently still without pay since a January 2006 strike. In July, the ITF and the ITUC already lodged a formal protest before the ILO over Osanloo&rsquo;s initial detention, and over the crackdown on the union Sherkat-e Vahed.
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The ITF has called the re-arrest an &ldquo;outrageous attempt to crush both a brave individual and all attempts to assert basic trade union rights in the country.&rdquo; The ICEM fully supports the call of the ITF to continue to apply pressure on Iranian authorities over human and labour rights. 
 
For more information, including the possibility to take action, please click here: 
<a href="http://www.itfglobal.org/solidarity/Osanloo.cfm">http://www.itfglobal.org/solidarity/Osanloo.cfm</a>.&nbsp;

President of Tehran Bus Company Union Arrested Again

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The paper sector caucus for eastern Canada of the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers (CEP) Union has resolved to hold intact the pattern sector labour agreement without granting concessions to employers. Meeting in Montreal on 4-5 December, local branch leaders of the CEP&rsquo;s paper industry sector adopted a strong anti-concession stand to preserve the current agreement. 
 
&ldquo;Our local union leaders are telling us to draw a line in the sand,&rdquo; said CEP President Dave Coles. &ldquo;And that is exactly what we intend to do. I will be in touch with the major players in the (paper) sector, including Abitibi Consolidated and Bowater, to let them know we have no intention of negotiating concessions to our existing wages and benefits.&rdquo; 
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The CEP will instead call on forestry companies to join it in its pronounced campaign before the federal government, calling for real and meaningful answers to Canada&rsquo;s forest products crisis, a crisis that finds the government short on ideas, and lacking in economic initiatives to stem both the mass job losses and resulting rural destruction. 
 
Some 7,000 CEP members have lost their jobs over the past two years, with some 40 full or partial mill closures occurring in that period. 
 
Coles said that the wage and benefit portion of operation costs in any given mill is among the lowest of cost items faced by employers. &ldquo;We have had more than one employer tell us we could work for nothing and he would still close his mill because the union contract was not the problem,&rdquo; said the CEP&rsquo;s president. 
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CEP has engaged a national campaign inside Canada, calling on the federal government to adopt a national forest strategy. Stated goals are money for research and development, creation of alternate end uses for fibre resources, investment in initiatives to ensure sustainability of resources, and accelerated adjustment programmes for workers, their families, and the communities at-large, which have been the hardest hit by this national crisis. 
 
The CEP is currently in the middle of a five-year labour accord with pulp and paper manufacturers operating in the eastern half of Canada, covering some 25,000 paperworkers.

CEP Says ‘No’ to Weakening of Paper Sector Pact in Eastern Canada

Estonian trade unions scored a major victory last week when the country&rsquo;s Parliament accepted all revisions made by the unions in the proposed Employees&rsquo; Representatives&rsquo; Act. The legislation, if passed, would have severely weakened trade union protections, including exclusion of union stewards from shop-floor information and consultation processes, and stripping union representatives from unfair dismissal protections. 
 
Instead, during a second reading of the bill on 6 December, the unions successfully inserted language into the proposed new statute calling for shop stewards to be formally characterised as &ldquo;employees&rsquo; representatives,&rdquo; with full rights and guarantees, and they must be included in all information and consultation matters over workplace or worker concerns. 
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Additionally, amendments to the law will prohibit shop stewards from being discriminated against, and they will retain paid time in the performance of their duties. 
 
A third and final reading of the bill will take place on 13 December, and since procedure disallows further amendments to it, it is certain to be passed this week. The law will take effect in Estonia on 1 February 2007. 
 
Harri Taliga, President of the Estonian national labour centre EAKL, said the statute now conforms to ILO Convention 135, the Workers&rsquo; Representatives Convention. He said that although the country&rsquo;s labour unions are not entirely happy with the new law, the success they had in rolling back the draconian aspects of the bill is commendable. 
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Estonian trade unions had the help of Industrianst&auml;llda I Nordic (Nordic IN), the five-nation trade union federation of chemical, energy, paper, and metal unions, in mounting a campaign against the worst provisions in the bill. &ldquo;This victory is a result of systematic and intransigent work by the Estonian trade unions,&rdquo; said Nordic IN General Secretary Jyrki Raina, who also credited an international solidarity campaign, as well as timely and expert help from the ILO in convincing parliamentarians to adopt the pro-worker amendments.

Estonian Unions Turn Back Anti-Worker Revisions to Country’s Labour Code

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ICEM affiliate Argentine Federation of Private Oil and Workers Union (FASPyGP) launched a series of rolling strikes to oil and gas production on 3 May across several provinces of the South American nation. The dispute is over a continued wage impasse between the union and several companies, covering 35,000 workers. 
 
The companies have balked at paying 2007 wage increases of 20%, an amount FASPyGP claims is only 45 minutes of combined production in oil and gas fields. The strikes have occurred at gas deposits near Mendoza and Salta, and other energy extraction in the provinces of Tierra del Fuego, Chubut, and Neuqu&eacute;n y Santa Cruz. 
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The companies being targeted include Repsol YPF, Argentine-British Pan American Energy, Apache, Argentina&rsquo;s PlusPetrol, as well as units of major energy producers, such as Petrobras and ExxonMobil. The industry has offered only 15% increases. 
 
Oil and gas companies doing exploratory and extraction work in Argentina have increased gas output by 5.2% in the first quarter of 2007, while oil production has jumped 4.9%. The companies export some 65% of all production and with oil and gas prices remaining high, multinationals have prospered from the country&rsquo;s natural resources. 
 
The government of Nestor Kirchner has called on oil and gas companies to expand their investment efforts in Argentina&rsquo;s energy sector, as well as to compensate oil and gas workers fairly as a means to curbing consumer price inflation.

Argentina Oil Union, FASPyGP, Launches Oil, Gas Strike

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A gem-polishing dispute that saw intense ICEM involvement in 2001 has flared again at Almond Jewellery in Bangkok. The New York-based jewellery exporter locked out 254 workers on 9 April. 
 
Workers are in protest over the firing of two key leaders of the plant-level union, which occurred in September 2006, and management&rsquo;s refusal to enter into to obligatory social talks over renewed labour terms. Workers began picketing the factory on 17 April. On 19 April, 200 of Almond&rsquo;s workers marched to the Government House in Bangkok and presented a petition. They were joined by trade union leaders from ICEM&rsquo;s Thai-affiliated unions. 
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Almond unionists marched to Govt House on 19 April
A government representative met with leaders of the workers at Almond, and pledged to investigate the lockout within seven days. That is now in progress. 
 
Almond is continuing to operate the gem-polishing factory with a small number of regular workers and some 400-500 agency workers. 
 
The contract dispute started in late January, after the union requested the re-opening of contract talks. Managers responded by demanding benefits back from workers that had previously been obtained during negotiations. Managers then made threats of dismissal to workers if they engaged in union activity, and they have forced some workers to sign petitions indicating their withdrawal from the union. 
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The ICEM obtained bargaining rights for workers at Almond&rsquo;s factory in Bangkok in late 2001. Then, Almond had sacked over 50 workers, including the entire leadership of the plant-level committee. The ICEM pressured Almond&rsquo;s owners to reinstate the workers, begin negotiations with the union, and to drop lawsuits the company brought against leaders for legitimate trade union activity. 
 
Almond&rsquo;s New York-based leader Jonathan Mandelbaum agreed to a four-point charter, which included the above. Since 2001, gem-polishing workers made positive gains in negotiations with managers. Almond&rsquo;s managers now seek to dismantle those gains. 
But workers have been tested before, and the 19 April march and protest at the Government House signals renewed resistance. Workers are demanding the re-hiring of plant-level President Patoom Kamdeewan and Committee Member Akom Thongdeewan, and are insisting on backpay for both, as well as for all locked-out workers.
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Former ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs&nbsp;talking to 
Thai Almond workers in 2001
The united workforce is seeking a 5% wage increase, plus a bonus payment. Workers seek a monthly-wage pattern, instead of daily wages, and demand that Almond pay them a transportation allowance. 
 
They also are demanding inclusion of contract and agency workers under terms of the collective bargaining agreement. 
 
The ICEM supports these demands as fair and just.

Thai Gem-Polishing Firm Again Bringing Labour Problems to the Fore

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