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The attack by U.S. Steel against 900 members of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1005 and even more retirees &ndash; 9,000 in total &ndash; will receive a boost 29 January when thousands of Canadian trade unionists converge on Hamilton, Ontario, for a Day of Action. A lockout was derisively imposed by the American steelmaker there on 7 November after Local 1005 refused to vote on steep cuts proposed in a renewal contract. (See prior ICEM report <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4101-Flawed-Investment-Canada-Act-Again-Seen-in-Steel-Lockout ">here</a>) 
 
The manifestation, organising by the Ontario Federation of Labour (CLC), will begin with speakers at 13h00 on Saturday, 29 January, at Hamilton City Hall, 71 Main Street West, and then a march will wind through the streets of the city centre. 
 
The lockout ten weeks ago became the latest affront by a multinational to the Investment Canada Act. When U.S. Steel received Canadian government approval to buy Ontario-based steelmaker Stelco three years ago, it pledged to maintain job and production levels. But within a year, it had levied layoffs on USW members at both of Stelco&rsquo;s mills, in Hamilton and Nanticoke, Ontario, and began supplying Canadian customers with products made in its US mills. 
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The Canadian Attorney General in 2009 brought a lawsuit against the company for failing to comply with the Investment Canada Act. U.S. Steel&rsquo;s obstruction and delay in addressing the suit was set back late last month when a federal appellate court judge upheld the right of the union and other parties to intervene in the breach of the Act. 
 
In bargaining last autumn, U.S. Steel pressured Local 1005&rsquo;s bargaining committee to accept a two-tier pension scheme in which new hires would be closed off from a longstanding defined benefit plan. The company also proposed de-indexing the pension benefits for retirees, a losing proposition for 9,000 retirees against inflation. U.S. Steel sought as well cuts to active workers&rsquo; cost-of-living adjustments, and proposed cutting two weeks of vacation time. 
 
When the steel producer demanded the bargaining committee put the concessions to a vote of active members and union leadership refused, the lockout began. U.S. Steel immediately cut off all health and disability benefits. Under Ontario provincial labour law, a company has the right to mandate a one-time only vote on a final contract offer. But U.S. Steel has not exercised that option, knowing full well that Local 1005&rsquo;s 2010 contract mobilisation campaign would produce a decisive &ldquo;no&rdquo; vote. 
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In fact, at a union meeting on 8 December, when a motion was put forward to put the company&rsquo;s proposals to a vote, a full 90% of Local 1005&rsquo;s members defeated it. 
 
The union already has received overwhelming support from Canadian unions, including the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) Union. At a Hamilton picket line on 5 January, CUPE National President Paul Moist presented the locked-out local with C$10,000, and said, &ldquo;Defending Steelworker pensions is a fight CUPE and the entire labour movement must be part of. If private sector pensions are eroded, the public sector will be next. 
 
CAW also has contributed to USW Local 1005 and President Rolf Gerstenberger addressed the CAW National Council of Delegates in early December. Gerstenberger called for a nation-wide campaign to resist the growing strength of international corporations in Canada and a political overhaul in order to revamp the loopholes in the Investment Canada Act. 
 
(See the mobilisation call for the 29 January Hamilton Day of Action <a href="/wp-content/migration/icem/20110129USSteel.pdf">here</a>.)

Rally Slated 29 January in Canada to Support Locked-out Steelworkers

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Trade unions in Tunisia played a central role in the social uprising that last week toppled the autocratic and corrupt rule of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali after 24 years in power. The General Union of Tunisian Workers (UGTT), an affiliate of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), conducted a two-hour general strike on Friday, 14 January, in protest of the government&rsquo;s violent suppression of the uprising. 
 
Tunisian citizens refused continuance of a 24% rate of unemployment, corruption, growing inequality, and limited access to the political process. 
 
With over 60 protesters killed in two weeks of clashes with the police, unions are demanding justice for the killers of the protestors. Throughout the clashes, the UGTT headquarters were repeatedly blockaded by police, who then stormed and ransacked the union&rsquo;s offices on 12 January. 
 
Reacting to the events, the National Commission of the UGTT held an extraordinary session on 11 January and called for public investment, improvement in the basic needs of the people, and a rebalancing of regional inequalities. A further important demand was for the establishment of an unemployment fund, which would provide a badly-needed social safety net for workers who lose their job. 
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Further, trade unions articulated the demand for democracy and freedom of the press. Privatisation of public services over recent years had increased the above stated unemployment level, which is now double for the country&rsquo;s youth. 
 
The violence used to suppress the Tunisians right to peaceful protest attracted condemnation from trade unions around the world, as well as from governments. The Sarkozy administration of France, however, attempted to help President Ben Ali retain power in the former colony, by providing additional military equipment. 
 
Speaker of the Parliament, Foued Mebazaa, was sworn in as interim president on Saturday, 15 January. He must now work together with social partners to find solutions to the inequality, unemployment, and corruption in Tunisia, ensuring that trade unions can operate freely and safely. 
 
Similar social problems are being protested in Algeria, bordering Tunisia to the West, where riots in seven cities have lead to five deaths, and over 1,000 arrests. European countries have increasingly closed their borders to North Africans looking for work, exacerbating the problems.

Tunisian ‘Jasmine Revolution’ Ousts Autocrat; Unions Call for Social Justice

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A strike last week at Indonesia&rsquo;s second largest copper and gold mining operations ended on Friday, 6 August, after some 1,500 miners of the PT NNT labour union, affiliated to the Chemical, Energy, Mine Workers&rsquo; Union of the Indonesia Workers&rsquo; Union, agreed to await an overtime pay judgment from a provincial government. The strike started on 1 August and completely shut US-based Newmont Mining Corp.&rsquo;s rich Batu Hijau mines and operations on Sumbawa Island. 
 
The dispute started some three weeks after the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry of West Nusa Tenggara Province issued an order that management was in arrears on Rp 126 billion (US$13.8 million) in overtime wages to some 1,919 workers dating back to 2008. 
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Newmont&rsquo;s Indonesian subsidiary, PT Newmont Nusa Tenggara, refused to comply with the order and in late July talks with the union, said it would challenge the order. The company was claiming that since the work agreement does not expire until the end of 2010, it was under no obligation to comply with the order. 
 
The union and management continued talks throughout the four-and-a-half day strike last week, with the two sides agreeing late on 5 August to get a legal interpretation of the order. Workers were back to work on Friday afternoon, 6 August. Some 7,000 total employees are employed at Batu Hijau. 
 
Newmont is managing partner and a 31.5% owner of the Batu Hijau mines and processing operations. Gold production in the first half of 2010 has increased by 87% over the same half-year period in 2009, while copper production is up 43% in the same period. Batu Hijau is expected to produce 227,000 tonnes of copper concentrate in 2010, while gold production is expected to reach 525,000 ounces.

Newmont Mining Strike Over Overtime Arrears Ends

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A two-year labour dispute in Queensland, Australia, broke into a continuous strike on 27 July when 233 miners of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) downed tools at open-pit coal mines operated by Theiss Contractors, a division of mining contractor Leighton Holdings. 
 
The mine in Collinsville in northern Queensland is owned by the Swiss-Anglo company Xstrata. 
 
CFMEU miners and their families are angry that the contract operator pays workers who fly-in and fly-out of the colliery far more than local residents. Despite efforts by the company to run the mine with scab labour, the 15-day strike has rendered the mine inoperable since emergency response teams are also part of the strike. 
 
On 2 August, some 18 wives and partners of striking miners blocked trains loaded with coal from leaving the Collinsville area, causing the trains to return to the mine. That scene was repeated over the weekend and today, 9 August, resulting in the arrests of four women for railway-related trespassing offenses. The trains are operated by the QR National rail line. 
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The CFMEU is seeking job security protections from Theiss in a new enterprise bargaining agreement, as well as pay packages that miners in other areas of the Bowen Basin receive. Collinsville miners have lost 24% in wages over the past several years as Theiss continues to stall bargaining. 
 
The contractor has offered a 6% increase this year, and 4% hikes in each of the next two years, but Collinsville miners are seeking increases of 9%, 6%, and 5% to bring them close to parity with other mining enterprises of Queensland. The CFMEU also is seeking super-annuation contributions lifted by 12% on a supplemental pension scheme. 
 
Xstrata Coal owns 55% of the Collinsville mine that produces and exports thermal coal, while Japan&rsquo;s Itochu Coal Resources and Sumitomo hold 35% and 10% stakes, respectively. 
 
Meanwhile, the 21-month dispute between CFMEU and Xstrata at the Tahmoor colliery in New South Wales continues. The union is seeking solution by an independent arbitrator of Australia&rsquo;s Fair Work Tribunal in order to retain union work rights at the mine, but the company is resisting. The livelihoods of some 240 miners are at stake.

Angry CFMEU Miners Strike Contract Operator at Australian Colliery

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Efforts to resolve a 2010 industry pay settlement for 4,000 UK paperworkers failed in late July, with ICEM affiliates Unite the Union and GMB now deferring further talks with the employers&rsquo; Confederation of Paper Industries (CPI) until 6 October. The negotiations cover workers in the corrugated boxboard sector of the paper industry, with the major employers being SmurfitKappa, DS Smith, and SAICA, the Spanish company that bought the UK operations of Swedish SCA in 2008. 
 
Following negotiations on 22-23 July, union negotiators were willing to put the corrugated industry&rsquo;s final offer up for a ballot, but without recommending approval or rejection. This was not agreeable to the CPI and the final offer was withdrawn. 
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In Unite&rsquo;s GPM Sector newsletter, Unite National Officer Peter Ellis said the unions are seeking a one-year pay deal, but &ldquo;various options were considered ranging from a one year deal, a deferred payment deal, a two-year deal, and a mixture of all three. 
 
&ldquo;However, the level of settlement offered by the industry was below the level that unions would be prepared to recommend to their members,&rdquo; said Ellis. 
 
The recess in corrugated talks until early October is due to scheduling. The unions and CPI have a 14-member joint negotiations body charged with reaching pay terms. Meanwhile, Unite&rsquo;s 2010 pay settlements in the print, packaging, and newspaper sector, covering some 70 employers, are averaging between 2% and 2.5%.

Corrugated Paperboard Talks in UK Put on Hold Until October

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Bumper pay packages were negotiated last week between British unions, including Unite the Union, and Corus, the steel producer owned by India&rsquo;s Tata Group. In what Unite termed a &ldquo;breakthrough&rdquo; in talks that dated to last May for 12,000 UK steelworkers, labour and management agreed to a 2010 pay deal of 3.2%, backdated to 1 April. 
 
The tentative agreement, which also includes a &pound;200 lump-sum bonus, will now be voted on by Unite&rsquo;s 8,000 members, with results due in early September. Two other UK unions representing Corus workers, GMB and Community, accepted the same deal, with its bargaining leaders empowered to ratify the agreement. 
 
The 2010-2011 collective agreement covers steelworkers at some 15 Corus worksites. 
 
In June, the pay offer by Corus was between one and two percent. The culmination of hard bargaining last week pleased trade union leaders of all three organizations, particularly since workers agreed to take a pay freeze last year that was included in &pound;1 billion in savings served up to the steelmaker in order to help the company through the recession. 
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&ldquo;This new deal offered by Corus will go some way to rebuilding trust with management,&rdquo; stated Unite National Steel Officer Terry Pye. &ldquo;Whatever the outcome of the ballot with our members on the revised pay offer, we are pleased that the company has made a significant improvement to the pay offer, which we are recommending to our members.&rdquo; 
 
GMB National Secretary Keith Hazlewood said, &ldquo;After last year&rsquo;s pay freeze and a very turbulent 18 months it would be nice to think that we have seen the worst, and have the makings of a foundation to build on for a secure future for our members and local steel communities going forward.&rdquo; 
 
India&rsquo;s Tata Group bought Anglo-Dutch Corus in 2006 for US$12 billion. UK unions remain hopeful that one Corus site that was partially shuttered in February in North-east England will reopen under new ownership. Union leaders, together with national and local officials have been negotiating with Sahaviriya Steel Industries of Thailand to operate the Teesside Cast Products mill.

UK Metal Workers Realize Pay Dividends with Tata’s Corus Steel

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Oil and transport trade unions in the Suleymania area of Iraqi Kurdistan returned home from a recent meeting of the ICEM, International Transport Workers&rsquo; Federation (ITF) Oil &amp; Gas Trade Union Alliance in Beirut and quickly organized a wider meeting of unions from both petroleum and transport sectors at the regional level. (See the ICEM/ITF story <a href="/en/3-Energy-Oil-and-Gas/3932-'Well-to-Wheel'-Forum-in-Beirut-Focuses-on-Oil-Transport-Work-in-Iraq ">here</a>.) 
 
Salam Rachid of the Iraqi Kurdistan Workers Syndicat Union of Suleymania arranged the meeting of local union activists to report back on the results of the seminar and explain the importance of the Alliance. 
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ICEM, ITF, and the Solidarity Center of the US, which supports the &ldquo;Well to Wheel&rdquo; Alliance in Iraq, are delighted to see the immediate follow-up work at local level, which is considered essential to the success of the Alliance. This is especially important given the draconian measures taken recently against trade unions of electric power workers&rsquo; in Iraq, in what has become the latest attempt by the Baghdad government to destroy independent trade unionism. 
 
The ICEM views the recent crack-downs on electric power workers as an extension of failure by Iraq&rsquo;s government to enact ILO-compliant labour legislation and its excuse to impose old legislation from the Saddam era, which banned trade unions in the public sector and heavily restricts all trade union activity and work.

Rapid Iraqi Follow-up to ICEM, ITF ‘Well-to-Wheel’ Work Praised

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In the US, recruiting new union members was to become easier with passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a solid piece of labour reform legislation meant to balance the current one-sided advantages that employers have in blocking workers&rsquo; from joining a union. But despite mass support generated by US unions and their members in 2008 to elect Barack Obama and Party Democrat majorities in both houses of Congress, reciprocation by prioritizing EFCA for passage never happened. 
 
Last week, on 1 August, the new President of the United Auto Workers (UAW), Bob King, turned that page by telling the annual Management Seminars of the Center for Automotive Research that American workers deserve to have their constitutional First Amendment rights of free association and free speech protected. He called on senior managers to help make that happen in good faith by signing a union election protocol. 
<img alt="" src="" width="135" height="190" />
Bob King, President of the United Auto Workers (UAW)
King said the UAW will not passively &ldquo;sit and wait&rdquo; for passage of EFCA, but instead will present to executives of auto and auto-related industries &ndash; now operating without unionization &ndash; a &ldquo;Principles and Fair Union Election&rdquo; protocol that guarantees workers will have their basic rights upheld in free and unencumbered union certification elections. The UAW will make those principles public following an upcoming executive board meeting of the union. 
 
But they are certain to include equal access to workers seeking to form a union by both the union and management, and the principles would ban derogatory, insulting, and false statements by either party. Perhaps more significantly within the US landscape of union, the UAW principles ban any threats, coercion, or pressure by either management or the union in the run-up to or after elections. 
 
King told the US auto industry&rsquo;s leading management seminar that for those companies that sign on and abide by the principles, &ldquo;we will respect the decision of their workers whether they vote to join the union or not. 
 
&ldquo;However, if companies do not agree to these principles, and instead engage in threatening behaviour towards workers who want to organise a union, or fire workers who try to organise, or close down facilities to thwart union activity, then the UAW will not tolerate the violation of workers&rsquo; First Amendment rights.&rdquo; 
<img alt="" src="" width="250" height="110" />
King added, &ldquo;So, any company that does not agree to the UAW Principles is essentially declaring war on freedom of speech and assembly, and it is our duty and mission to enforce that right.&rdquo; 
 
King, who was newly-elected to head the 400,000-member union in June, told the industry that &ldquo;the 21st century UAW&rdquo; will be less adversarial and has already proven to the three major US automakers to be a partner in flexibility, innovation, quality, teamwork, productivity, continuous cost-savings, and mutual respect. 
 
&ldquo;We respect not only the employers with whom we have relationships, but we also have enormous respect for the transnational companies who have build factories in the US,&rdquo; said King. &ldquo;We welcome you as partners and colleagues in the industry. We appreciate the fact that you are providing good jobs here. We admire many of your good policies and practices, including the focus on continuous improvement, quality, and productivity. The transplants are an important and essential part of preserving, maintaining, and growing our manufacturing base in this country.&rdquo; 
 
King, the first UAW President to speak before the US auto industry&rsquo;s managers&rsquo; forum since 1994, told executives that the choice was up to non-union employers whether or not to sign the UAW&rsquo;s Principals. But, he suggested, &ldquo;the best business practice, the best way to deliver shareholder value, is to partner with the UAW on quality, productivity, attendance, employee morale, and the overall goal of providing the best product at the best price to the customer.&rdquo;

US Auto Workers Seek Bilateral Accords with Employers over Unionisation

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Good relations between the ICEM affiliate Mexican National Miners&rsquo; and Metalworkers&rsquo; Union (SNTMMSRM), or Los Mineros, and Luxembourg-based steelmaker ArcelorMittal have made it possible for the union to post 14% overall gains in renewal negotiations recently. 
 
The contract covers 4,000 steelworkers at massive ArcelorMittal&rsquo;s L&aacute;zaro C&aacute;rdenas SA de CV complex in Michoacan state. 
 
The new agreement was signed on Wednesday, 4 August, in Vancouver, Canada, between Los Mineros General Secretary Napole&oacute;n Gomez Urrutia, Sergio Beltr&aacute;n Reyes, Javier Zu&ntilde;iga Garc&iacute;a of the union&rsquo;s executive, and Mario Garc&iacute;a Ort&iacute;z of Los Mineros in Michoacan state, with William Chisholm, CEO of ArcelorMittal Mexico, and Jose Luis Fuentes Quiroz Director of Human Resources. 
<img alt="" src="" width="229" height="172" />
from left, ArcelorMittal&rsquo;s Jose Luis Fuentes Quiroz-Pacheco and William Chisholm, Los Mineros General Secretary Napole&oacute;n G&oacute;mez, Sergio Beltr&aacute;n Reyes, the union&rsquo;s Secretary of Interior, Exterior and Acts
The agreement was signed in Canada where Napole&oacute;n Gomez continues to lead the union while in exile. 
 
There was no involvement by the Mexican Ministry of Labour in the negotiations. 
 
The new agreement increases direct wages by 8%, and benefits by 6%, to be paid retroactively from 1 May 2010. The agreement also includes a one-time payment of US$1,300 to each worker for outside social benefits, including those permanently employed and those employed through subcontractors. 
 
Los Mineros and ArcelorMittal had been negotiating for several weeks prior to a 1 August expiration of a prior agreement. It was extended by three days to allow the Los Mineros leadership to attend the 14th National Mineworkers Forum on 30 July in Cananea, marking the third anniversary of the Cananea copper strike in northern Sonora state. 
<img alt="" src="" width="230" height="145" />
Standing: Javier Zu&ntilde;iga Garc&iacute;a, Los Mineros Secretary of Labor, and Mario Garc&iacute;a Ort&iacute;z, Los Mineros Section 271 Special Delegate from Michoacan 
ArcelorMittal posted net profits in second quarter 2010 of US$1.7 billion. This compares to a net loss of US$792 million for the same period in 2009. At L&aacute;zaro C&aacute;rdenas, Los Mineros gave approval in May for merger of the company&rsquo;s four business units, a move that will give the company greater flexibility and mobility of raw materials and resources between its flat steel and slab steel production processes. 
 
Prior to the signing of the ArcelorMittal collective agreement, meetings were held in Canada between Napole&oacute;n Gomez and another General Secretary of an ICEM-affiliated Latin American mining trade union, Luis Castillo Carlos of the National Miners&rsquo; and Metalworkers&rsquo; Union (FNTMMSP). 
 
Meeting in Vancouver on 21-24 July, the two General Secretaries discussed regional issues facing mineworkers, looking towards building a strategic regional alliance. 
 
The two unions share common difficulties with Grupo M&eacute;xico, the mining corporation that is accused of corrupt ties with the Calder&oacute;n government in Mexico. Grupo M&eacute;xico&rsquo;s Southern Copper subsidiaries in Peru include mines at Toquepala and Cuajote, and smelters and refineries in the Moquegua and Tacna regions. FNTMMSP has been attempting to negotiate with Southern Peru Copper for eight months in the Tacna region, but has faced repeated refusals from management on union demands. 
 
Both unions face governments that systematically side with employers in disputes with workers. Currently, the Peruvian Minister of Labour, Manuela Garc&iacute;a Cochagne, is refusing to mediate talks to resolve the Tacna conflict. Instead, he is carrying out bilateral discussions with the company. This is in breach of the Peruvian Constitution.

Los Mineros of Mexico Achieves 14% Gains with ArcelorMittal

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A deadly accident killed four maintenance workers at the Carbones del Cerrej&oacute;n mine complex in La Guajira department, north-eastern Colombia, on Wednesday, 4 August. The ICEM affiliated trade union at the mine, Sintracarb&oacute;n, represents 3,500 direct employed workers, and has been fighting to organise many of the 4,000 outsourced at Cerrej&oacute;n, Latin America&rsquo;s largest coal mine. 
 
As prior ICEM reports indicated, organising efforts were countered with harassment and persecution by contractors, while Carbones del Cerrej&oacute;n management refused to intervene. 
 
This latest fatal accident underlines the urgent need for free trade unions among all the contractors of Cerrej&oacute;n in order to end unsafe working conditions. Carbones del Cerrej&oacute;n, and its owners Xstrata, AngloAmerican, and BHP Billiton, cannot continue to turn a blind eye to anti-union contractors. 
<img alt="" src="" width="220" height="185" />
Wednesday&rsquo;s accident occurred at 19h50, when a high platform holding 16 workers collapsed and fell. Contract employees of Conconcreto and Ticom were carrying out repair work in one of two coal storage silos in the massive facility&rsquo;s crushing plant. 
 
Three workers died at the scene. While 12 of the 16 were injured and taken to hospital, one died en-route. The bodies of the three dead workers could not be recovered until late into the night. 
 
Seven of the hospitalized workers have since been discharged, and the others are all in stable condition. 
 
Sintracarb&oacute;n, as well as communicating shock and sadness, moved quickly to demand a full inquiry into the accident, with a view to fully understanding its causes, and establishing a strict safety policy throughout the Cerrej&oacute;n operations. The company has responded, with external investigators due to release findings in two weeks. 
 
Production at Cerrej&oacute;n reached 30.5 million tonnes in 2009, and is expected to reach 40 million tonnes by 2011.

Contract Workers Killed at Colombia’s Cerrejón Mine, Renewing Cry for Unionisation

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