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On 18-20 June 2012, a new Global Union Federation (GUF) will see daylight at a founding congress in Copenhagen, Denmark. 
 
But what shall the new International be called? Now you have the chance to make a proposal. 
 
The organization will unite 50 million workers in more than 140 countries in mining, energy, metal, electronics, chemicals, paper, rubber, materials, garments, shoe, leather textile industries. 
 
It aims to connect workers, fight for labour rights and build global solidarity across entire supply chains. It will be a strong counterweight to multinational companies and promote social justice, democracy and a sustainable future for the whole world. 
 
Such a powerful organization needs a fresh and identifiable name. Your contribution is welcome. Please send your proposal by e-mail to <a href="mailto:imf.icem.itglwf@gmail.com">imf.icem.itglwf@gmail.com</a> at the latest by 31 October 2011. 
 
A joint Executive Committee meeting of the IMF, ICEM, and ITGLWF will decide upon a name at the end of February 2012.

What Name for New GUF? Suggest It!

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Three trade union leaders at Euroasian Steels in Kutaisi, Georgia, will be released from jail late this week after serving ten-day administrative arrests. Emilo Gumberidze, Irakli Iobidze, and Malkhaz Gogiava were rounded up in a marketplace in Kutaisi eight days ago, three days after <a href="/en/4-Chemicals-Pharmaceuticals/4667-ICEM-Scorns-Blatant-Police-Repression-in-Putting-Down-Georgian-Metal-Strike">Georgian police brutally broke a strike</a> there by ICEM affiliate Metallurgical, Mining and Chemical Industry Workers&rsquo; Trade Union of Georgia. 
 
The three were charged with narcotics possession/consumption and given drug tests. All three plainly passed. But in expressing the ridiculousness of the charge, the three were cited with disrespecting police. On 19 September, the Kutaisi City Court sentenced Gumberidze, Iobidze, and Gogiava to ten days in jail. 
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The sentence was a ruse to lock up trade unionists who are leading a legitimate workers&rsquo; movement decrying a two-year-old worksite that has no wage structures, no plan on safety and health, no adherence to global labour standards, no overtime pay, but limitless and mandatory work at low pay. When workers exercised their global right to strike under such conditions, they were met by a police crackdown reminiscent of a police state. Twenty-nine steelworkers at Euroasian, or known locally as Hercules, have been fired in recent weeks for exerting their voice over the horrid and despicable working conditions. 
 
Euroasian Steels is an Indian-Georgian enterprise, 87.5% owned by Manaksia Ltd.&rsquo;s Euroasian Ventures, and 12.5% by Paata Chkhenkeli, a Georgian construction engineer who has close ties with a government eager for business but void of labour or regulatory statutes. Hercules is a mini-mill that rolls rebar and steel billet from molten iron scrap and then sells the steel bar to central Asia&rsquo;s construction industry. 
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Georgian police brutally break strike: 15 September 
Photo: RIA Novosti 
It employs 400 workers, including 130 Indian nationals who are segregated from the Georgian workers and who themselves are treated like indentured servants. Their passports are held by management, their salaries sent back to India, and they are given a small stipend to live on. On 21 September &ndash; separate from the Metallurgical, Mining, Chemical Workers&rsquo; Union&rsquo;s clash &ndash; Indian workers went on a two-hour work stoppage to protest their dire conditions. It was their second strike in recent months. 
 
The situation at Euoasian Steels in Kutaisi is gaining widespread attention, which cannot be good for the Georgian business climate or the country&rsquo;s social record. The ICEM sent a sharp letter of protest to Georgia President Mikheil Saakasvhili and Prime Minister Nika Gilauri on 19 September over the previous week&rsquo;s blatant human rights abuses by police and government authorities. (An <a href="/en/77-All-ICEM-News-Releases/4668-ICEM-Condemns-Georgia-Police-in-Suppressing-Union-Rights-at-Euroasian-Steels">ICEM news release</a> is here.)&nbsp; 
 
LabourStart has started a new <a href="http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=1101">Georgia campaign</a> on the most recent repression and can be found here.&nbsp;And several protest actions by the Georgian Trade Unions Confederation (GTUC), NGO, and others in Georgian civil society were held last week at government ministries in Tbilisi and provincial offices in Kutaisi. These will continue this week, culminating in a mass action at Georgia&rsquo;s parliament on 1 October.

Georgian Trade Union Leaders Jailed for Passing Drug Test

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Government-mediated talks broke off last week and labour relations further soured between Freeport-McMoRan and 8,000 striking Indonesian miners of ICEM affiliate FSP-KEP (SPSI), the Trade Union of Chemical, Energy, and Mine Workers (CEMWU). The PT Freeport Indonesia Workers&rsquo; Union of CEMWU this week meets the halfway mark of its 30-day strike that now could be prolonged at the world&rsquo;s largest gold and third largest copper mining complex &ndash; Freeport McMoRan&rsquo;s Grasberg mine in eastern Papua Province, New Guinea Island. 
 
Management spite was apparent at the strike&rsquo;s start on 15 September and it worsened following the breakdown of three days of talks with the Manpower Ministry in Jakarta on 22 September. PT Freeport managers relieved 138 union shop stewards of their job duties on Friday. The union responded by stating the strike likely will be extended beyond 15 October. 
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Since the wage, pension, and community funds strike started, managers have coerced workers to return to work with threats of dismissal, they have pressed contractors&rsquo; employees into production, and now they try to decimate the union by sacking union stewards and isolating the branch union&rsquo;s other leaders. 
 
PT Freeport management has attempted to coerce workers to sign a statement saying they will return to work or face getting fired. But despite this, only 500 workers are manning operations and many are staff of contractors. (See a <a href="/wp-content/migration/icem/1109.indo%20contractors.docx ">list of contractors</a> here.) 
 
Freeport-McMoRan last week issued a statement last week saying it was losing three million pounds of copper production daily, and 5,000 ounces of lost gold output daily. To increase pressure on miners to abandon the strike, the company also warned of lost revenues to the Indonesian government and to the seven native groups around Timika, Papua, that Freeport-McMoRan is obliged to support. 
 
The opening salvo came at the strike&rsquo;s outset when Managing Director Armando Mahler announced a &ldquo;no-work, no-pay&rdquo; policy. After last week&rsquo;s mediation failure, union and government sources said &ldquo;complete distrust&rdquo; exists between Mahler and his team and the union. 
 
Thus, PT Freeport Indonesia Workers&rsquo; Union asked that US-based Freeport-McMoRan Chairman James Moffett enter discussions. Mine union leaders remember Moffett&rsquo;s visit a few years ago when he encouraged workplace leaders to engage in &ldquo;win-win&rdquo; principles of labour relations. 
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At last week&rsquo;s mediation, PT Freeport, 91% owned by Freeport-McMoRan and 9% by Indonesia&rsquo;s government, said it would not budge from a wage offer of 11% in each year of a two-year accord. (The bi-annual contract comes due on 1 October.) The average miner&rsquo;s wage rate at Grasberg is US$1.50-per-hour. The union was seeking a doubling of that to US$3-an-hour but in mediation last week, the FSP-KEP miners&rsquo; branch union offered a compromise and proposed a 65% increase. The company would not move from 11%. 
 
It has offered slight increases in education and housing support and in shift pay, but has said it would not deviate from wage increments that other foreign investors pay in Indonesia. It also refuses to base a pension scheme &ndash; 50% paid into by workers &ndash; on multiplied years of service, or hear the union&rsquo;s demands for enhanced development and opportunities for the indigenous people of Papua. 
 
Grasberg is Freeport-McMoRan&rsquo;s biggest revenue maker and a year ago, the company&rsquo;s chief financial officer called it &ldquo;very low cost and a high cash flow generating asset with a very long life.&rdquo; The company&rsquo;s revenues this year from Grasberg are expected to be lower because it is mining lower-grade sections of the open pit mine. But Freeport-McMoRan is bullish on the future; it is developing a deep underground mine adjacent to Grasberg that contains high grades of copper and gold in the same ore body. 
 
The ICEM has intervened in this dispute and through its Indonesian Affiliates&rsquo; Union Chairman, D. Patombong Sjaiful of FSP-KEP, is giving direct aid and support to the Grasberg strikers. They need the solidarity and support of all miners and all trade unions in mining and other industrial sectors. Please send a short message in your own words to the <a href="mailto:Puk.fsp.kep.spsi.ptfi@yahoo.com; 2391936@gmail.com; Sudiro_930haulage@yahoo.com; pp.fspkep_spsi@yahoo.co.id; parorronganjuli@gmail.com; me2union@yahoo.co.id">PT Freeport Indonesia Workers&rsquo; Union</a>. 
 
In ICEM outreach to the union, when asked to characterise the strike, one officer responded by saying, &ldquo;determination. That&rsquo;s the one word that describes workers. We&rsquo;re determined to change our future through the work we do for this company.&rdquo;

PT Freeport Mine Managers Turn Rabid on Indonesian Grasberg Strikers

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Today in Belgrade, the ICEM affiliate Federation of Chemical, Non-Metal, Energy and Mining Trade Union will lead a joint main board meeting with two other Serbian unions on the final stages of a three-way merger. The 40,000-member ICEM affiliate will be joined by the Trade Union of Metalworkers and the Textile, Leather and Shoe Workers&rsquo; Union in an effort to create a single entity with strong growth prospects in the Central European nation. 
 
The new labour organisation is expected to be called the Trade Union of Industry and Energy and an integration Congress will be held in early May 2012. The 2,000-member Metalworkers&rsquo; union was weakened by a split in that organisation in 2010 and the Textile, Leather Union, numbering now only 1,000 dues-paying members, has been plagued by operational difficulties. 
 
Today&rsquo;s meeting is expected to set an agenda in which the two smaller unions will operate as boards of the Chemical, Non-Metal, Energy and Mining Trade Union until next year&rsquo;s merger. Zoran Stojanovic of the ICEM affiliate said the action plan being developed calls for a merged union to actively organise and provide updated services to Serbian industrial workers, particularly in the different energy sectors.

Serbia’s Chemicals, Metal, Textile/Leather Unions Set Agenda for Merger

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The North American Cement and Building Materials Union Network (NACBMUN) met at the headquarters of the United Steelworkers (USW) in the US city of Pittsburgh on 20-21 October. This third network meeting was co-chaired by Steve Brady, Chair of the USW Cement Conference, and Jim Pressley, Vice President of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers (IBB). 
 
The main activity of the network, created in 2008, is information exchange via a collective bargaining database, which includes full analysis of each collective agreement in the cement and building products sector. The database is updated annually. Six managers from Lafarge, Cemex&rsquo;s St. Mary&rsquo;s Cement, Essroc were invited to receive a report on business trends and human resource issues. 
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Phee Jungsun, ICEM Materials Industries&rsquo; Officer, presented an industry report and explained the new global labour instruments on protection of trade union rights in supply chains, including the revised OECD Guidelines and the UN Governing Principles on Business and Human Rights. Ongoing labour disputes at Holcim Cement in India and in Guatemala, and a global action plan to combat Holcim&rsquo;s unfair labour practices were reported. 
 
The network extended full solidarity support to contract workers at Holcim&rsquo;s Ambuja Cement in India, who have long been fighting for the right to join a union and to bargain collectively. 
 
The meeting discussed a plan to regularly conduct social dialogue with human resource managers, and participants agreed to extend the dialogue agenda to cover comprehensive subjects including subcontracting and union work along supply chains. A plan on a common organizing drive at unorganized workplaces is set as the main agenda item for a 2012 network meeting, to be held in Canada.

North American Cement, Building Materials Network Meets in Pittsburgh

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The ICEM&rsquo;s Brazilian affiliate ABC Chemical Workers&rsquo; Union project called &quot;The Chemical Industry in 2020 &ndash; A New Direction is Possible&quot; launched earlier this year was finalized with an international conference from 26-28 September in Santo Andre with 150 union leaders, government officials, and business and civil society representatives attending. 
 
The project&rsquo;s main goal is to promote sustainable growth in the Brazilian chemical industry through social dialogue and decent work. ICEM&rsquo;s Director of Industry and Corporate Affairs Kemal Ozkan was keynote speaker and the conference fostered many discussions toward achieving 2020 targets by the UN, as well as producing and using chemicals not harmful to human health and to the environment. 
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The event was also an opportunity to prepare the ABC Chemical Workers&rsquo; Union, together with social partners, for the UN&rsquo;s Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio +20) to be held in June 2012. 
 
With topics covering economic, social, and environmental dimensions, the conference deepened and expanded a series of discussions in three parts with participation of workers, entrepreneurs, public authorities, and others. Another highlight was presenting the ILO report called &quot;Restructuring the Brazilian Chemical Industry and its Impact on Employment and Social Dialogue.&quot; 
 
Paulo Lage, President of ABC Chemical Workers&rsquo; Union, opened the meeting by citing progress made since the first round of discussions in June 2011, especially a joint agenda between the union and the Brazilian Association of Chemical Industry (ABRIQUIM). &quot;Our industry has a terrible trade deficit which directly affects the jobs of workers, and only through debate and dialogue we will have a better world for everyone,&quot; said Lage. 
<img src="" width="170" height="161" alt="" />
Kemal Ozkan
At the conference&rsquo;s opening, Ozkan presented a detailed overview of the world&rsquo;s chemical industry, highlighting the prospects of growth in Asia, particularly China, which today is among the leaders in producing specialty chemicals industry. 
 
Yasuhiko Kamakura, senior ILO specialist for the chemical industry, addressed another important topic &ndash; Social Dialogue in the Chemical Industry. He gave worldwide data on restructuring and the effects of social dialogue, contents of which are contained in the ILO study. He also addressed the trend of mergers in the chemicals industry, saying some four million jobs were lost between between 2000 and 2006 due to corporate integration. 
 
The conference&rsquo;s closing was made by Artur Henrique, the president of Brazilian national labour center, Central &Uacute;nica dos Trabalhadores (CUT) and following, a proposed document was produced to strengthen the Brazilian chemical industry, which will be delivered by the unions and employers to the federal government.

Decent Work, Social Dialogue to Mark Brazilian Chemical Industry

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The 10th Congress of ICEM Turkish affiliate T&uuml;mka-İş, the All Paper and Cellulose Industry Workers&rsquo; Union, was held on 15-16 October at the offices of Birleşik Metal-İş in Istanbul and it paid tribute to Kemal Yilmaz, the president of T&uuml;mka-İş who retired at the Congress after a sterling 50-year career in the Turkish labour movement. 
 
The Congress elected Erg&uuml;n Tavşanoğlu to succeed the storied union leader, while İlhan &Ouml;zel was re-elected as the General Secretary. 
 
Comrade Yılmaz started work in the rubber industry in Turkey and was a member of another ICEM affiliate, Lastik-İş, the Rubber and Plastics Workers&rsquo; Union. While a regional officer for the union in the 1970s, he represented workers at factories defined in the paper industry. It was then that T&uuml;mka-İş was established and he became the first President of the pulp and paper union in the mid-1970s. He was also eleceted to the Executive Committee of Confederation of the Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey (DİSK), and during the military coup d&rsquo;etat of the 1980s, he was imprisoned for his trade union activity from 1980 to 1984. 
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Kemal Yilmaz
After DISK re-started activities in 1991, he again took the lead in organizing paper workers under the umbrella of T&uuml;mka-İş. He organised workers at several paper companies, including Procter &amp; Gamble, Kimberly Clark and Europackaging. At the Congress nine days ago, the T&uuml;mka-İş Executive Committee praised his achievements and committment to Turkish workers, and pledged that the banner and work of Kemal Yılmaz will never be scaled down. 
 
Delegates to the Congress discussed important legislative matters inside Turkey, as well as the country&rsquo;s paper industry in Turkey, particularly impacts from the financial crisis. According to official figures, employment in the industry dropped down from 34,075 in 2007 to 33,850 in 2008. By the end of 2008, however, Social Security Agency statistics showed an improvement and that has gradually improved to where in April 2011, employment was at 37,696 in 1,930 workplaces. 
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T&uuml;mka-İş Members Voting on 16 October
The Congress demonstrated its determination to organise in the post-crisis environment and precarious employment created through subcontracting was tagged as the main threat in union recruitment. 
 
This 10th Congress of T&uuml;mka-İş coincides with proposed mmodifications to Turkish trade union law to correct some of the deficiencies seen by the ILO. One specific modification relates to the paper sector in defining the exact number of sectors in which trade unions can operate. The proposed modification reduces the number of sectors from 28 to 18. 
 
If passed into law, the paper industry would be merged with the wood industry sector. This would require T&uuml;mka-İş to have to a Congress within a year of enactment to harmonizing its statutes with new provisions of the law. T&uuml;mka-İş and its national labour center, DİSK, find the proposal inadequate, and demand far more democratic measures in order to assure paperworkers the ability to enjoy freedom of association and other trade union rights.

Turkish Tümka-İş Pays Tribute to Retiring Leader, Kemal Yilmaz

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Broad strike activity accelerated a positive wage agreement in the Austrian metal sector. In the early morning hours of 18 October, Austrian trade unions PRO-GE and GPA djp, the Salaried Employees, Print, Journalism, Paper Union, emerged from bargaining on behalf on 170,000 metal and industrial workers with positive results. 
 
The 2011 pay awards will range from 4.2% to 4.4%, with the minimum wage in the sector increasing by &euro;80-per-month, or a sizeable 5.3%. The ICEM commends these wage gains as a sterling European example in creating consumer power to offset the dire financial climate of the Eurozone. PRO-GE and GPA djp are to be congratulated for negotiating &euro;300 million into the Austrian economy in this single set of talks. 
<img alt="" src="" width="180" height="120" />
This was made possible by strategic and early strikes on 13 and 14 October that moved third-round bargaining up from 20 October to 17 October, and forced the employers&rsquo; hand in raising their wage offers to above 4%. (See <a href="/en/5-Mining-DGOJP/4719-Wage-Shame-Drives-Austrian-Metalworkers-into-Warning-Strikes ">ICEM report</a> on Austrian coordinated strikes last week here.) 
 
&ldquo;We have met our main demands of sustainable wage and salary increases, particularly for the lowest paid workers,&rdquo; said Rainer Wimmer, PRO-GE&rsquo;s chief negotiator. &ldquo;I thank the stewards, members, and supporters who made this deal possible. Without the 800 workplace actions and the pressure generated by the strikes, this would not have been possible.&rdquo; 
 
Those surprise strikes were to continue into the week of 17 October, but employers recognised the growing momentum among workers for fair wage gains and they reached settlement on union terms. That recognition came in hastily called exploratory talks held on Sunday, 16 October, that included &Ouml;GB national labour centre President Erich Foglar and the leader of the chief employers&rsquo; association, the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber (WK&Ouml;). 
<img alt="" src="" width="105" height="160" />
Rainer Wimmer
The two sides then reached accord in the early morning hours of 18 October after a 14-hour bargaining session. 
The agreement grants a 1 November pay rise of 4.4% to bottom rung workers, 4.3 to mid-level, 4.2% to senior staff, and 4% to top level people. In addition, pay for apprentices increases by 4.3% and all benefit indemnifications increase by the same amount. 
 
Perhaps the crowning achievement was hiking the minimum wage by 5.3%, or up to &euro;1,584-per-month. The wage agreement positively affects the buying power for 25,000 autoworkers, 16,000 who work in basic steel and iron, 5,000 in non-ferrous metals, 5,000 in utility work, and tens of thousands more in machinery, metal goods, and other industrial production. 
 
Austria&rsquo;s metal sector agreement now sets the template for 450,000 retail sector workers, who began bargaining through their unions with retail employers on 19 October.

Surprise Strike Brings Austrian Metalworkers Sizeable Wage Gains

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By a 61% vote on 15 October, members of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1005 in Hamilton, Ontario, ended U.S. Steel&rsquo;s chokehold on the livelihoods of 900 Canadian workers. Union members accepted a three-year labour agreement that ended a 49-week lockout at the steel mill. 
 
The agreement meant workers began returning to their rightful steel mill jobs on 18 October for week-long health and safety training. Further recalls for the training are expected this week and next. The new pact is not altogether satisfactory because it creates a two-tier pension scheme with new hires placed in an inferior plan, and it ends cost-of-living indexing for 9,000 retirees, a key issue in the 14-month dispute. 
 
U.S. Steel pressured steelworkers into submission by first imposing the lockout on 7 November 2010, and then supplying its Canadian customers from the former Stelco mill in Hamilton with finished steel from American mills. In the end and after nearly one year, most of Local 1005&rsquo;s members were on the verge of losing unemployment insurance benefits, which coupled with the USW&rsquo;s C$200-a-week strike benefit gave workers about two-thirds of their normal income. 
<img alt="" src="" width="218" height="163" />
The agreement contains a C$3,000 ratification bonus, to be paid within 60 days of the 15 October vote, and it also includes a lump sum pay-out of C$1,000 to retirees taking in less than C$1,500-per-month in lieu of annual pension indexing. Active workers will also see reduced cost-of-living annual increases. 
 
A profit-sharing plan for active employees will be implemented in the fourth quarter 2011. It will come from a pool of money totalling 6.5% above C$25 million in earnings from the Hamilton Works and could mean an added C$3,500 in income per worker. Union members will receive credited service for the 11 months of the lockout, meaning some workers will be closer to taking retirement. 
 
All workers will be guaranteed 26 weeks of employment at 40 hours per week. That countered a U.S. Steel proposal from mid-September in which the company sought call-back language that would have left many workers without jobs long after ratification and the end of the lockout. As it is, U.S. Steel will only re-start the coke ovens, the cold line, and the Z line. There are no plans in the near future to re-start Hamilton&rsquo;s blast furnace. 
 
The new agreement, which took effect on 15 October, calls for new hires not to be included in the existing defined benefit pension scheme and placed in a union-administered plan that will see U.S. Steel contribute C$2.50-per-hour worked. 
 
On USW Local 1005&rsquo;s website, union leaders said, &ldquo;We have made a huge effort so that the members can make an informed vote on whether to accept or reject this contract. We wanted to ensure that they are fully aware of the situation they face and of the responsibilities towards not just themselves and their families, but also towards the retirees, the future generation of workers, their union and their community. This whole process has shown that there are serious challenges facing us going forward.&rdquo;

U.S. Steel Canadian Lockout Ends

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Pressure is building on US-based Freeport-McMoRan as talks again broke down with striking miners at the Sociedad Minera Cerro Verde copper and molybdenum mine in southern Arequipa region. A branch union of the ICEM-affiliated National Miners&rsquo; and Metalworkers&rsquo; Union (FNTMMSP) of Peru met with management on 20 October in an attempt to end the strike, but once again company negotiators refused to move closer to union demands. 
 
Management originally offered a 2,000-sol (US$735) one-time bonus and a 3% pay rise but the union has demanded an 11% increase to current wages. 
 
Very important to the struggle was a government declaration on 30 September that the strike is legal. This is the first time a strike at the mine has been declared legal in its 40-year history. This judgement means Freeport cannot hire temporary replacement workers, or scabs. The company is however using 600 volunteers and management staff to continue operations. This is illegal and has been confirmed to be so by the government, which has ordered the mine to stop its unsafe use of replacement workers or face a fine of 72,000 soles (US$26,500). 
<img alt="" src="" width="241" height="161" />
Replacement workers damaged an ore-crushing facility at the mine, causing a three-day total shutdown until repairs could be made. The copper mine has now exhausted its stockpiled ore. No new blasting is being carried out. Pressure is high on management to meet the union demands. 
 
The indefinite strike is respected by all 1,220 FNTMMSP members at the third largest copper mine in Peru. Miners downed tools on 29 September. 
 
Some strikers went on hunger strikes on 17 October, demanding the company and regional authorities respect their demands. Leoncio Amudio, the secretary general of the branch union of FNTMMSP reported that workers marched on 18 October to the Arequipa regional government headquarters. 
 
The Cerro Verde mine produces some 2% of the world's copper mine. Miners of Cerro Verde are unwilling to accept anything less than an 11% pay increase.

Peru’s Mineworkers’ Strike against Freeport-McMoRan Now in 26th Day

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