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New Zealand affiliate Engineering, Printing &amp; Manufacturing Union has mounted a campaign to preserve NZ&rsquo;s Employment Court. An employers&rsquo; group is out to gut the effective labour panel, saying all appeals from the Employment Relations Authority should go to NZ&rsquo;s High Court.

New Zealand’s EPMU Seeks to Preserve Employment Court

The Ukrainian government has transferred some new funds to the country's cash-starved nuclear power stations. However, the sums involved are far from enough to resolve the ongoing crisis over the non-payment of nuclear workers' wages. 
Information on the payments and other government moves has just been received by the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM) from the Ukrainian nuclear workers' union ATU, which is an ICEM affiliate. 
 
Workers at Chernobyl and Ukraine's four other nuclear power stations will launch an indefinite strike on 22 March unless the wage backlog of more than 15 million US dollars is paid off by then. 
 
A decree to provide new credits for the power stations, specifically in order to pay off the wage debt, was signed into force yesterday. But the total earmarked in the decree is 120 million hryvnia - and the sector's total debt has now risen to 150 billion hryvnia. Credits actually transferred to the power stations' bank accounts between 1 March and 9 March amounted to 4,319,000 hryvnia. 
 
Prime Minister Valery Pustovoitenko met the directors of the nuclear power stations yesterday, and a further meeting between the Prime Minister and the unions was scheduled for today. 
 
The ATU Presidium will meet on 17 March to examine the government's measures to date. 
 
Meanwhile, the commission established last week to tackle the problem of Ukraine's massive unpaid electricity, heating, gas and coal bills has started work under the personal supervision of Deputy Prime Minister V. Kurachenko. The commission is empowered to cut off all supplies to major defaulters. 
 
According to information received by the ATU, the commission has already decided to cut off some 18,000 Ukrainian enterprises.

Ukrainian Nuclear Crisis - Government Transfers Some Wage Funds - But Not Enough

The Uribe government and the Colombian oil firm Ecopetrol has escalated a 19-day strike by Union Sindical Obrera (USO) by sacking another 40 workers. The government has ruled the strike illegal on the &ldquo;essential service&rdquo; theory of oil refining. The ICEM argues that ILO jurisprudence regarding that definition proves differently. The government has now sacked 60.

Colombian Government Declares War on Oil Union

Some 100,000 African miners face unemployment and desperate poverty if gold prices stay at their present 20-year low. 
 
Gold slid to around $261 an ounce today after Britain sold 25 tonnes at $261.20 an ounce in an auction that was 5.2 times oversubscribed. Renewed pressure could come from further big sell-offs, notably a plan by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to cut its gold reserves by up to 10 million ounces. 
 
&quot;If the price of gold stays around $260 an ounce or less, this spells the loss of up to 82,000 miners' jobs in South Africa and more than 100,000 in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole,&quot; miners' leader James Motlatsi told ICEM UPDATE from Johannesburg this afternoon. 
 
&quot;If you take the indirect effects into account,&quot; he pointed out, &quot;this means that more than a million Africans will suffer deeply as a result of these gold sales. Many more miners' jobs will also be put at risk on other continents.&quot; 
 
The world's biggest gold producer, South Africa currently has some 300,000 miners. Unemployment in South Africa as a whole is already around 30 percent. 
 
Motlatsi is President of the country's National Union of Miners (NUM) and Vice-President of the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), to which the NUM is affiliated at the global level. He also chairs the ICEM's African region. 
 
&quot;We are very disappointed that the British government went ahead with the gold sale today and that they are apparently determined to continue these sales,&quot; Motlatsi said. 
 
&quot;Through this policy, they are doing great harm to many of the world's indebted and poor countries. For one-third of the highly indebted countries, gold mining is an important currency earner. We cannot believe that the British government has thought this policy through properly, and we appeal to the British to reconsider. 
 
&quot;One major South African mining company, ERPM, already announced 5,000 job losses yesterday,&quot; Motlatsi added. &quot;Tomorrow, we will be taking those 5,000 miners to the British embassy in Pretoria, to show the British authorities what suffering they are causing.&quot; 
 
The British attitude was in marked contrast to the line taken by a number of other national reserve banks, Motlatsi stated. Last month, he said, he was on a delegation from South Africa's Chamber of Mines which lobbied the heads of reserve banks and legislators in a number of key countries. &quot;The central reserve banks of the US, Germany, France, Italy and some other countries promised us that they would not be selling off their gold reserves,&quot; Motlatsi said. &quot;This makes the British action all the more incomprehensible.&quot; 
 
The Chamber of Mines delegation also found considerable opposition amongst US legislators to the idea of selling IMF gold reserves, Motlatsi said. The US is the IMF's biggest contributor and voter. 
 
The declared rationale behind the IMF gold sell-off is that it would finance debt relief for the world's poorer nations. 
 
&quot;It's ridiculous for the IMF to suggest that selling 10 million ounces of gold would make a significant contribution to writing off third world debt,&quot; Motlatsi countered. &quot;That sale would raise about $2.6 billion, but the poor countries owe some $220 billion. And in the meantime, the IMF sale, by pushing down the gold price, would further reduce the earnings of some of the world's poorer nations. 
 
&quot;Instead,&quot; Motlatsi insisted, &quot;the IMF should assist the poorer countries by meeting their needs case by case, rather than imposing its discredited structural adjustment policies on them. And the rich countries should simply write off what the poor countries owe them. That is what South Africa did, after the end of apartheid, with the debts owed to us by Mozambique and Namibia. We are not a rich country. If we can do it, others can too.&quot; 
 
&quot;The British gold sale and the proposed sale by the IMF are irresponsible,&quot; agreed ICEM General Secretary Vic Thorpe in Brussels. &quot;The ICEM calls upon both of them not to dump any more gold on to the market. What is needed urgently is a world gold summit, at which any changes in the role of gold can be properly planned. In that way, governments can ensure that such changes cause minimum disruption to the earnings of some of the world's poorest countries and some of the world's least privileged workers. 
 
&quot;The British government has made much of its ethical foreign policy,&quot; Thorpe added. &quot;The ICEM will be pressing it to put its gold where its mouth is. As for the IMF, it is perfectly well aware that debt can be written off without selling gold stocks. We should all be telling the IMF what it knows already: you don't have to sell gold to do good.&quot;

ICEM Slams British Sell-Off And IMF Scheme - 100,000 African Miners At Risk

United Steelworker (USWA) members at four Michelin plants in the US and Canada ratified new two-year labour agreements last week that enhances job security protections and pledges the French-based tyre firm to make minimum US$150 million capital improvements to the plants. The ratification in Canada at the company&rsquo;s Kitchener, Ontario, plant ended an 11-week strike for 1,000 workers. The USWA fended off concessions at Michelin&rsquo;s four unionized North American plants, and won protections against contracting out maintenance and a guarantee of no layoffs or plant closings during the term of the contract. The three US plants are located in Tuscaloosa and Opelika, Alabama, and Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Steelworkers in US, Canada Ratify Rubber Contracts with Michelin

IGBCE in Germany won gains for 60,000 rubber workers in wage negotiations. A one-year contract with the rubber industry will pay workers 1.7% effective 1 October. A payment of &euro;150-per-worker was also agreed to prior to that date, and rubber industry training obligations will remain intact.

IGBCE Negotiates Gains for Rubber Workers in Germany

PACE, along with ICEM, has released a testimony of European DuPont workers following a visit to the chemical firm&rsquo;s US sites last spring. The report contains first-hand experience of the European delegates including DuPont&rsquo;s inhospitable response to the tour. The report can be accessed at www.dupontcouncil.org.

PACE in US Releases Anti-Worker Testimony at DuPont

US affiliate PACE has adopted a paper industry bargaining policy that has been approved by 75% of its local unions in the paper sector. Goals include collective agreements of no more than four years in length, and no waiver of rights to negotiate over health care plans, sickness or accident benefits, life insurance or pensions. Of PACE&rsquo;s 275,000 members, about 160,000 work in the pulp and paper sectors.

PACE in US Adopts Paper Sector Bargaining Policy

Another pair of ICEM affiliates also is on the road to merger. In Sweden at the congress of Industrifacket, the Industrial Workers&rsquo; Trade Union, delegates voted to merge with Svenska Metall. That ICEM affiliate, which includes mineworkers, will now vote at its congress in September on the merger agreement. If passed, the merger is expected to take effect in January 2006.

Swedish Unions Industrifacket, Metall Prepare to Merge

The GPMU and another ICEM affiliate in the UK, Amicus, officially merged earlier this month following a vote of members at branch levels of the GPMU. The vote tally to merge with the UK&rsquo;s largest union was 26,709 for and 4,287 against, or 86% to 14%. The two unions will begin joining operations on 1 October with a five-year period expected to fully merge structures. GPMU will become a sector within Amicus.

UK Union GPMU Merges with Amicus

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