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The cement workers&rsquo; union, Sintraincehsa, an affiliate of the Building and Wood Workers&rsquo; International (BWI), wrote to the chief labour inspector of the Ministry of Labour in Honduras, Selvin Ram&oacute;n Mart&iacute;nez, on 21 January to decry the union-busting tactics of local management. The union accused&nbsp;French-based Lafarge of&nbsp;breach of&nbsp;the collective agreement, national and international labour legislation, and the Global Framework Agreement signed by ICEM, BWI, and Lafarge. 
 
Local management of Lafarge Cementos in the city of Comayagua have arbitrarily begun&nbsp;alcohol and drug testing on employees as a means to sack union leaders. The tests are not observed by a third party and were initiated without consultation with the union.
<img alt="" src="" width="128" height="115" />
Sintraincehsa requests that inspectors from the Ministry of Labour&nbsp;oversee the testing. The union asked&nbsp;management in June 2010&nbsp;to work together with it&nbsp;in cases where workers were found to be breaking rules on alcohol and drugs. The union wants&nbsp;to&nbsp;rehabilitate and educate those failing drug or alcohol tests. 
 
However, since December 2010, management has increased its unilateral testing, without agreement or dialogue with the union. Sintraincehsa says that this is the latest tactic in the company&rsquo;s union-busting campaign, which has seen membership of the union decrease five-fold in recent years. Local management continues to outsource jobs, with 23 sub-contracting firms&nbsp;now operating on site, jobs Sintraincehsa says should be held by direct and permanently employed workers of Lafarge Cementos. 
 
Sintraincehsa and&nbsp;Lafarge Cementos&nbsp;have had a collective agreement in place since March 2005.

Cement Giant Lafarge in Breach of GFA in Honduras

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Some 1,600 American trade union and environmental leaders met in Washington, D.C., last week in a historic, three-day BlueGreen Alliance conference that concluded on 10 February with visits to US legislators urging a green industrial future for America. 
 
The BlueGreen Alliance Foundation, formed in 2006 between the United Steelworkers (USW) and the Sierra Club, has now grown to include eight US unions, several environmental organisations, and a handful of trade groups. 
 
The 2011 &ldquo;Good Jobs, Green Jobs National Conference&rdquo; featured US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson as keynote speaker, and consisted of many workshops, including one entitled &ldquo;11 Workers Killed and the Worst Environmental Disaster Ever; How Do We Respond to the Deepwater Horizon Explosion?&rdquo; 
<img src="" width="246" height="71" alt="" />
A familiar chord throughout the conference was how to compete against trading nations such as China and Germany that have developed better industrial policies concerning green technologies. Participants took that question, demanding legislative solutions, to lawmakers on Capitol Hill in Washington. 
 
USW President Leo Gerard opened the conference by urging delegates to push leaders of both US political parties to act in the long-term interests of the US. Another pair of themes weaved throughout the conference is that clean energy does create jobs, and good jobs and achievement of a safe environment are mutually inclusive. 
 
BlueGreen Alliance Executive Director Dave Foster said the participants at last week&rsquo;s conference, who represent 8.5 million American workers, &ldquo;are willing to answer President Obama's call to out-build, out-educate, and out-innovate to win the future. 
 
&ldquo;Congress,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;must (now) get moving on critical policies that build a healthy and prosperous America.&rdquo;

USW-led BlueGreen Alliance Champions Job Growth in America

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A group of union leaders from the energy sectors of Mexico, Canada, and the US, including several ICEM affiliates, met in Los Angeles, US, on 28-29 January and debated topics such as North American energy integration, energy policies and privatization, natural gas policies, and petroleum extraction &ndash; particularly offshore &ndash; and refining. 
 
The conference, hosted by ICEM affiliate Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA), also took up solidarity with the independent trade union movement of Mexico. 
 
Some of the conclusions drawn are that Canada and Mexico have become energy colonies of the US; privatization and deregulation have caused occupational health and safety to suffer; liberalisation of markets has basically seen environmental protection largely forgotten; and good jobs mean liveable, safe, secure, and unionized jobs. Anything less is unsustainable. 
<img alt="" src="" width="110" height="55" />&nbsp;&nbsp; <img alt="" src="" width="110" height="58" />
Conference participants also concluded that decent jobs are being lost while privatized oil and gas companies exploit and export wealth. Delegates also rejected the notion that new electrical capacity must be private and deregulated, and identified this area as the next round of attacks to come. 
 
The conference also said indigenous peoples' rights are being trampled on or bought off, and countries face greater handicaps in assuring that their energy resources help their own citizens. 
<img alt="" src="" width="110" height="67" />
The Tri-Nation Energy Workers&rsquo; Network in Los Angeles consisted of Canadian unions Communications, Energy, Paperworkers (CEP) Union, the Power Workers Union (PWU), Canadian Office &amp; Professional Employees&rsquo; Union (COPE 378), and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE); US unions included the UWUA, United Steelworkers (USW), and the International Longshore &amp; Warehouse Union (UWUA). 
 
And the Mexican unions included the Authentic Workers&rsquo; Front (FAT), the National Miners&rsquo; and Metalworkers&rsquo; Union (SNTMMSRM), the National Union of Technical and Professional Petroleum Workers (UNTyPP), the Mexican Union of Electrical Workers (SME), and SUTIN, a nuclear workers&rsquo; union, and CNEE, an energy union.

Tri-Nation Energy Workers’ Network Convenes in Los Angeles, US

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In Spain early this month, national union federations DGB of Germany and CC.OO and UGT of Spain were full social partners at the 23rd Spanish-German Summit. In common, they took the opportunity to issue a strong statement that government measures stemming from the economic crisis have benefited markets, but done nothing for social cohesion. 
 
The national trade union centers also took issue with German Chancellor Andrea Merkel&rsquo;s economic proposition heading into the summit to restrict wage growth by linking salaries to productivity and inflation. Leaders of the three federations &ndash; Michael Sommer of DGB, Ignacio Fern&aacute;ndez Toxo of CC.OO, and C&aacute;ndido M&eacute;ndez of UGT &ndash; were part of a tripartite event at the summit that also included CEOs from Telef&oacute;nica, Deutsche Telekom, Iberdrola, Siemens, Acciona, and other corporations. 
<img alt="" src="" width="140" height="49" />&nbsp;&nbsp; <img alt="" src="" width="90" height="90" /><img alt="" src="" width="120" height="67" />
In the statement, the federations said compliance with &ldquo;the agenda established at the G20 in London for new regulation of the international financial system&rdquo; must be a priority. They also gave full support to the European Trade Union Confederation&rsquo;s (ETUC) rejection of European Commission proposals for financial governance, and bluntly said, &ldquo;Today&rsquo;s European governments aim to lay the burden of the crisis on workers and pensions.&rdquo; 
 
Citing social inequality as a trigger to the economic collapse, the statement said structural reform and fiscal consolidation concerning pensions overhaul, welfare cut-backs, and weakening of collective bargaining laws &ldquo;will not lead to the recovery of the European economies. Quite the opposite. This erroneous conception is holding back a solution to the crisis and promoting social injustice.&rdquo; 
 
The statement also hit out at judgments from the European Court of Justice that wrongly regularize social and wage dumping, including the Vikking, Lava, R&uuml;ffert, and Luxembourg cases. 
 
The DGB, CC.OO, and UGT also said it agrees with analysts who say &ldquo;Europe is losing its values and its soul,&rdquo; and used as case example Tunisia and the fact that European governments held back until the very end condemnation of dictator Ben Ali and support for a people&rsquo;s democratic movement.

DGB, CC.OO, UGT Forge Common Ground on Euro Jobs, Economy

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	Some 200 delegates and international guests gathered 11 May in the Serbian city of Kragujevac for the founding Congress of Industrija, Energija, Rudarstvo, or IER Nezavisnost, the new 35,000-member industrial front of UGS Nezavisnost that brings together the ICEM-affiliated Chemicals, Non-Metals and Mining Trade Union, or GSHNER Nezavisnost, with the federation&rsquo;s metalworking union (GSM Nezavisnost), and the Trade Union of Textile, Leather and Shoe Industries (GSTKO Nezavisnost), an affiliate of the International Federation of Textile, Garment and Leather Workers&rsquo; Federation (ITGLWF).

	The merger marked the first time in Serbia that trade unions combined to gain greater strength, rather than past trends of pulling apart.

	<img alt="" src="" style="width: 221px;height: 79px" width="390">

	Guest speaker, ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda, made note of this fact and drew the parallel of this historic achievement to what is now occurring on the global level with the creation of IndustriALL.

	The founding Congress was held in Serbia&rsquo;s fourth largest city, a community now gearing up with production of a 2,500-worker Fiat automotive plant in which union recruitment will be essential. The Congress saw guests come from the International Metalworkers&rsquo; Federation (IMF), the European Metalworkers&rsquo; Federation (EMF), IndustriEnergi (IE) of Norway, FIM-CISL of Italy, FNME-CGT of France, Petrom of Romania, EKN of Croatia and KNG of Slovenia.

	Also in attendance were several representatives from regional-based companies, which signal realistic expectations that tri-partite and bi-lateral social dialogue is on the horizon.

	The Congress elected former GSHNER Nezavisnost President Milorad Panović as President and Dragon Vesić of that former union as General Secretary. Elected as Vice Presidents were former GSM Nezavisnost President Nenard Matić and former GSHNER Nezavisnost Vice President Zoran Pantelić. GSTKO Nezavisnost is represented on the eight-member Executive Committee by Bo&scaron;ko Karalić.

Serbian Branches of UGS Nezavisnost Merge Into Single Industry, Energy, Mine Union

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	A strike by ICEM Indonesian affiliate KSP2KI at one of the world&rsquo;s largest paper mills last week produced sizeable salary increases for over 13,000 workers. With strike support from nearly all workers at Asia Pulp and Paper&rsquo;s (APP) PT Pindo Deli&rsquo;s twin mills in Karawang, West Java, the union achieved substantially more than the minimum government-mandated increase that APP was at first willing to distribute.

	As well, KSP2KI won substantial increases for the lowest paid paperworkers and an APP pledge that it would engage in continuous social dialogue with the union.

	<img alt="" src="" style="width: 212px;height: 159px" width="390">

	FSP2KI Strike Leaders

	The two-year accord became retroactive to 1 April and grants workers, in some cases, a doubling of the provincial government minimum. KSP2KI, or&nbsp; Federasi Serikat Pekerja Pulp Dan Kertas, the Pulp and Paper Union of Indonesia, announced a three-day strike on 7 May but because of the large strike turnout, management resumed talks and agreed to the across-the-board increases on the day the strike started.

	In March, managers of the 900,000-metric-tonnes-per-year paperboard, writing papers and tissue mills had unilaterally decided on the minimum increase while still in bargaining. The strike and immediate return to the table saw wages lifted from 9.14% to 18% for most workers at low-end classifications, with increases to 14.14% and 11.14% in medium- and top-level classifications.

	That translates to an average IDR (Indonesia Rupiah) monthly increase of 139,363 (US$15.12). The minimum monthly pay at PT Pindo Deli in Karawang had been IDR 1,450,000 (US$157), so the pay grid for most workers will climb to above US$180-per-month.

	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<img alt="" src="" style="width: 225px;height: 169px" width="390">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

	The ICEM commends the KSP2KI &ndash; a union with 7,650 members at the twin Karawang mills &ndash; for the well-organised strike action and subsequent result, and encourages all workers at Karawang, including workers of outsource companies operating inside the mills, to take up union membership.

	APP is part of Indonesian Sinar Mas Group and operates some ten paper machines and 14 paper-coating machines in the Karawang No. 1 and No. 2 mills in West Java. It also operates wholly-owned or majority-controlled pulp and paper mills &ndash; some nine in total &ndash; in other parts of Indonesia.&nbsp;

Indonesian Paperworkers Win Big Pay Gains in Short Strike

<img alt="" src="" style="width: 100px;height: 39px" width="390" />

	The two unions representing 43,000 Austrian chemical workers &ndash; ICEM affiliate PRO-GE and GPA-djp &ndash; reached 2012-13 wage terms with Fachverband der Chemischen Industrie (FCIO), the Chemical Industry Association on 11 May. The deal came following four difficult rounds of bargaining, and also came after public protests and authorisation for warning strikes late last week by PRO-GE&rsquo;s General Board.

	The result was an increase in minimum salaries of 4.5%, effective 1 May, and actual increases for all workers of 4.35%, or at least a monthly minimum increase of &euro;90 that, in essence, will lift the pay for lower salaried workers to over 5%.

	The agreement is for 12 months and covers some 270 chemical companies represented by FCIO.

	The unions won a 4.5% pay increase for apprentices, 4.5% added to shift and night shift premiums, and a 3.2% hike to work allowance benefits.

	<img alt="" src="" style="width: 180px;height: 120px" width="390" />

	3 May Manifestation in Schwechat

	But perhaps most notable in the new collective agreement is improved maternal leave language whereby women can spend up to two years at home, with 16 months of that credited in calculation of wage increases and retirement benefits. The unions also won for chemical workers added bereavement leave in cases of death of children, either those living at home or away from home.

	Deputy PRO-GE Chairman Alfred Artm&auml;uer and GPA-djp Secretary Roman Krenn, who jointly led the unions&rsquo; bargaining efforts, credited shop stewards across the Alpine nation for conducting meetings and mobilising chemical workers for the favourable agreement after the third round of talks failed on 27 April.

	Indicative of the mobilisations was a 3 May one in Schwechat near Vienna where 800 workers manifested at a Borealis polyolefin plant.

After Testy Talks, Austrian Chemical Workers Agree to 4.35% Wage Hikes

<img alt="" src="" style="width: 100px;height: 39px" width="390" />

	The ICEM affiliate in Sierra Leone, United Mineworkers&rsquo; Union (UMU), stepped in last week to negotiate a partial resolve to a strike by casual workers employed by subcontractors of iron ore producer African Minerals Ltd. That strike, lasting from 17 April to 23 April, was marked by police violence in the north-central Sierra Leone town of Bumbuna that saw one woman killed by police gun fire and at least nine others seriously injured.

	The agreement reached on 24 April near Bumbuna between the UMU, African Minerals and several Sierra Leone ministry officials &ndash; including ministers of Labour and Social Security and Mineral Resources &ndash; produced several remedial measures to last week&rsquo;s spontaneous strike by some 500 casual workers.

	UMU General Secretary Ezekiel Dyke said he hoped his union&rsquo;s intervention would move the London-based mining company that relies almost totally on subcontractors to finalise a collective agreement with the UMU. African Minerals earlier this year began production at Sierra Leone&rsquo;s Tonkolili project near Bumbana, containing the world&rsquo;s largest reported magnetite iron ore reserves of 12.8 billion tonnes.

	<img alt="" height="140" src="" style="cursor: default" width="123" />

	Ezekiel Dyke

	UMU has been in talks with African Minerals since last year over a collective agreement. Last week&rsquo;s strike by nearly half of the workforce of 1,000 casual workers was caused by delayed salaries to some, meagre pay to all, lack of medical care, and on-going lack of union representation as production ramped up and rail shipments to the capital of Freeport began.

	On the strike&rsquo;s second day, 18 April, violence ensued when Bumbuna towns-people joined strikers and blocked entrances to the Tonkolili project. Riot police then stormed protestors in the village, firing live ammunition, wielding batons and shooting tear gas directly at strikers and their community supporters. The police action created a stampede that tore through a marketplace in Bumbuna.

	Killed instantly was Musu Conteh, a woman in her 30s employed by the catering firm ATS. Some nine others were seriously injured by bullet wounds to their legs, said the UMU&rsquo;s Ezekiel Dyke, while perhaps 20 others were treated in an ill-equipped medical centre in nearby Makena for gas inhalation and police-inflicted wounds.

	Dyke said upwards of 40% of the casual workers employed throughout the Tonkolili project are women.

	The remedial agreement reached will see African Minerals immediately pay owed back salaries of up to two months for casual workers who work on the mine&rsquo;s rail link. It establishes a framework whereby casual workers will become permanent employees of either African Minerals or their subcontracting firm after three months of employment, or in some cases extended to six months.

	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<img alt="" src="" style="cursor: default;width: 200px;height: 92px" width="390" />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

	It also mandates that African Minerals provide a full review of salaries, work conditions and job categories within two weeks. The primary employer also agreed to investigate and pay compensation to the deceased woman&rsquo;s family within two weeks, as well as provide compensation to injured victims in that same period. African Minerals also agreed to pay compensation to market vendors &ndash; mostly women &ndash; for their losses from the 18 April violence.

	There will also be a thorough investigation of the unchecked police force used on 18 April.

	Major contractors for African Minerals in Sierra Leone include the company BCM, doing production work, while UK-based engineering and construction companies Dawnus and Hawk also employ casual workers, as does South African-based Wilson Bayly Holmes-Ovcon (WBHO). There are scores of Sierra Leone-based companies that reportedly also exploit workers.

	Between the latter half of 2011 and last month, China-based Shandong Iron &amp; Steel Group Co. Ltd. of state-owned Shandong Province Asset Commission purchased 25% of the Tonkolili project from African Minerals, along with the same percentage of related rail and port subsidiary companies for nearly US$1.5 billion.

	UMU currently has collective agreements in Sierra Leone with iron ore miner London Mining, BSG Resources&rsquo; Koidu Holdings, a diamond miner, Cluff Gold, Baomahun Gold Mines, and Sierra Rutile, a miner of titanium dioxide. &nbsp;&nbsp;

Mineworkers’ Union in Sierra Leone Intervene on Behalf of Oppressed Contract Workers

<img alt="" src="" style="width: 100px;height: 39px" width="390" />The current propensity by multinationals to lock-out Canadian workers when they refuse cutbacks to their work standards continues. On 5 May, Evraz North America, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Luxembourg-based Evraz Group, locked out 105 union members of Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) Local 551 in Camrose, Alberta.The lockout comes three months after expiration of a prior labour agreement and more tellingly, comes during a boom cycle of steel pipe manufacturing, with the Camrose mill residing squarely and profitably inside the booming bitumen oil production fields of western Canada.Evraz is seeking elimination of the defined benefit pension scheme for new employees, cuts in retiree benefits for future pensioners, and has offered pay rates in a new three-year contract that are less than what it agreed to at union-represented tubular pipe factories in Regina, Saskatchewan, and Calgary, Alberta, late last year. The company also seeks to slash vacation benefits in Camrose.Meanwhile, due to an acute shortage of skilled workers in the Canadian tar sands, the Camrose factories have been unable to hire enough metalworkers to operate around-the-clock operations and even before the lockout, the company has been stretched thin in meeting existing orders from oil- and gas-producing firms.&ldquo;It is completely unfathomable that workers in the oil and gas industry working in the hottest economy in North America are being attacked and threated to give back long fought gains,&rdquo; said CAW National Representative Todd Romanow.&nbsp;&nbsp;<img alt="" src="" style="width: 120px;height: 157px" width="390" />&nbsp;&nbsp;Todd RomanowLast year, the United Steelworkers (USW) set up a global <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4346-Steelworkers-Form-a-98Unity-Councila-for-Evraz-Metal-Mine-Workers">Unity Council</a> for workers and their unions of the Evraz Group. In a message to USW Local 6673 in Calgary and USW Local 5890 in Regina, Romanow wrote:&ldquo;At the heart of this attack is the removal of our defined benefits plan and retiree benefits for future employees but make no mistake, the fight is bigger than that as it is an attack from a multinational conglomerate on working people and the middle class.&rdquo; He added it is &ldquo;all in the name of corporate greed and insatiable profits.&rdquo;The Evraz Group is controlled by holding companies connected to the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, owner of UK&rsquo;s Chelsea football club of the English Premier League. It is Russia&rsquo;s largest steelmaker, operates iron ore and coal mines throughout the world, and is North America&rsquo;s largest producer of tubular pipe and second largest maker of steel plate.In Camrose, a facility Evraz got in 2007 with the US$2.3 billion acquisition of US-based Oregon Steel Mills, the company operates two pipe mills, one making 16-inch piping and casing for drilling and transport of oil and natural gas, the other producing large-diameter pipe used in transmission lines.

Evraz Pipe Shamefully Locks Out Members of Canadian Auto Workers

<img alt="" src="" style="width: 120px;height: 59px" width="390" />

	The current propensity by multinationals to lock-out Canadian workers when they refuse cutbacks to their work standards continues. On 5 May, Evraz North America, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Luxembourg-based Evraz Group, locked out 105 union members of Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) Local 551 in Camrose, Alberta.

	The lockout comes three months after expiration of a prior labour agreement and more tellingly, comes during a boom cycle of steel pipe manufacturing, with the Camrose mill residing squarely and profitably inside the booming bitumen oil production fields of western Canada.

	Evraz is seeking elimination of the defined benefit pension scheme for new employees, cuts in retiree benefits for future pensioners, and has offered pay rates in a new three-year contract that are less than what it agreed to at union-represented tubular pipe factories in Regina, Saskatchewan, and Calgary, Alberta, late last year. The company also seeks to slash vacation benefits in Camrose.

	Meanwhile, due to an acute shortage of skilled workers in the Canadian tar sands, the Camrose factories have been unable to hire enough metalworkers to operate around-the-clock operations and even before the lockout, the company has been stretched thin in meeting existing orders from oil- and gas-producing firms.

	&ldquo;It is completely unfathomable that workers in the oil and gas industry working in the hottest economy in North America are being attacked and threated to give back long fought gains,&rdquo; said CAW National Representative Todd Romanow.

	<img alt="" src="" style="width: 120px;height: 157px" width="390" />

	Todd Romanow

	Last year, the United Steelworkers (USW) set up a global <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4346-Steelworkers-Form-a-98Unity-Councila-for-Evraz-Metal-Mine-Workers">Unity Council</a> for workers and their unions of the Evraz Group. In a message to USW Local 6673 in Calgary and USW Local 5890 in Regina, Romanow wrote:

	&ldquo;At the heart of this attack is the removal of our defined benefits plan and retiree benefits for future employees but make no mistake, the fight is bigger than that as it is an attack from a multinational conglomerate on working people and the middle class.&rdquo; He added it is &ldquo;all in the name of corporate greed and insatiable profits.&rdquo;

	The Evraz Group is controlled by holding companies connected to the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, owner of UK&rsquo;s Chelsea football club of the English Premier League. It is Russia&rsquo;s largest steelmaker, operates iron ore and coal mines throughout the world, and is North America&rsquo;s largest producer of tubular pipe and second largest maker of steel plate.

	In Camrose, a facility Evraz got in 2007 with the US$2.3 billion acquisition of US-based Oregon Steel Mills, the company operates two pipe mills, one making 16-inch piping and casing for drilling and transport of oil and natural gas, the other producing large-diameter pipe used in transmission lines.

Evraz Pipe Unjustifiably Locks Out Canadian Auto Workers Unionists

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