English

Español

Français

Русский

Aerospace

Automotive

Base metals

Chemical, pharmaceutical and bio-science

Energy

Glass, cement, ceramic and associated industries

ICT, electrical and electronics

Mechanical Engineering

Mining and DGOJP

Pulp and paper

Rubber

Shipbuilding and shipbreaking

Textile, garment, shoes, leather and textile services

Sectors

Action on textile and garment industry

Clean up shipbreaking

Ratify ILO C176

United for a just future - time to pay up!

Disinvest from Myanmar

Action Plan 2021-2025

Global Framework Agreements

Union building

Women

Youth

White-collar workers

Health & safety

Industry 4.0

Just Transition

Organizing with industriALL

What we do

Affiliates

Statutes

Elected Officials

Executive Committee

Geneva head office

South East Asia

Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus

Latin America and the Caribbean

Middle East and North Africa

South Asia

Regional offices

About us

Global worker No1 2022

Global worker No2 2022

Publications

Resources

Press

Several hundred union members rallied in Melbourne, Australia, today outside the headquarters of BHP, the minerals, metals and oil multinational. 
 
They were protesting over a radical policy shift in BHP's Australian iron ore operations. Management there has abandoned its traditional cooperative approach to industrial relations in favour of a hard-line policy that denies its workers the right to bargain collectively. 
 
BHP issued its 1,000 iron ore workers in the Pilbara, Western Australia, with individual staff contracts, saying it was not prepared to negotiate a new collective agreement. The company had previously operated under a collective agreement negotiated with unions. 
 
The individual staff contracts were delivered to workers' homes on November 11. BHP decreed that workers must either sign the contracts or stay on their expired agreement. Sticking with the expired agreement would mean forgoing wage and superannuation rises and lump-sum sick leave payouts. Under the individual contracts, BHP would be able to impose workplace changes and alter pay scales without having to negotiate with unions. BHP offered workers a bonus of three months' back pay if they signed by December 3. 
 
The Secretary-elect of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Greg Combet, said the BHP iron ore division had moved sharply away from its successful cooperative approach to industrial relations, and was aping the hard-nosed American-style tactics that characterised its competitor, Rio Tinto. 
&quot;Not only is BHP now displaying great disregard for the right of employees to bargain collectively,&quot; Combet pointed out, &quot;it is adopting discriminatory practices against one section of its workforce. BHP is offering these Pilbara workers 14 percent superannuation only if they sign an individual contract, and yet BHP already pays its steel workers the same amount under a collective agreement negotiated with the unions. 
 
&quot;If BHP Steel can work out a collective agreement,&quot; Combet asked, &quot;why can't BHP Iron Ore do the same? Unions and their members in the Pilbara are more than willing to talk about efficiencies and flexibility to boost BHP's domestic and international competitiveness in iron ore.&quot; 
 
BHP's individual staff contract offer came just weeks after conservative lawyers and journalists published articles in the Australian financial press urging the company to drop &quot;its union culture&quot;. Some industrial relations experts are tipping that the move by BHP is a forerunner of similar forays into other areas, such as the coal and steel divisions.

BHP&#039;s Anti-Bargaining Stance Sparks Australian Protests

&nbsp;The government in South Korea has at last legally recognised the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU). The labour ministry decision on 23 November came after no less than four previous rejections of KCTU bids to obtain full legal status. 
Announcing the legal recognition at a press conference, KCTU President Dan Byung-ho said the Confederation would base its future action on &quot;the principles of independence, democracy, struggle and moral strength kept alive by so many pioneers who gave their lives in the course of our struggle&quot;. 
 
The 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM) has congratulated the KCTU and all Korean workers on their achievement. 
 
&quot;The Korean government has finally recognised the long-standing truth that the KCTU is widely representative of the Korean working class and is no longer a force that can be marginalised from negotiations over social and industrial issues,&quot; commented ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs. &quot;The courage and perseverance of Korean workers over the past years have been an inspiration to the labour movement worldwide.&quot; 
 
ICEM member unions include affiliates both of the KCTU and of the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU), which was already legally recognised. 
 
In a statement, the KCTU paid tribute to the many thousands of Korean trade unionists imprisoned and dismissed from their jobs during the struggle for recognition. The new ruling &quot;is also a victory for the international trade union movement and the vindication of the standard-setting and supervisory vigilance of the International Labour Organisation,&quot; the KCTU said. 
 
But it warned that full freedom of association is still not guaranteed in the Republic of Korea. &quot;Some one million government employees are still denied the right and freedom to form or join trade unions,&quot; the KCTU pointed out. Also, &quot;many millions of workers remain outside the trade unions&quot;. And more than 50 percent of Korean workers are employed in &quot;non-standard&quot; jobs which often put them beyond the protection of current labour laws. &quot;70 percent of employed women workers are found in this category,&quot; the KCTU said. It has resolved to &quot;reach out to these workers&quot;. 
 

The KCTU will also campaign next year for the Korean statutory working week to be cut to 40 hours. 
 
And it plans to &quot;transform the current union structure, from enterprise unionism to industrial unionism&quot;. This will be &quot;a vital requirement in the KCTU's effort to reach out to a wider range of workers and to undertake its campaigns more effectively&quot;. But &quot;it may - unless the government and employers acknowledge the inevitability of the change - require continued difficult struggle on the part of the KCTU&quot;.

Korea Legalises Union Confederation

South Africa has signed up to a key international mining safety standard. 
 
The country's Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana announced the good news in a fax received today by the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). 
 
ILO Convention 176 on safety and health in mines has now been ratified by the South African parliament, Mdladlana told the ICEM. Parliament also approved the accompanying Recommendation 183. 
 
On 4 November, the ICEM asked South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki to promote South African ratification of Convention 176. President Mbeki, who was the guest speaker at the ICEM World Congress in Durban, promised to raise the matter at the next meeting of the South African cabinet. 
 
Approved by the world's government, trade union and employer representatives within the ILO, Convention 176 sets out international standards for ensuring health and safety in mines. The ICEM played a major role in its drafting and adoption. 
 
The Convention came into force in 1995 and had already been ratified by 12 countries. Ratification by South Africa, one of the world's biggest mining nations, will send an important signal to mining countries worldwide. 
 
ILO Conventions are ratifiable by states and binding upon them. The related ILO Recommendations set out further detail on implementation of the Conventions. 
 
&quot;We wish to thank you for raising this issue with us,&quot; Labour Minister Mdladlana wrote to the ICEM, &quot;and to assure you that we indeed take the matter of health and safety of all workers, including those in mines, very seriously.&quot;

South Africa Signs World Mining Safety Norms

The NUM has settled strikes at two of the world&rsquo;s largest platinum producers, Anglo Platinum and Impala Platinum. The pay disputes were settled for increases between 7.75% and 9.5%, depending on job grades, and cycle shift workers who work on public holidays won added improvements.

NUM in South Africa Settles Two Platinum Strikes

South African affiliate NUM sees no harmony, only dishevel in the hostile takeover of Goldfields by smaller gold-mining company Harmony. In a statement, NUM said that considering the high gold price, companies should be investing in development and job growth rather than consolidation and shrinkage. Both South African companies have retrenched numerous workers this year alone. NUM is calling for dialogue between the two companies instead of hostile &ldquo;approaches that send jitters into the market and economy,&rdquo; in the words of Gen. Sec. Gwede Mantashe. NUM is also opposed to a Goldfields preferred deal with Canada&rsquo;s Imagold and said the mining industry in South Africa suffers an &ldquo;anti-patriotic spirit&rdquo; in terms of abandoning national investment.

South Africa’s NUM Chastises Harmony’s Takeover Bid

Ukraine's worst mining disaster is now being investigated by a team led by Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko. The probe commission includes Mikhail Volynets, President of the Miners' Independent Trade Union of Ukraine (MITU). 
 
Saturday's explosion at the Barakova mine killed 80 workers and injured seven others, Volynets confirms in a fax received today by the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). MITU is an ICEM affiliate. 
 
Describing the accident as &quot;the most serious in recent years&quot;, Volynets says the blast happened &quot;during repair work&quot; at the mine and was caused by a &quot;mixture of dust and gas&quot;. Barakova is owned by the state holding company Krasnodonugol. As well as investigating the accident, the government team of which Volynets is part is bringing &quot;vital assistance to the families of those killed and injured&quot;. 
 
Ukraine has one of the world's highest mining accident rates. Close to 1,500 Ukrainian miners have been killed over the past five years. MITU, backed by the ICEM, has been campaigning to reverse a catastrophic spiral of underinvestment, leading to falls in productivity, leading to further cutbacks in equipment and safety. Non-payment of miners' wages has been another serious problem in the cash-starved industry.&nbsp; 
 
&quot;Beyond sadness and grief, drastic measures need to be taken to address the causes of these series of mine disasters,&quot; insists ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs in a message of condolence to the MITU. In particular, Higgs calls for implementation by Ukraine of Convention 176 on mining safety, adopted by the UN's International Labour Organisation (ILO). 
 
Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma has declared 13 and 14 March as days of national mourning for those killed in the Barakova disaster.

Ukrainian Miners&#039; President Joins Disaster Probe Team

The Rio Tinto Shareholder Coalition, backed by worker-owners and trade unions in Australia, Europe and the United States, today launched an unprecedented global shareholder proxy contest with one of the world&rsquo;s largest mining companies, Rio Tinto. This is the first-ever joint shareholder initiative sponsored by unions in several countries and, in recognition of the growing globalisation of the capital markets, represents the broadest international proxy contest to date by any shareholder proponent. 
 
The shareholder coalition today submitted two resolutions for consideration by the shareholders at both London-based Rio Tinto plc and Melbourne-based Rio Tinto Ltd. during the company&rsquo;s two Annual General Meetings in the United Kingdom and Australia in May. The resolutions demand that the Rio Tinto board of directors become more accountable to its shareholders through the appointment of an independent, non-executive Deputy Chairman after May 2000, and that the company implement a workplace code of labour practice at its operations worldwide. The coalition is asking institutional investors to support these two resolutions in order to make Rio Tinto more accountable to its shareholders and increase shareholder value. The coalition also launched today a special website dedicated to the proxy contest, with the complete text of the resolutions and supporting statements. 
 
The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) - the principal union representing Rio Tinto&rsquo;s unionised workforce in Australia - has joined with the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), the Trades Union Congress (TUC) of Great Britain, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), and the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers&rsquo; Unions (ICEM) in a worldwide public launch of the shareholder initiative today in Sydney, Brussels, London and Washington, D.C. Combined, these organisations represent 41 million workers. 
 
The proponents represent workers who are direct Rio Tinto shareholders and who are also beneficiaries of pension funds which are company shareholders. The coalition estimates that pension funds with worker beneficiaries account for approximately 19 per cent of Rio Tinto&rsquo;s shares - worth approximately 3.2 billion dollars - mainly held through nominee accounts. 
 
&quot;Our members have both capital equity and sweat equity invested in Rio Tinto,&quot; said John Maitland, who is both National Secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union of Australia and President of the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers&rsquo; Unions (ICEM). Unions affiliated to the ICEM also represent Rio Tinto employees in the United States, Canada, South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Austria, Norway, France, the United Kingdom and Chile. &quot;They have a long-term interest in the success of the company and know that Rio Tinto&rsquo;s success is impossible without respect for their rights in the workplace,&quot; Maitland pointed out. 
 
&quot;These resolutions are about good corporate governance, and we hope that as such they will receive the full support of the Rio Tinto shareholders,&quot; commented ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs. &quot;The worldwide code of labour practice is urgently needed within Rio Tinto, but it must be credible and verifiable. The only way to ensure that such a code is properly implemented is to make it part of a global agreement between Rio Tinto and the ICEM. We are ready and willing to reach an agreement with Rio Tinto.&quot; 
 
&quot;We are challenging Rio Tinto management to become more accountable as well as to minimise its risk exposure to serious human rights violations,&quot; said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. &quot;We will be actively encouraging pension fund trustees, money managers and other institutional investors to support these resolutions,&quot; he said. 
 
&quot;These resolutions make sound economic and business sense,&quot; said John Monks, General Secretary of the 7-million-member British Trades Union Congress. &quot;Companies with high standards of corporate governance who value their workforce are the companies that succeed and give shareholders and pension fund members a better return on their investments. These are the companies that succeed in the long term.&quot; 
 
Speaking at the Australian launch in Sydney today, Greg Combet, Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, stated that the shareholder action was the first of its kind for trade unions in Australia, and the first-ever joint shareholder action by worker-owners from a number of countries at a multinational company. &quot;Worker-owners and other shareholders need to join together in common cause to ensure that corporate management is accountable and that the long-term interests of shareholders and workers are protected,&quot; said Combet. 
 
Joining Combet at the Sydney press conference was Susan Ryan, former Australian federal government minister and current adviser to the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees. Ryan will be conducting the shareholder solicitation in Australia in support of these resolutions. &quot;Good corporate governance and respect for workers&rsquo; rights in the workplace are good for shareholders, workers and communities,&quot; she said. &quot;It&rsquo;s a win-win situation for all concerned and it&rsquo;s the high road way to compete in the 21st Century.&quot;

Rio Tinto Shareholder Coalition Backs Better Corporate Governance

The new Austrian government's policies were sharply criticised yesterday by the country's mining, metal and energy union the GMBE. In the same statement, the union condemned the climate of intolerance created by one of the coalition partners, Joerg Haider's extreme right-wing Freedom Party of Austria (FPOe). 
 
The government's programme will, the GMBE says, place &quot;massive, unilateral burdens on workers, and particularly on women workers, but also on young people, the unemployed, the sick and the pensioners.&quot; It particularly criticises plans to raise the legal pension age and cut the incomes of those who retire earlier. And, as the union points out, the government intends to scrap previously successful employment programmes in order to finance big hand-outs to companies and farmers. The government programme also fails to bring in &quot;reforms that are important for the workers - notably the protection of workers within a globalised economy and real improvements in training and retraining.&quot; 
 
On the FPOe's role in the new government, the GMBE says &quot;the concerns of the European Union and other states are quite understandable&quot;. In particular, the union cites Haider's praise for what he called the &quot;proper employment policies of the Third Reich&quot; and his description of former SS officers as &quot;decent people&quot;. [For more on Haider's sayings, the union recommends the Austrian Haiderwatch website - available in both German and English]. 
 
But, the GMBE insists, &quot;we reject any blanket condemnation of the Austrians as a 'Nazi people'. After all, more than 70 percent of the electors did not vote for the FPOe.&quot; The union warns that boycotts of Austrian goods, services and tourism would &quot;hit the wrong people, namely the workers.&quot; 
 
The FPOe has repeatedly &quot;stirred up fear, intolerance and xenophobia,&quot; the GMBE says. It accuses the party of &quot;playing different parts of the population off against each other.&quot; 
 
The GMBE &quot;judges any government - of whatever party - on the basis of what it does for the workers in this country. We will act massively against the measures of the new federal government, which are worsening the situation of working, unemployed and retired people in Austria. At the same time, we oppose the brutalisation of Austria's political culture.&quot; 
 
At the global level, the GMBE is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM).

Austrian Union Slams New Government

Pay rises are combined with job creation measures in the new collective agreement for Germany's 30,000 rubber industry workers. 
 
This is the first sectoral agreement reached this year by the IG BCE union, which covers a wide range of process, chemical, mining and energy industries. The rubber sector deal is a &quot;first benchmark for the 2000 bargaining round,&quot; emphasised Werner Bischoff, IG BCE's head of collective bargaining. 
 
Employment-boosting measures are an important part of the new agreement, in line with the current &quot;Alliance For Jobs&quot; between unions, employers and Germany's social democrat/environmentalist federal government. 
 
For example, improvements to early retirement provisions will mean that rubber workers aged 55 and above can opt to work half-time while continuing to be paid at least 85 percent of their last full-time net wage. For workers on a three-shift roster, the corresponding figure will be 95 percent. 
 
At the same time, a new employment promotion fund to be administered jointly by the employers and the union will help to finance early retirement by rubber workers. Payments from the fund will virtually eliminate the net financial difference between retirement at age 60 and retirement at the legal age of 65. 
 
&quot;We have lived up to our responsibilities and made our contribution to the success of the Alliance for Jobs,&quot; Bischoff said. 
 
On wages, the agreement provides an overall increase of 2.9 percent in Western Germany, effective from 1 October this year until at least 31 October 2001. Workers will pay 0.4 percent of the increase into the employment promotion fund. In Eastern Germany, the increase will be 3.2 percent, effective from 1 March 2001 for one year. Here too, 0.4 percent of the pay rise will go into the employment promotion fund. 
 
At the global level, IG BCE is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM).

German Rubber Industry Deal Boosts Jobs And Pay

A row is brewing between two Geneva-based international agencies over who is to codify worldwide occupational health and safety management norms. 
 
Workers' right to a global say on workplace health and safety could be under threat if the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) next month votes itself competent to tackle this complex issue. 
 
Any ISO efforts on this would cut across work already well under way within the UN's International Labour Organisation (ILO). And the ISO, unlike the ILO, excludes organised labour. 
 
The ILO sets ratifiable and binding international standards on a wide range of labour-related matters. Worker, employer and government representatives from all over the world meet on equal terms within this &quot;tripartite&quot; UN agency. All three groups draw up and adopt the ILO's standards, and all three monitor national governments' compliance with them once they are in force. 
 
Occupational health and safety is a major focus of these ILO norms, and organised labour has been one of the main driving forces behind the adoption and application of the standards. 
 
No such labour representation exists within the ISO, where strong corporate influence is brought to bear. The ISO is known mainly for two &quot;families&quot; of standards - ISO 9000 on quality management and ISO 14000 on environmental management. Through worldwide standardisation, ISO helps to speed the globalisation process by reducing &quot;technical barriers to trade&quot;. 
 
Any ISO move into the health and safety field would also be market-driven. In fact, the voting proposal now before the ISO's national member organisations argues that it &quot;will enable a faster response to market needs than could be met through the development of a standard in partnership with the ILO ...&quot; 
 
The proposal comes from influential ISO member the British Standards Institute. BSI wants to set up an ISO technical committee on occupational health and safety management systems, with the aim of &quot;developing a non-certifiable ISO standard based on [existing UK standard] BS 8800:1996&quot;. The ISO's national member organisations have until 10 March to vote on the British motion. 
 
BSI, meanwhile, got the industrialists on board by issuing a joint communique on 21 January with the multinational companies' Industry Cooperation on Standards and Conformity Assessment (ICSCA). &quot;ILO, due to its scope and membership, is not an appropriate organisation to publish an international standard on occupational health and safety management systems,&quot; BSI and ICSCA jointly opined. &quot;Instead, ILO is encouraged to participate actively in work in this area, through its liaison with ISO ...&quot; 
 
If it gets the green light from its members, this will be the ISO's second attempt to wrest the health and safety brief from the ILO. 
 
At the beginning of 1997, the ISO decided to discontinue its previous efforts to to draw up occupational health and safety management system standards. This followed an ISO seminar which found that the ILO, precisely because of its tripartite structure, was the more appropriate forum. 
 
Subsequently, the ILO drafted non-mandatory guidelines on occupational health and safety management systems, drawing on a detailed review of standards and codes of practice worldwide. These guidelines are due to be tested this year. 
 
&quot;The ILO is the proper forum for these efforts,&quot; declared Fred Higgs in Brussels today. Higgs is the General Secretary of the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), which has helped shape a number of major ILO health and safety initiatives. 
 
&quot;We call upon ICEM member unions, and all others who believe that workers are entitled to a say on occupational health and safety management, to press their national ISO member organisations for a 'no' vote on this motion,&quot; Higgs said. 
 
&quot;Global health and safety management standards in the workplace are not the sole prerogative of the big corporations,&quot; Higgs insisted. &quot;Organised labour must have a full say on this vital standard-setting activity. When workplace health and safety are at stake, workers are experts.&quot;

World Health And Safety Norms: ILO or ISO

Archive

BHP's Anti-Bargaining Stance Sparks Australian Protests

Korea Legalises Union Confederation

South Africa Signs World Mining Safety Norms

NUM in South Africa Settles Two Platinum Strikes

South Africa’s NUM Chastises Harmony’s Takeover Bid

Ukrainian Miners' President Joins Disaster Probe Team

Rio Tinto Shareholder Coalition Backs Better Corporate Governance

Austrian Union Slams New Government

German Rubber Industry Deal Boosts Jobs And Pay

World Health And Safety Norms: ILO or ISO

About IndustriALL

Follow us

Contact us