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Global worker No1 2022

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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

Rio Tinto subsidiary Energy Resources in Australia enters a Northern Territory courtroom today to face landmark criminal charges under the NT&rsquo;s Mining Management Act. The firm is charged with contaminating miners&rsquo; drinking and showering water with water used from uranium processing at Ranger Mine in Kakadu National Park. Some 30 workers took ill from the incident last March. The prosecution is the first under the 2001 statute.

Rio Tinto Faces Court Case Over Contaminated Water

The ICEM&rsquo;s ExxonMobil Global Workers&rsquo; Network, led by US affiliate PACE, helped achieve a first collective agreement for ExxonMobil gas production workers in the US state of New Mexico. Following two years of struggle, the Native American workforce chartered as PACE Local 5-50 won a US$2,000 ratification bonus and a wage re-opener in October 2004. PACE conducted two mass mobilizations of all unionized ExxonMobil workers to aid the new union members in the American southwest. More details can be found at the Network&rsquo;s website, www.exxonmobil-solidarity.org.

US Affiliate PACE Wins Gains for ExxonMobil Workers

The ICEM&rsquo;s 4th Bridgestone Workers&rsquo; Global Network meetings were held in Brazil last week and delegates came from Japan, Spain, South Africa, US and host country Brazil. Topics included health and safety, breakdown of company finances by region and division, and delegates met with the director of the Japanese firm&rsquo;s big Santa Andre tyre plant near Sao Paulo.

ICEM’s Bridgestone Network Meets in Brazil

US affiliate PACE criticized ExxonMobil for discriminatory practices against Native Americans in the state of New Mexico at a gas production site. After organizing with PACE two years ago, workers are still without a first collective agreement. ExxonMobil has denied the mostly Native American workforce a pay raise now for the second consecutive year. &ldquo;To single out Native Americans after a year in which ExxonMobil achieved US$21.5 billion in profits, its CEP garnered US$28.7 million in total compensation, and almost all ExxonMobil employees received some wage increase, to treat them differently from other workers appears overtly discriminatory to us,&rdquo; said PACE Executive Vice President Jim Pannell. He cited union data that the gas workers earn US$1.30-to-$2.66 per hour less than other company workers in the US.

PACE Takes on ExxonMobil Over Native American Rights

Hibernia offshore oil workers in Canada won yet another legal victory 28 April when the Supreme Court of Newfoundland held union certification with CEP legal. The ruling was another and hopefully final setback for lead company ExxonMobil at Hibernia. CEP President Brian Payne said, &ldquo;ExxonMobil has now run out of excuses and reasons&rdquo; for denying the 420 workers a collective agreement. Hibernia workers were the first North American offshore platform workers to unionise in October 2001, and ExxonMobil used legal appeals and delays to block a collective agreement up to now.

CEP Offshore Workers in Canada Win Case Against ExxonMobil

US affiliate PACE, together with national center AFL-CIO and a host of other ExxonMobil shareholders convinced the Texas-based company to include a statement of intent to uphold the ILO&rsquo;s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work in its 2004 Corporate Citizenship Report. The union, Amnesty International and other socially concerned stockholders, owning an accumulative 7.2 million shares, agreed to withdraw a shareholder proposal mandating the firm to adopt a workplace human rights policy based on the 1998 ILO Declaration.

PACE, Others Hold ExxonMobil Accountable on ILO’s Work Rights

The ICEM has signed yet another Global Framework Agreement. Together with Swedish affiliate Svenska Papersindustriarbetaref&ouml;rbundet, the ICEM on 15 April became signatory with Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget (SCA) to maintain high health, safety, environment and workers&rsquo; rights standards. SCA will formally launch the agreement in June with a public campaign, and will follow that by distributing the agreement in respective languages to all its global worksites.

ICEM, Swedish Pappers Union Sign Global Agreement with SCA

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