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Global worker No1 2022

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ICEM affiliate National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) of South Africa last week declared wage disputes with three mining houses, DeBeers, Exxaro Resources, and Kumba Resources&rsquo; Sishen Iron Ore mine. The wage dispute filings come just days after NUM announced that it would take industrial action at Gold Fields&rsquo; four mines in August. 
 
The world&rsquo;s fourth largest gold producer, Gold Fields, has let safety lapse in South Africa, accounting for 23 of the country&rsquo;s 87 mining deaths between January and June, 2008. 
 
In late June, NUM and diamond miner DeBeers agreed on salary adjustments for 2008 of 12%. But the company pulled the offer and &ldquo;put forward a different draft that spoke a different language,&rdquo; said the NUM. DeBeers offered 11% over a two-year period, an obvious slight to miners, with run-away inflation in South Africa with due to rising food and fuel prices.
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The two sides will meet on 21 July before the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation, and Arbitration (CCMA) in an effort to resolve the dispute. If agreement is not reached, some 6,000 miners at six DeBeers operations will then take industrial action. 
 
The dispute at Exxaro&rsquo;s three coal mines is over wage disparities between the collieries that are both inside and out of the Chamber of Mines. NUM is also seeking to establish minimum wage levels. Exxaro is majority owned by private equity company Main Street, with AngloAmerican Plc. holding 9.84%. 
 
At the Sishen Iron ore mine, where 4,000 miners are employed, the dispute is over wages promises that have not been met. 
 
But the continuing story in the South African mining industry revolves around safety. The NUM held a Safety Imdaba from 3-4 July in Boksburg. There, NUM Health and Safety Chairman Peter Bailey stated bluntly, &ldquo;We need to have the same passion about safety as we did in defeating apartheid.&rdquo;
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&nbsp;NUM's Peter Bailey 
 

The summit caused South African Minerals and Energy Minister Buyelwa Sonjica to call on the nation&rsquo;s Justice Ministry to join it in investigating and then prosecuting companies negligent over safety. Despite 1,500 workers dying in the mines in the past five years, the Justice Ministry has not taken up a single prosecution case. A new Mine Health and Safety bill is under consideration in South Africa&rsquo;s Parliament. It is intended to mandate stricter enforcement measures, and impose harsher fines on those responsible for safety lapses. 
 
At Gold Fields, the company experienced 15 mining deaths between late April to early May at its South Deep and Driefontein mines. And then on 29 June at its 15,000-worker Kloof mine near Westonaria in West Rand, just hours after the company boasted that it had achieved one million fatality-free shifts, two miners were crushed and died 3,000 metres underground due to a ground shift.
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The company&rsquo;s most egregious accident occurred on 1 May. Nine miners, including two from the same family, plunged 2,880 metres to their deaths at South Deep when a lift cable snapped on a cage that was carrying them. Sonjica said then that the deaths could have been avoided if the infrastructure had been properly checked and maintained. &quot;When you don't service equipment, it will collapse,&rdquo; she told a South African newspaper. 
 
Six other miners employed by Gold Fields, including five at Driefonteion, had died because of rock falls or earth tremors in the week before.

NUM Files Strike Notice on 3 South Africa Mining Houses; Safety Strike Looms at Gold Fields

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Unilever has not always been top of the class in its treatment of agency workers in Asia. In 2004, when Unilever Pakistan sold off a plant producing Dalda brand edible oils and fats to a group of company managers, it came as no surprise that the new Dalda managers began applying the lessons learned at Unilever. 
 
As well as buying out the competition, their labour relations&rsquo; behaviour involved reducing permanent employment and keeping potential union influence to a minimum. Dalda workers, however, are challenging the denial of trade union rights to agency workers, and are currently fighting back through a newly formed union. 
 
They were encouraged by a successful challenge to casualisation at Coca-Cola Pakistan, and then contacted the IUF and the Coca-Cola union for support. Over 430 workers have signed up as members of the Dalda Food Employees Union, which then applied for official recognition from Pakistan&rsquo;s relevant authority.
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Since they feared a backlash, and were aware of Unilever&rsquo;s savage reprisals against temporary workers&rsquo; at the company&rsquo;s Rahim Yar Khan factory in Pakistan in November 2007, the union applied to the courts for a &ldquo;stay order.&rdquo; This blocked the company from firing workers, or closing the plant. But management violated the order and fired 266 workers at the end of May 2008. 
 
By early June, the union had received official union registration, and with the support of the IUF-affiliated Pakistan National Federation of Food, Beverage, and Tobacco Workers&rsquo; Union, applied for collective bargaining status. 
 
Dalda management challenged this, and workers have set up a permanent encampment in front of the plant with support from the Federation. With daily visits from representatives of trade unions, political, and civil society organisations, the camp has become a living symbol of the struggle against Pakistan&rsquo;s repressive regime of outsourcing and use of casual labour.

Pakistani Food Workers Challenge Unilever’s Casualisation

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New Zealand&rsquo;s labour agency workers are hopefully on the road to have minimum wage protection soon. That follows passage of the second reading in Parliament in May of Labour Party MP Darien Fenton's Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill. 
 
The bill is intended to give protection to agency workers by fixing an anomaly that allows them to be paid below the minimum wage for their services. 
 
New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Secretary Carol Beaumont said that people doing contract work for less than minimum wage deserve the full wage protections that are afforded to other workers.
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&ldquo;There are people doing (agency) work right now who are paid poverty wages, and these people need the full protection of minimum wage laws,&rdquo; she said. 
 
&ldquo;Most (agency workers) in New Zealand should be remunerated at well above the minimum wage. For those that are not, this bill would provide protection against being exploited by companies wanting to unreasonably drive down costs. 
 
&ldquo;Contracting practices are certainly widespread in industries such as acting, cleaning, and forestry,&rdquo; she stated.
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The bill has the support of the Labour Party, the Greens, and the Maori Party, with opposition coming from parliamentarians in NZ First and the National Party, which argue there is not a need for minimum wage protection. They also argue that the bill will create too many &ldquo;compliance costs.&rdquo; 
 
After the second reading met passage, the bill now moved to a Select Committee. From there, it goes to the House for one more reading, before passed into law.

Minimum Wage Bill for Agency Workers Passes Major Hurdle in New Zealand

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On 28 May, 2008, Peru&rsquo;s National Assembly passed an outsourcing law, giving full labour rights to contract workers. On 23 June, President Alan Garc&iacute;a signed the measure into law three days before the bill was set to expire. 
 
There was considerable pressure by employers&rsquo; groups to scuttle the bill for fear it would restrict labour market flexibility.
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The new outsourcing law will affect 400,000 contract workers, according to the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP), one of Peru&rsquo;s major national labour centres. 

Foremost, the law closes down outsourcing &ldquo;front companies,&rdquo; which some companies had used to avoid their responsibilities to workers. The new law also holds companies accountable for social security and other benefit payments for one year following the expiration of the outsourcing contracts. 
 
The law sets stricter conditions for registering outsourcing companies, which will now have to have more than one client, and establishes a register of businesses using outsourcing companies, so that the Labour Ministry can monitor and inspect them.
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The government&rsquo;s support of the new law reveals that it is no longer willing to turn a blind eye to the mining industry boom caused by soaring mineral prices, resulting in windfall corporate profits. 
 
The new contract labour law was passed primarily due to pressure from the ICEM&rsquo;s Peruvian mining union affiliate, FNTMMSP. The ICEM commends the Peruvian union for its diligent work, particularly on behalf of the 85,000 contract workers who work in the country&rsquo;s important mining industry.

Peru Enacts New Contract Labour Law Assuring Rights

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What is your experience with contract and agency labour in Denmark? 
 
Firstly, the Danish Trade Unions are organised by trade. This means, for example, that you can have five different trade unions representing the employees in a power plant. The Danish Union of Electricians organises all skilled electrical workers in Denmark. We have collective agreements with most companies in the country, with some dating back to early in the 20th century. 
 
Secondly, contract and agency work is still a growing phenomenon in Denmark. Our union has three strategies for dealing with the issue. First of all, we try to agree on equal rights and equal pay for agency workers in the collective agreements. Already 10 or 15 years ago, we agreed on an appendix in the largest collective agreement between Danish Industries (DI) and CO-Industry, covering 9 unions, with regard to agency workers that are employed in blue-collar jobs. Through this appendix, agency workers in power plants receive the same rights and benefits as their permanent colleagues from day one. 
 
This appended agreement, unfortunately, only covers the blue-collar workers, not white- collar, or professional or technical workers. This is something we are still fighting for, and we hope that the new European Directive on Agency Work will help in this. Even though blue-collar agency workers have, at present, equal rights from day one, there still are some problems. Many of the social rights, such as the right to full sick pay, or the right to training and education, call for a minimum employment period of 6 or 9 months. Agency workers often don&rsquo;t work long enough to get that far.
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&nbsp;Dansk El-Forbund Gen. Sec. J&oslash;rgen Juul Rasmussen 
 
 


What is your union&rsquo;s experience on how employers handle their responsibilities regarding agency workers? 
 
Danish employers try hard to find different ways to ignore these agreements. A few years ago, for example, we saw a sudden increase in the use of electricians as agency workers in the construction sector. In our agreement that covers this work (DEF-Tekniq), agency work is not mentioned. This is where our second strategy takes hold. We take the employers&rsquo; organisation to court to enforce our contracts and the law. And so far, we have always won. In this particular case, the court decided that the agency workers should be paid according to the general stipulations within the DEF-Tekniq agreement. If not, it would have been seen as a violation of the agreement. They hold that it is the responsibility of primary employers to treat contract or agency workers the same as the permanent employees. 
 
Now, employers will try to circumvent this. They will claim that the workers they hire are subcontractors themselves, or self-employed people. We continue to bring such claims before the courts and so far, we have been winning.
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How difficult is it to organise contract or agency workers into your existing union structures? 
 
This is exactly the third strategy. We are very pro-active in organising agency workers or so-called subcontractors into our existing unions. We approach these workers inside their companies and on building sites. The problem we encounter is that contract workers of a specific company might be spread out widely over a geographic area, and oftentimes they switch between company to company, so the problem of reaching them is hard. 
 
In the near future, we will keep taking employers who attempt to avoid their responsibilities to labour court; we will continue to organise contract and agency workers; and where we can, and we encourage more unions in Denmark to actively organise these workers as well. Until now, we are the only union in Denmark to do so. But we hope that more unions in Denmark will join us.

Interview with Jørgen Juul Rasmussen, General Secretary, Danish Union of Electricians (Dansk El-Forb

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What has been the impact of Contract and Agency Labour Work in Brazil and Latin America? 
 
The impact of outsourcing is felt in all sectors in Latin America. Of those sectors covered by the ICEM, it is probably the energy sector which has been hit hardest because of the mass privatisations in the 1990s. We are currently doing a study on the situation of contract workers in the energy sector to get more and better data on the present situation. 
 
Subcontracting is everywhere. It is not limited to catering, or security, or transportation. It now goes right to the core of business in most companies. Oil companies subcontract maintenance, development, even production in the refineries. And, of course, at many companies, contract workers are involved in drilling and on offshore platforms.
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ICEM Latin America/Caribbean Vice President S&eacute;rgio Novais&nbsp; 
 


Has outsourcing caused a general trend of reduction in the salaries and benefits of permanent workers? 
 
Outsourcing has led to a drastic reduction of salaries and in secondary benefits, since many workers go uncovered by collective agreements. Another aspect is health and security, in spite of the fact that, on paper, when we are engaged in dialogue with the bigger companies, everything appears fine. But in reality, we find many situations where there is a lack of proper training and adequate equipment. The proof comes in the fact that the highest number of fatalities, particularly in the energy sector, occurs among contract workers. 
 
Are contract or agency workers more difficult to reach in terms of organizing? 
 
The increase of contract and agency workers on any particular job makes the work of unions very difficult. When jobs are outsourced, you inevitably lose a number of full-time, permanent workers. This, in turn, makes negotiations that much more difficult. And then there also is the difficulty to contact and gain access to contract workers. And when you do, they are not always interested in joining an organisation that enters into a dialogue and negotiate with their company. 
 
So, it places pressure on representation and that, in turn, places a diminished capacity to mobilize contract or agency workers toward the union. And in some cases, at least in Brazil, it makes trouble for the central unions, because workers might be represented by other unions who negotiate at different times with different agendas. 
 
What is it like dealing with a primary company over subcontracting? What kind of legal challenges does it present? 
 
Brazil is one of the countries where a primary company can be held legally responsible for the violation of labor laws by a subcontracting company. And indeed, sometimes primary employers are taken to court over infractions by a subcontractor. But this always occurs after an accident, or after an instance of polluting has taken place, or after a labour infraction has occurred. Further, it is only case by case, so it doesn&rsquo;t solve the bigger problem of regulating and making an employer accountable on the front end.
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What would you say on networking between unions, or sharing information on contracting practices? How important is that for success? 
 
The consequences of the increase in use of contract and agency labour, and outsourcing in general, can be managed better if unions start cooperating. Creating national and international networks is important. We are making good progress with our regional BASF company network of labour unions, an ICEM network. The company has agreed that contract work is an important subject for permanent social dialogue. Imagine, the company recently admitted that even they didn&rsquo;t know the number of contract workers present at any particular chemical worksite. We are now in a position where we are able to monitor the situation, learn from the monitoring, and hopefully pass this on to other BASF unions worldwide. It has also vastly improved our discussions with this particular company. 
 
There has been a steep reduction in contract workers at Petrobras due to union action. Can you explain what was done? 
 
This is another good example. Being a state-owned company, Petrobras, as a primary employer, was relatively easy to engage, particularly with a change of government in Brazil. It has led to better relations between the company management and the FUP, the national oilworkers&rsquo; federation. In a period of six years, this has resulted in a reduction of the ratio of contract workers to Petrobras workers from 4-to-1 to 2.2-to1. However, we&rsquo;re not there yet. There are still many, many contract workers on oil rigs.
<img height="114" src="" width="260" alt="" />
&nbsp; 
 
What are the next steps in Brazil regarding contract and agency labour? 
 
Here in Brazil, we must find a way to get legislation adopted which enables contract workers to be represented by the majority union on any give jobsite. However, it is not likely this will happen with the current Parliament. Many Latin American governments have recently adopted legislation in one form or another on contract labour. The best legislation might be in Argentina. There, the Federaci&oacute;n Argentina Sindical del Petr&oacute;leo y Gas Privados managed to use it to negotiate that all contract workers are covered by the collective agreement. 
 
What can you tell us about the upcoming Day in Latin America for Contractors? 
 
On 28 July, we will campaign throughout Latin America to call for attention to the health and safety risks involved with subcontracting. The date has been chosen as a memorial to the 200 contract workers who lost their lives in Colombia while constructing a hydroelectric dam 25 years ago on this day. We will use this day as a regional call to all trade unions and trade union networks to include contract work in their agendas for dialogue and negotiation with the different companies.

Interview with Sérgio Novais, National Chemical Confederation of Brazil and ICEM Vice President, Lat

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At the ICEM&rsquo;s World Congress in Bangkok, Thailand, in November 2007, a resolution was adopted in support of the World Day for Decent Work. This global day of action and mobilisation &ndash; 7 October 2008 &ndash; is organised by the Decent Work, Decent Life campaign, led by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the Council of Global Unions, Solidar, the Global Progressive Forum, Social Alert International, and the European Trade Union Confederation. 
 
ICEM has a special interest in Decent Work, particularly in view of the Global Union Federation&rsquo;s strong work over the past several years on Contract and Agency Labour (CAL). For this reason, the ICEM is focusing its 7 October action day events, and the period to follow, on CAL. ICEM is also working together with the other Global Union Federations, through the Council of Global Unions, on the CAL issue.
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As part of ICEM&rsquo;s overall campaign, we will intensify our activities on this date to ensure equal rights and equal treatment for temporary and agency workers. The ICEM will use the Global Day of Action as the start of a global push to organise contract and agency workers. This campaign will run until December 2008. 
 
Affiliates will be asked to give special attention to contract and agency workers during this period, as well as to give priority to the issue as a whole. 
 
Campaign materials will be published to help affiliates address the issue at local, national, and international levels. With this special InBrief newsletter, we would also like to call your attention to the issue of Contract and Agency Labour globally, as well as also within particular work sectors. The aim of distribution the information is to share and to learn from experiences.
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In the upcoming months, further useful materials will be published and distributed, and we will also send you information on how you and your union can become active on this issue as the 7 October World Day of Action arrives. 
 
Activities that affiliates can consider doing, include: 
 
&bull; Issuing press communications, highlighting 7 October as a the start of a campaign on organising contract and agency labour workers; 
&bull; Active distribution of the ICEM campaign material; 
&bull; Organising workshops with members discussing the CAL issue, and coming up with union responses; 
&bull; Organising public debates on CAL; 
&bull; Go out and start organising campaigns that specifically target contract and agency workers. 
 
The ICEM also continues to call on all its affiliates, and their members, in both developing and developed countries, to sign the call to action at <a href="http://www.decentwork.org">http://www.decentwork.org</a>.
<img height="86" src="" width="100" alt="" />
 
In addition, in the last several weeks, the ICEM has invited all affiliates to fill in an online survey. Through this survey, we aim to gather information on CAL in your industrial sectors and countries. Is CAL a growing phenomenon? How does your union respond? What means and methods are you using to organise temporary workers? The answers will give us valuable information &ndash; information to inform other affiliates on best practices and successful strategies used by fellow unions. 
 
Many of you have already filled in this survey, and we would like to ask others who have not, to do so in the near future. If you have not received an invitation to participate in the survey, please send an e-mail to <a href="mailto:contract.labour@icem.org">contract.labour@icem.org</a>.

ICEM’s Focus on 7 October World Day for Decent Work: Contract and Agency Labour

ICEM Contract and Agency Labour Newsletter

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The continuing collective bargaining dispute between ICEM&rsquo;s North American affiliate, the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, and French multinational LaFarge in Sugar Creek, Missouri, received keen focus in Paris recently. The ICEM, together with the Building and Woodworkers&rsquo; International (BWI) &ndash; co-signatories to a Global Framework Agreement with the company &ndash; brought the dispute before the company and French and other unions on 3 October. 
 
At a cement manufacturing plant in Sugar Creek, Lafarge seeks to dramatically change retiree medical coverage in collective negotiations with Boilermakers Local D-27. It seeks to exclude new workers from retiree health coverage altogether, while proposing to move existing workers to another, inferior medical plan upon retirement. 
 
That plan, if accepted, could see retirees&rsquo; pay double for their health care costs. The existing plan now finds pensioners paying US$254-per-month for family health coverage.
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In a statement issued following the meeting, the ICEM, BWI, Boilermakers, and the other unions said: &ldquo;We believe that the leading companies of our industry have a social responsibility that extends beyond the borders of the home country. When companies fail to meet their responsibilities around the world, it is a threat to workers everywhere. We therefore pledge to strengthen and mobilise our international network in support of the world&rsquo;s cement industry workers. 
 
&ldquo;At this moment, Lafarge is not meeting its social responsibility to the workers in the community of Sugar Creek, Missouri in the United States. We call on Lafarge to meet and negotiate in good faith with Boilermakers Local Lodge D-27 for a new contract that does not discriminate against workers on the basis of age and offers all workers the opportunity for a retirement with dignity.&rdquo; 
 
Boilermakers Vice President Warren Fairly said global intervention in Missouri is necessary because if Lafarge halts its social responsibility on providing basic benefits in the US, the pressure to concede basic rights and social benefits in the company&rsquo;s European operations can be &ldquo;foreseen in the near future.&rdquo; 
 
North American and European unions, together with the ICEM and BWI, met in Paris on 3-4 October over matters with Lafarge and Swiss cement company Holcim. Trade unions taking part included the Boilermakers, United Steelworkers, Laborers&rsquo; International, and Teamsters of the US, Unia of Switzerland, as well as French trade unions CFDT, FO, CFTC, and CGT. 
 
The dispute for 55 members of the Boilermakers Union in the state of Missouri has been ongoing since expiration of a prior four-year labour agreement on 30 April 2008.

ICEM, BWI, US Boilermakers Bring LaFarge USA Dispute to Company in Paris

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Norway&rsquo;s general workers&rsquo; union Fellesforbundet, conducted a World Day for Decent Work seminar on 30 September in the union&rsquo;s offices in Oslo. The event brought together representatives from many of the union&rsquo;s sectors, international officers of the national centre, LO, and Labour Party officials of the federal government, including Minister of Labour and Social Inclusion Dag Terje Andersen. 
 
The union intentionally convened the forum to occur just days before the government will take up the draft State Budget for 2009. That will start tomorrow, 7 October.
<img height="70" alt="" src="" width="325" />
One of the main proposals put forward by the ICEM affiliate on the budget is over social dumping regulations concerning the use of workers on temporary contracts. Currently, a person on a temporary contract must bear the burden of proof that an employer is circumventing existing legal procedures on the use of temporary contracts. 
 
&ldquo;Our demand is that fixed termed contracts must be the norm and that if an employer uses temporary contracts, it is their obligation to prove that it is within the limits of the law,&rdquo; said Fellesforbundet President Arve Bakke. As well, he added, a demand within this round of social talks is that &ldquo;the main contractor must be held responsible for wages and conditions for all employees of the subcontracting firms.&rdquo; 
 
Fellesforbundet also prominently took up the issue of restaurant workers at last week&rsquo;s Decent Work seminar. The union is demanding that the government impose regulations that the country&rsquo;s culinary industry must have regional safety representatives, much like those in other Norwegian industries. 
 
Such representatives could better monitor the social abuses so common in this sector. Fellesforbundet says workers oftentimes are enlisted in restaurants on a day-to-day basis.

Norwegian Fellesforbundet Discusses Contract Labour, Restaurant Work in Decent Work Forum

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