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The mining company Rio Tinto has been identified by the Australian labour movement as a major obstacle in stopping the use of AWAs, the draconian individual work agreements made to order by the ousted Howard government in order to weaken workers&rsquo; rights. 
 
And ICEM affiliate Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) is taking on the company squarely for trying to renew Australian Work Agreements (AWAs) with railroad workers at Pilbara Rail Services, a key Rio subsidiary in its lucrative western iron ore business. 
 
The CFMEU is seeking authorization from the Industrial Relations Commission to hold a secret ballot election in order to take industrial action, a move geared to rid rail workers of AWAs in favour of real collective agreements. Getting such legal sanction in West Australia is aimed at forcing Rio Tinto to the bargaining table.
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The union is similarly running campaigns to persuade BHP Billiton iron ore workers in the west to toss away AWAs, as well as Xstrata coal miners in the north. 
 
The Labour Government of Kevin Rudd, in March, passed a new law that scrapped John Howard&rsquo;s WorkChoices, but major companies are using loopholes in the new law to continue offering AWAs. 
 
Australian Council of Trade Unions President Sharan Burrow said &ldquo;there has been clear evidence that (telecommunications company) Telstra, Rio Tinto, Cochlear, and other major companies are still exploiting&rdquo; the loopholes. The ICEM stands with the CFMEU and asks that all miners in Australia refuse AWAs, and demand ironclad collective agreements with their employers.

Rio Tinto Test Awaits to Get Mining Firm to Discontinue Individual Work Agreements

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The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in South Africa has hit hard on four deaths within a week at AngloGold and AngloPlatinum, pivotal proof that the country is in need of rigid safety regulations that hopefully will become law late this year. 
 
During a week spanning 12 August to 17 August, safety performances by both AngloGold and AngloPlats sunk at the same time the Chamber of Mines lobbied against tougher criminal penalties and corporate liabilities. Those arguments came in discussions during public hearings of the proposed Mine Health and Safety Amendment Bill. A Chamber of Mines leader said such measures would undermine CEOs in their current focus on workplace safety. 
 
At AngloGold, one worker was killed underground on 12 August in a mine collapse at Mponeng, while at TauTona, another miner was killed similarly, and two others were seriously injured. This happened on 15 August. At AngloPlats, majority owned by AngloAmerican, a company that sacked an AngloPlats CEO over safety performance, a fatality occurred at the Mogalakwena mine (16 August) and the Amandabult mine (18 August).
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NUM Gen. Sec. Frans Baleni&nbsp;
AngloGold workers set up a Day of Mourning for 21 August, but it was met with a company &ldquo;no work, no pay&rdquo; rule, which infuriated the national NUM. &ldquo;It is within our African culture to mourn and workers will continue to mourn for their deceased colleagues whether or not&rdquo; the industry accepts the practice, said NUM General Secretary Frans Baleni. 
 
AngloGold shut production at one of the two mines stricken by the worker fatalities, but AngloPlats continued production at both its mines. The NUM is pushing enactment of reform legislation that would lift maximum fines from R200,000 to R1 million on mining deaths, as well as place criminal liabilities on company officials.
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Also in the NUM, a near month-long strike by 700 miners at UK-based Petra Diamonds Ltd.&rsquo;s Heman mine ended on 19 August when the nation&rsquo;s second largest diamond producer significantly rised wages. The company admitted during the strike that even though its wage offer was near the inflation rate of 12%, its wage proposal would still not lift salaries to national mining averages. 
 
In other South African mining news, Energy and Minerals Minister Buyelwa Sonjica emphatically blasted activists who are attempting to block a titanium mining venture in the country&rsquo;s remote western coastal regions. Speaking in favour of a project by the Australian company Minerals Resource Commodities and its South African subsidiary, Transworld Energy and Minerals, she said those opposing the project now should examine their own apartheid-era disinterest before they take up the mantle community activists.

NUM Protests Rash of AngloGold, AngloPlats Mine Deaths in South Africa

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On 13 August, in the northern Colombian city of Baranquilla, the right-wing paramilitary group &ldquo;Black Eagles&rdquo; issued a communiqu&eacute; calling for death to community activists and trade union leaders, most notably a union leader in ICEM mining affiliate Sintracarb&ograve;n. He is Adolfo Llanos. 
 
The ICEM strongly denounced the cowardly acts in a letter to the Colombian government and the three MNCs that control worksites in which Sintracarb&ograve;n represents coal miners, and transport and port workers. The ICEM demanded greater security for trade union leaders in the letter, and for the government to apprehend and convict those responsible.
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ICEM Gen. Sec. Manfred Warda
&ldquo;It must now be the obligation and responsibility of the government, in close cooperation with the management of Carbones del Cerej&oacute;n, to ensure the safety for all the people on this death list,&rdquo; wrote ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda. &ldquo;We take this vile and cowardly letter seriously and we hope you do as well, particularly in view of the fact that the 22 March 2008 murder of Sintracarb&ograve;n activist Adolfo Gonz&aacute;lez Montes has gone unsolved.&rdquo; 
 
Gonz&aacute;lez Montes was a committeeman for the Barrancas mining section of Sintracarb&ograve;n. He was murdered early in the morning of 22 March prior to his work turn at his home in Riohacha. Before his murder, multiple assailants tortured him in front of his four children, and immediately following the murder, other leaders of Sintracarb&ograve;n received telephone death threats.
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Adolfo Llanos is a union leader at Puerto Bolivar, Cerrej&oacute;n&rsquo;s deep-water coal export port on the Caribbean coast. Carbones del Cerrej&oacute;n is one of the world&rsquo;s largest open pit coal mining firms, equally owned by AngloAmerican, BHP Billiton, and Xstrata. 
 
The Colombian government has maintained that the Aquilas Negras, or &ldquo;Black Eagles,&rdquo; no longer exists. But leaders of other unions have received death threats from the paramilitary group, including the food and beverage trade union Sinaltraninal late last year.

ICEM Demands Greater Security for Sintracarbòn Unionists in Recent Colombian Death Threats

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Focused militancy coupled with poised negotiating gave 325 workers of German industrial gas company Linde in Thailand a solid 31-month collective agreement. The Thai Industrial Gas Local Union (TIGLU), aligned with ICEM affiliate Petroleum and Chemical Workers&rsquo; Federation of Thailand, won major gains at 10 chemical plants in a negotiated agreement reached late last week. 
 
On 22 July, in the first round of collective negotiations, local management claimed they had no authority to address the union&rsquo;s 16 demands. Even at a 28 July tripartite bargaining session in a provincial labour office in Saraburi, management refused to take the demands.
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Last Week's Bargaining, TIGLU Committee in Foreground
TIGLU then conducted extraordinary meetings at different worksites where strike authorization was put to a ballot. As important, the union reached out to the ICEM and to German affiliate IGBCE, insisting that parent Linde instruct local management to bargain in good faith. 
 
A strike by two-thirds of the combined workforce started on 6 August, and lasted only four days. A commitment was gained quickly and honest talks began on 11 August. Those talks produced the first written agreement between TIGLU and the company. That happened last Friday, 22 August. In the binding pact, the union scored major gains on 10 of the 16 demands. They also won agreement that the remaining items would be addressed by joint union-management committees.
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&nbsp;TIGLU Workers on Strike, 8 August
TIGLU won important contractual commitments on contract labour, giving contract workers the right to full-time and permanent work after time periods. Effective 1 January 2009, a union dues check-off system will be put in place by the company, and Linde&rsquo;s management agreed to begin giving 39 scholarships for children of workers, ranging from elementary school age to post high-school age. 
 
TIGLU also achieved paid union leave, training courses for all workers on their rights, benefits, and entitlements, and increased health care benefits. That increases to 40,000 baht per year, the equivalent of &euro;750. 
 
They also won Providence Fund increases of up to 10% of salary for workers with 15 years service or more, and 5% increases for workers with less than five years. 
 
The ICEM congratulates the members of TIGLU for their energy, integrity, and ability to use social dialogue to post benefits and work rule improvements for Linde workers in Thailand.

Thai Industrial Gas Workers Win Through Striking, Engagement in Earnest Bargaining Table Talks

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A major demonstration set for tomorrow, 30 May, in Sofia, Bulgaria, by trade union organisations there has the full support of the ICEM. The Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria (CITUB), together with another labour federation, will protest over government and employer disinterest in social dialogue talks with trade unions over a national income policy. 
 
The protest will also center on workers&rsquo; rights over their legitimate right to strike in Bulgaria, as well as gaining that rights for civil servants. 
In March 2006, the average monthly income of a Bulgarian family stood at &euro;241, while average household expenditures rose to over &euro;226 per month, according to the National Statistical Institute. &ldquo;Bulgaria is the only one among the countries that are acceding to the European Union that does not have an income policy bargained at the national level,&rdquo; said CITUB President Zhelyazko Hristov. 
 
In a poll taken last month, over 60% of Bulgarian trade union members insisted on national protest actions for the end of May, while 40% said they would join a national strike over the income and other issues if one were called. For ICEM&rsquo;s letter of support to affiliate National Labour Federation of Chemistry and Industry on the 30 May demonstration, <a href="/index.php?id=9&amp;doc=1810">click here</a>.

Bulgarians Protest Tomorrow over Low Wages, Labour Rights

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Lastik-Īş, ICEM&rsquo;s rubber and chemicals affiliate in Turkey, kept its collective agreement in the rubber sector intact. A week ago, under threat of a 22 May strike at four tyre plants by 3,500 workers, the rubber industry representing Pirelli Lastikleri, Goodyear and Brisa Bridgestone Sabanci, agreed to a two-year contract with the union that excludes all employer flexibility demands contained in a World Bank and IMF inspired labour code introduced in Turkey three years ago. 
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Lastik-Īş leaders outside the Izmit Turkey 
Goodyear plant
Lastik-Īş retained 50 years of gained rights, including holiday periods, wage rates of new hires, health care protections, and limitations on use of temporary workers.
The union won a 5% wage increase back to 1 January, which equals the country&rsquo;s inflation rate of the last six months of 2005, and also won wage adjustments every six months, based on the inflation rate level. Lastik-Īş negotiated increases based on the inflation rate for several social benefits, including education and child aid, sickness and disease benefits, and heating, food and other social gains.

Turkish Lastik-Īş  Preserves All Past Gains in New Tyre Agreement

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ICEM Nigerian affiliate PENGASSAN agreed to a 27% wage increase at the weekend for upstream workers of Mobil Oil Nigeria Plc. The company, a subsidiary of US-based supermajor ExxonMobil, was under an extended strike deadline to tomorrow by the white-collar oil workers&rsquo; union and its 1,700 members employed by the company. 
 
PENGASSAN had targeted ExxonMobil&rsquo;s Nigerian operations because prior wage negotiations with other multinational oil companies had yielded higher pay increases. The union and company will meet again in December to discuss further increases. 
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Meanwhile, dialogue will continue between the two sides on the use of contract labour in offshore oil operations, as well as PENGASSAN&rsquo;s demand that ExxonMobil comply with an expatriate quota and local content policies that are in effect in Nigeria. The union seeks more full-time employment for Nigerian workers in the oil and gas sector. 
 
On 25 May, PENGASSAN&rsquo;s National Executive Board met and elected Peter Esele as president. He had been serving as acting president since the tragic death of President Uche Okoro in an airline crash last December. Esele is a skilled negotiator and employed at Core Laboratories Nigeria Ltd. as a Health and Environment officer.

ExxonMobil Negotiates Equity Wage Increases to Avert Nigerian Strike

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Senzeni Zokwana won re-election as president of South Africa&rsquo;s National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), while Frans Baleni was elected general secretary. Those and other elections were part of a spirited 12th National Congress of the NUM, held 24-27 May in Midrand, near Johannesburg. 
 
Over 1,000 delegates to the NUM&rsquo;s triennial Congress passed resolutions prioritising the issue of wage compensation, and convene a special summit to deal with the issue; to openly engage employers to reopen mines to enhance employment; and for leadership of the 300,000-member NUM to develop a discussion document on its important role inside COSATU related to labour&rsquo;s strained relationship as part of the African National Congress (ANC) Alliance. 
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The Congress also vowed to maintain NUM&rsquo;s bank as a workers&rsquo; asset, set in motion an aid and support plan for striking security guards in conjunction with the Transport &amp; Allied Workers&rsquo; Union, and commemorated the 1946 strike by the Black Mineworkers Union, with events leading up to the 60-year anniversary of the strike in the Witwatersran on 12 August of this year. 
The Congress closed by paying a rousing tribute to Gwede Mantashe, NUM&rsquo;s general secretary since 1998 who retired at this Congress. 
In opening the Congress, Zokwana, ICEM president, now in his third term as a NUM national office bearer, demanded of ANC leadership, including President Thabo Mbeki, that more anti-retroviral medicines be made available to workers in the fight against HIV/AIDS. &ldquo;This human culling must stop,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;South Africa has the resources to assist us and it must do so.&rdquo; 
 
Baleni, a miner who rose through NUM leadership ranks as a national organiser and then national education coordinator, has been the union&rsquo;s chief negotiator prior to his 27 May election. He headed the Production Pillar of the NUM. Zokwana joined NUM in 1983 as a shaft steward in a Free State gold mine, and rose through the ranks to regional chairman in 1993 and national vice president in 1994. 
 
Other national office bearers elected at the 12th Congress: Crosbi Moni, deputy president; Oupa Komane, deputy general secretary; Derick Elbrecht, treasurer general; Helen Diatile, chairperson of Education; Zwelitsha Tantsa, secretary of Education; Peter Bailey, chairperson of Health and Safety; and Eric Gcilitshana, secretary of Health and Safety.

NUM Elects Leaders at Energised South African Congress

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ICEM&rsquo;s Latin America/Caribbean Regional Coordinating Committee meeting in S&atilde;o Paulo, Brazil, on 18 and 19 May, discussed and took action on two pressing matters involving ICEM sectors in South America. 
 
The Committee resolved, considering the steps taken by the Bolivian people to institute a process of nationalisation of certain natural resources, to call on the governments and companies involved to be coherent in a wise and prudent response so that the rights of workers in these enterprises are not adversely affected. 
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Regarding the dispute between Argentina and Uruguay and the construction of two paper mills on the Uruguay side of the Uruguay River, the ICEM&rsquo;s Committee vowed to put pressure on both governments to immediately resolve the matter. The resolution stated that it was important that the opinions of trade unionists be considered in the combined US$1.7 billion projects by Mets&auml;-Botnia AB of Finland and Grupo Empresarial Ence of Spain. 
 
The resolution also said &ldquo;it was advisable not to ignore contributions made by those at the international level&rdquo; in this debate. &ldquo;In our double role as workers and trade unionists, we have to make sure, as we have done in the past, that control mechanisms exist which guarantee ecological and environmental sustainability for our people,&rdquo; ICEM&rsquo;s Latin America/Caribbean Committee declared. 
To read the resolution (in Spanish), <a href="/index.php?id=26&amp;doc=1814&amp;la=ES">click here</a>.

Nationalisation and Paper Mills: ICEM’s Latin Delegates Take Fresh Look at Two Regional Dilemmas

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North American&rsquo;s offshore oil and gas industry now has its second collective agreement in place after a Newfoundland-Labrador provincial arbitrator issued a 38-month labour contract between employers on the Hibernia platform and the Communications, Energy, Paperworkers (CEP) Union of Canada. Some 450 workers at Hibernia, whose managing company is US supermajor ExxonMobil, will receive yearly wage increases, plus backpay to 1 July 2004 totalling, on average, C$9,168. 
 
CEP won a guarantee that workplace certification of the platform and terms of the agreement apply to all successor companies or oil-service firms at Hibernia. The interest arbitration award lays out a three-week on, three-week off work rotation schedule. That includes 84 paid hours each workweek, divided into seven 12-hour days while on the platform. 
Hibernia workers were the first offshore oil workers anywhere in North America to organise a union, voting for the CEP in 2001. Workers at the Terra Nova platform, an oil rig also in the North Atlantic that is managed by Petro-Canada, voted for CEP representation in 2003 and the 120 workers there received a first collective agreement through an interest arbitration award issued on 30 September 2005. Legislation in several Canadian provinces provides for such a process in achieving first collective agreements, and also prohibits strikes or lockouts during that period.

Labour Agreement in Place at Hibernia’s Offshore Platform

Archive

Rio Tinto Test Awaits to Get Mining Firm to Discontinue Individual Work Agreements

NUM Protests Rash of AngloGold, AngloPlats Mine Deaths in South Africa

ICEM Demands Greater Security for Sintracarbòn Unionists in Recent Colombian Death Threats

Thai Industrial Gas Workers Win Through Striking, Engagement in Earnest Bargaining Table Talks

Bulgarians Protest Tomorrow over Low Wages, Labour Rights

Turkish Lastik-Īş Preserves All Past Gains in New Tyre Agreement

ExxonMobil Negotiates Equity Wage Increases to Avert Nigerian Strike

NUM Elects Leaders at Energised South African Congress

Nationalisation and Paper Mills: ICEM’s Latin Delegates Take Fresh Look at Two Regional Dilemmas

Labour Agreement in Place at Hibernia’s Offshore Platform

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