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The most dangerous country for trade unionists saw yet another assassination, 12 August, when Luis German Restrepo Maldonado, President of the Colombian packers&rsquo; union Sintraempaques, was shot in the head outside a caf&eacute; in public, in the city of Medellin, by a hit man who evaded arrest. 
 
Prominent trade union leader Maldonado was 58 years old and had spent 40 years representing workers in the central Colombian district of Antioquia. 
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Assassinated Luis German Restrepo Maldonado
Maldonado also served the Colombian national centre CGT, as treasurer of the Antioquia region. The National Executive Committee of the CGT, led by Julio G&oacute;mez Esguerra, condemned the brutal attack, and expressed its solidarity to the family. The CGT added that it &ldquo;will not be cornered by these acts of violence&rdquo;. It has become expected in Colombia that crimes against trade unionists are not properly investigated, with the perpetrator almost never brought to justice. The CGT has demanded that this trend does not continue. 
 
This latest murder again brings into question the decision to remove Colombia from the list of 25 countries sanctioned for trade union rights abuses, by the ILO&rsquo;s Committee on the Application of Standards, in June this year. 
 
The murdered trade unionist is survived by five children, Freddy, Lisette, Veronica, Juan Carlos, and Luis Herman.

Colombian Trade Union President Assassinated

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Mexico&rsquo;s Los Mineros won a legal victory on 11 August, in their struggle at Grupo Mexico&rsquo;s Cananea copper mine, as the Ninth District Judge in the state of Sonora ruled that the strike is still in legal existence. The Cananea strike, three years old last 30 July, was attacked with police force on 6 June, forcibly evicting strikers from the installations, where 3,000 federal police remain now. The large police presence protects strikebreakers at Cananea, as Grupo Mexico seeks to reopen the mine by the end of 2010. 
 
The constitutional appeal of Los Mineros resulted in admissions of both the Mexican Attorney General&rsquo;s office, and the Federal Secretary of Public Security that police had been deployed to the mine on 6 June to carry out inspections under a ministerial order. As the mine inspection had already been completed, police had no legal right to enter the mine facilities, or remove strikers. An eviction order from the judicial authority never existed. 
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Federal police violently take control at Cananea, 6 June 
Photo - IMF
The United Steelworkers&rsquo; (USW) President Leo Gerard announced on 20 August solidarity action for Los Mineros in Cananea, with the USW placing a rotating team of international observers in the city to monitor the illegal police presence, who are intimidating strikers and protecting scabs. Gerard added that American volunteer workers arrived this weekend as observers. The rotating team will join the picket line, which is often 800-strong. 
 
Government support for the strikebreakers continues, with local authorities accused of cutting electric power to some of the strikers&rsquo; homes, in an effort to intimidate them. 
 
Grupo Mexico and Mexico&rsquo;s Labour Ministry have refused to accept the appeal ruling, stating that the union&rsquo;s contract remains suspended, and that the District Judge&rsquo;s decision has no effect as the eviction of the strikers has already occurred.

Pressure on Mexican Authorities as District Judge Rules Cananea Strike Legal

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European trade unions, led by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), will stage a mobilization in central Brussels on 29 September protesting job loss and resulting service cuts due to austerity measures being imposed by governments. The date will coincide with a meeting of Europe&rsquo;s Finance Ministers in Europe&rsquo;s capital. 
 
In addition, Spanish trade union federations UGT and CC.OO have called a one-day strike across Spain on 29 September in protest to massive public-sector cuts and attacks on pension formulas and social services by the ruling Partido Socialista Obrero Espa&ntilde;ol (PSOE). 
 
The ETUC&rsquo;s Day of Action, entitled &ldquo;No to Austerity, Priority for Jobs and Growth,&rdquo; will manifest against proposed &euro;200 billion in overall cuts, which could result in 200,000 further job losses. The manifestation will take the side, for example, of Romanian trade unions which have futilely resisted pay cuts by as much as 25% on state workers. 
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The Day of Action is to resist European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet&rsquo;s call for an end to economic stimulus programmes and rigorous imposition of austerity measures across Europe. European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) General Secretary Carola Fischbach-Pyttel warned that &ldquo;as governments swing the austerity axe, they risk chopping off any green shoots of recovery, leaving workers, pensioners, and communities to face the prospect of an even longer recession.&rdquo; 
 
The ICEM calls on its European affiliated trade unions to heed the ETUC&rsquo;s call and manifest on 29 September against the socially destructive austerity measures. In Brussels, some 25,000 trade unionists are expected to assemble that day at Gare Du Midi, the city&rsquo;s south railway station, at 11h30 and march to Parc du Cinquantenaire where a rally will be held beginning at 15h.

Trade Unions in Europe Plan 29 September Manifestation to Resist Austerity Measures

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The ICEM has been saddened by the worst flooding in Pakistan in over 80 years, which have hit all four Provinces of the country. More than 150 million people have been badly affected, as floods have destroyed homes and belongings, and taken an unknown death toll of at least 1,600, as entire villages have been washed away. 
 
There are already 4.6 million people homeless, at least 6 million in urgent need of food, and 5 million without access to clean water, meaning that disease is spreading fast. 
 
In a letter to Pakistani affiliates last week, General Secretary Manfred Warda offered the sincere condolences, on behalf of all ICEM members, to the victims and their families. We urge affiliates and supporters to provide all possible relief aid through international relief agencies in their home countries. 
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&ldquo;It is my sincere hope that the affected people overcome these terrible ordeals in the near future, with the support of the international community,&rdquo; stated Warda, &ldquo;We applaud all union members who are engaged in relief work for victims of the floods&rdquo;. 
 
Pakistan will be in need of continuing international aid, as the floods have destroyed crops throughout the agriculture-based economy, a food crisis is a real possibility. 
 
After a two-day session of the UN General Assembly last week, the amount of international aid pledged for Pakistani flood victims fell short at US$350 million of the US$460 million in emergency aid that the UN appealed for. The full figure of US$460 million would only cover the bare essentials for a period of three months. Billions of dollars would be needed to rebuild Pakistan following this disaster.

ICEM Saddened by Disastrous Floods in Pakistan

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In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the US, the United Steelworkers&rsquo; (USW) Paper Sector Bargaining Conference was held from 17-19 August, with some 500 local union leaders further refining a common negotiations agenda aimed at synchronizing working terms and conditions for 100,000 unionised paperworkers in North American. 
 
The conference also served as another springboard for Workers Uniting, the joint cooperative organization formed by the USW and Unite the Unite of the UK that is a registered trade union in four countries. Ten shop-floor trade union leaders from paper and printing plants in the UK attended, as did pulp and paper union leaders from Australia, Canada, Finland, Sweden, and South Africa. 
 
The conference took a hard look at management operated behavioral-based safety programmes compared to the preferable process safety alternatives, and the USW thoroughly analysed a comprehensive safety and health survey it did a year ago from among local unions of some 30 pulp and paper companies. 
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Linda Pollock, a shop-floor leader at HarperCollins book publishing in the UK and Unite member, addresses the USW paper conference 
But the main focus at the bi-annual conference was to shape common bargaining agenda, a process the union&rsquo;s pulp and paper leadership has honed in recent years in order to regain bargaining clout after decades of mill-by-mill bargaining in the US pulp and paper sector. Delegates did that last week through some 30 break-out sessions that brought local branches of the same company together. 
 
In one, the MeadWestvaco council of trade unions, USW trade unionists elected Iain Eid, a Unite activist from a MeadWestvaco packaging plant in the UK, as spokesperson, further cementing the trans-Atlantic Workers Uniting bond. 
 
USW Executive Vice President and ICEM Executive Committee Member Jon Geenen, who heads this sector for the union, opened the conference by reporting that since 2007, due to dire economic circumstances that have caused mill shutdowns, bankruptcies, and coupled with production offshoring in search of cheaper labour, the USW&rsquo;s largest industrial sector has lost 100,000 members, and dropped from holding 846 collective agreements to 750. 
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The global panel included Simon Mofokeng (right) of South Africa, who told of the victimization of union activists in his country by Sappi, and Fred Wilson (center) of CEP in Canada, who told how his union retained pattern bargaining in eastern Canada last spring
Despite this, the USW paper sector has achieved 17 master agreements in which partial framework terms are common within a company, and successfully negotiated successorship language for 50,000 workers. In the absence of adequate US labour law, this means that in the event of an asset sale of a mill or takeover of a company, the new employer must honour the collective agreement and retain the unionized workforce. 
 
Expanding successorship language in all collective agreements of the sector was one of 13 bargaining priorities formulated at the conference. Others include strengthening health and safety language based on recommendations made from the health and safety survey, called &ldquo;Papered Over: Safety and Health in US Paper Mills,&rdquo; contract term lengths of three years unless other circumstances prevail, and holding the line on 80/20 health insurance coverage, meaning employers pay 80% of health care premiums under the privatized US health care system. 
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Early this year, members of USW Local 1050 in Michigan at a Pratt/Visy paper plant wrote to workers at the Tumut mill of Visy in New South Wales, Australia, encouraging them to join the CFMEU. Alex Millar (left) presented the USW paper converting unit a flag signed by Australian paperworkers at Tumut who favour unionization. At center, USW District Two Assistant Director Art Kroll and Pratt/Visy unit chairman Mike Prins. At right, USW District Two Director Mike Bolton 
Other priorities relate to maintenance of defined benefit retirement plans, maintaining current vacation schemes, and addressing adequate staffing levels, a huge threat to safety in industrial settings where employers have been reluctant to re-hire workers when recovery and increased production begins. 
 
The conference heard from USW President Leo Gerard who told trade union leaders that America was at a crossroads in upcoming national mid-term elections. He said the US either continues on a path of people-friendly government initiatives now underway by President Barack Obama and Democrats, or a return to the regressive social policies of the Bush era. 
 
One panel during the conference featured union leaders from several paper-producing countries and their perspectives on future growth or decline, and trade union matters in their respective countries. That panel consisted of Jouko Ahonen, President of Paperiliitto of Finland; Christer Larsson, an economist for Pappers Union of Sweden; Fred Wilson, Executive Assistant to the President, Communications, Energy, Paperworkers (CEP) Union of Canada; Alex Millar, Federal Secretary of the Paperworkers Branch of Australia&rsquo;s Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union (CFMEU); Simon Mofokeng, General Secretary of South Africa&rsquo;s Chemical, Energy, Paper, Printing, Wood and Allied Workers&rsquo; Union (CEPPWAWU) of South Africa; and Peter Ellis, National Officer of the GMB.

USW’s Papermaking Sector Advancing Common Agenda for 100,000 Workers

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Seventeen days after 33 miners were buried alive 700 metres deep in a copper and gold mine owned by Campa&ntilde;ia Minera San Esteban Primera in northern Chile, a note attached to a drill bit reached the surface yesterday, 22 August, revealing that all 33 were still alive. 
 
The note, in red letters, simply stated, &ldquo;All 33 of us are fine and in the shelter,&rdquo; referring to a shelter containing food, water, and oxygen for 72 hours and thought to be too small to hold all 33 miners. Later on Sunday, a small camera lowered down the drill bit probe of the San Jose mine showed miners bare-chested and gleeful that they had been discovered. 
 
The miners became trapped on 5 August when a shaft collapsed. The ICEM report on that catastrophe, from the InBrief No. 162 newsletter, can be found <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/3952-33-Miners-Feared-Dead-Inside-a-Copper-Gold-Mine-in-Chile ">here</a>. 
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Rescue of the miners is far from assured, however. Rescue leaders on the surface, using state-of-the-art probing equipment imported from Australia and the US, say it could take four months before the miners are brought to the surface. Rescuers say a tunnel 68 centimeters in diameter must now be drilled in order to hoist the miners to the surface. 
 
In the meantime, the drill hole used to make the initial contact with the miners will be utilized to drop plastic tubes called &ldquo;doves&rdquo; that contain food, water, glucose, and a communications device to them. 
 
If the rescue proves successful, it will exceed both the eight days that 115 Chinese coal miners survived underground in a Shanxi province mine in April 2010, as well as the 25 days that three Chinese miners survived in a colliery in the south of the country last year. 
 
ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda highlighted the accident in an interview today on BBC World Service Radio.

Miraculous! 33 Chilean Miners Alive in Depths of Copper, Gold Mine

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New England Teamsters Union members, 400 strong including trade unionists of another American union, are effectively blockading 20 cement plants and terminals of Swiss-based Holcim subsidiary Aggregate Industries in the US states of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. 
 
The strike, and subsequent sympathy strikes by other branch Teamster locals and Operating Engineer locals, started 16 August when Holcim&rsquo;s American and UK subsidiary implemented work terms making drivers and plant operators part-time workers. The ICEM intervened late last week, stating this in a letter to Holcim CEO Markus Akermann: 
 
&ldquo;ICEM affiliates, together with BWI, represent hundreds of thousands of workers at Holcim and other cement plants throughout the world. We will expose your actions and make this a truly global campaign, starting right here in Switzerland.&rdquo; 
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Last week&rsquo;s strike actions find global justification because Aggregate Industries unilaterally implemented part-time work status at one facility while legally engaged with the union in negotiations at the same time. Truck drivers and operators of Teamsters Local 170 diligently had worked for Aggregate Industries for five months past expiration of a prior labour agreement. Holcim rewarded that loyalty by taking the decision that it could and would reduce work-day time to four hours without negotiating with the union. 
 
Following the walk-out by Local 170 teamsters, supportive trade unionists from Teamsters Locals 25 and 379 in New England downed tools at other Aggregate Industries plants, as did members of the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE). A few of these local branch unions have upcoming contract expirations with the national cement-products producer, and workers across Holcim&rsquo;s New England operations clearly recognize that such a one-sided work rule is tantamount to social dumping. The ICEM applauds the actions of cement drivers and workers in New England, and pledges all necessary support. 
 
The ICEM reiterates its demand that Holcim in Switzerland take responsibility for this labour breach and immediately rescind the unilateral implementation of reduced working hours. To negate social dialogue over an economic issue of this depth is counter to the principles that Holcim supposedly adheres to. 
 
Holcim bought Aggregate Industries, active in several US and UK regional markets, in 2005. Early in 2010, Zurich-based Holcim merged Aggregate Industries US fully with Holcim US to create a single business unit.

American Teamsters Union Strikes Holcim Cement Subsidiary

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According to Economic Populist and based on reliable data from a company that monitors layoffs, 25 American-based companies were responsible for 700,000 jobs lost during the financial crisis. And the statistics reveal that most of the lost US jobs were caused by outsourcing jobs offshore. 
 
The list of 25 includes a few industrial companies, but the most consisting of tech companies, service-oriented forms, and, of course, financial services. 
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The 25 are: General Motors, 107,357 jobs lost due to outsourcing; Citigroup, 73,056 jobs gone; Hewlett-Packard, 47,540 jobs eliminated due to outsourcing; Circuit City Stores, 41,495 (not attributed to outsourcing); Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, 40,650; Verizon Wireless, 39,000; Pfizer, 31,771; Merck and Co., 24,400. 
 
Lehman Brothers, 23,340; Caterpillar, 23,024; JP Morgan Chase, 22,852; Starbucks, 21,316; AT&amp;T, 18,401; Alcoa Aluminium, 17,655 jobs lost to outsourcing; Dow Chemical, 17,530; Dupont, 17,000; Berkshire Hathaway Capital, 16,900 jobs lost due to unknown reasons; 
 
Ford Motor, 15,912; KB Toys, 15,100; US Postal Service, 15,000; DHL Express USA, 14,900; Sprint Nextel, 14,500; Sun Microsystems, 14,000; Boeing Aviation, 13,715; and Chrysler, 13,672. 
 
Many of these companies demanded US taxpayers&rsquo; dollars in the form of stimulus monies, all the while they were loping jobs.

US: 25 Companies, 700,000 Jobs Lost Due to Outsourcing during Financial Collapse

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A draft report on precarious women workers has been presented to the European Parliament by Danish Social Democratic MEP, Britta Thomsen. 
 
The report expresses disappointment that EU employment law and the directives on fixed-term, part-time, and temporary agency work do not adequately address the precarious nature of employment and calls on the Commission and the Member States to take further specific legislative measures, such as introducing binding minimum social standards for employees and granting all employees equal access to social services and benefits, including maternity leave, health care, and pensions, regardless of their employment conditions. 
 
The report underlines the need for unionisation of women in precarious jobs and calls on the Member States to penalise those who create obstacles to trade union participation. 
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Danish Social Democratic MEP, Britta Thomsen
Member States are encouraged to combat undeclared work by means of preventive measures, such as granting immunity from prosecution to employees who report their illegal employment status and taking dissuasive action against employers. The report further calls on the Commission and the Member States to improve data collection and monitor progress in this field. 
 
The Commission and the Member States are called on to enhance their monitoring of minimum health and safety requirements in the workplace, paying particular attention to the specific risks to female workers. 
 
With regard to migrant workers, the report calls on the Commission, in its new gender equality strategy, to strengthen its commitment to promoting gender equality in migration and integration policies, in particular with a view to fully utilising migrant women&rsquo;s employment potential and encourages employers to take specific measures to facilitate the social integration of women migrant workers. 
 
Attention is drawn to the limited amount of research on the subject of precarious work and the report calls on the Commission and Eurofound to initiate targeted research in order to assess the cost of the de-skilling and welfare loss resulting from precarious employment. 
 
The report will be voted on by members of the European Parliament Committee on Women&rsquo;s Rights and Gender Equality on 10 October 2010.

Draft European Parliament Report on Precarious Women Workers

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At a side meeting in Geneva at the 2010 International Labour Conference of the ILO in June 2010, the UN Special Representative on Business and Human Rights, Professor John Ruggie, requested the ILO&rsquo;s expertise in determining the impact of precarious work on human rights. 
 
In preparing to make operational the 2008, &ldquo;Respect, Remedy, Protect&rdquo; framework, Ruggie is consulting with a wide range of actors, including through an online consultation forum. Ruggie&rsquo;s request to the ILO follows online submissions by the Global Union Federations International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Association (IUF) and the International Metalworkers&rsquo; Federation (IMF), which both highlighted the fact that CAL and other forms of precarious work are being used to undermine the human rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining. 
<img alt="" src="" width="145" height="73" />
John Ruggie
In its submission to the consultations, the IMF&rsquo;s statement said, &ldquo;It is our submission that precarious work threatens the very survival of stable employment and collective bargaining,&rdquo; adding, &ldquo;As with other human rights, exercise of the fundamental enabling rights of freedom of association and collective bargaining is severely constrained by fear. That fear comes from the vulnerability that employers are imposing on workers every day, in developed and developing countries alike, with the explosion of precarious work practices.&rdquo; 
 
Ruggie&rsquo;s &ldquo;Respect, Remedy, Protect&rdquo; framework is based on three pillars: it is a state duty to protect human rights abuses by third parties, including businesses; corporate responsibility to respect human rights; and that there must be greater access by victims to effective remedies, judicial and non-judicial.

UN Human Rights Special Representative Ruggie Seeks ILO Help on Precarious Work

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