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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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The ICEM was shocked and angered by the arrests of labour and political rights advocate, Somyot Pruksakasemsuk, and Associate Professor Suthachai Yimprasert, in Thailand, and will be detained until earliest 6 June.
The pair presented themselves to police on hearing of their arrest warrants.&nbsp;Neither of them were members of the core Red Shirt group, they were following events closely in their capacity as journalist and academic.
Both friends of the international labour movement, Somyot and Suthachi are detained at the Adisorn Army Base in Saraburi, 115km north of capital Bangkok. Suthachai is on hungar strike in protest of his arrest.
ICEM affiliates and supporters around the world are requested to write to your local Thai embassies and call on the release of both men.
Somyot is a former ICEM project coordinator in Thailand. 
The arrest warrants were issued in connection&nbsp;to the incident on 21 May 2010 at 13.00, when Somyot and Suthachai, in the name of the 24th of June Democracy Group, held a press conference in front of the House No. 111 Foundation. This was a completely peaceful event.
The ICEM joins calls for the immediate release&nbsp;of both men.

ICEM Angered by Thai Arrests

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The Workers&rsquo; Network of Bayer meeting, held 6-7 May at the Hotel Terras Altas in Itapecerica da Serra, S&atilde;o Paulo, was supported by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) of Germany and was attended by workers, members of factory committees, and managers from Bayer plants in Brazil and Argentina. This eighth meeting was also attended by representatives by CNQ/CUT, the National Confederation of Chemical Industry, the Social Observatory Institute, CUT&rsquo;s Multi Action on Multinationals Project from the Brazilian national labour centre&rsquo;s International Relations Secretariat. 
 
The participation of comrades from the pharmacists' union in Argentina stimulated the discussion on the regional expansion of the network and also allowed a better understanding of the reality of Bayer employees in that country. The Argentine trade unionists spoke on collective agreements, benefits, restructuring and acquisitions in the region, and on relations between business, workers, and unions. 
 
According to CNQ International Relations Secretary Antenor Nakamura, the network must engage in regional expansion, but in order to do that it has to consider the differences in trade union structures in the region. According to Eder Correa, manager of labor relations at Bayer in Brazil, the company acknowledges the Brazilian network, but emphasized that the Brazilian structure cannot interfere in Bayer&rsquo;s positions in other countries. &quot;We can&rsquo;t guarantee recognition of the network in other regions, but we can make a strategic disclosure of the dialogue practices,&quot; he said. 
The impact of nanotechnology for workers was another topic discussed during this eighth meeting. The coordinator of the research institute Renanossoma, Dr. Paulo Martins, introduced the theme and spoke about the lack of regulation for products made with nano particles and the lack of research investment and that impact on processes. 

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&quot;Nanotechnology allows the creation of new products, but we still do not know if they are safe. The social, environmental, and ethical concerns should be taken into consideration,&quot; he stated. 
 
During the two-day meeting, workers and Bayer managers covered topics such as fundamental rights at work, moral harassment in the corporate world, control system of working hours, incorporation of benefits, dissemination of social dialogue in all areas of the company, newsletters, and the functioning and structure of the network. The next meeting of workers network at Bayer will be held in April 2011. 
 
At the social dialogue forum, Bayer representatives were present during the whole meeting and discussed all themes proposed by workers. They presented an overview of the business in the country and its prospects for the future. The President of Bayer Brazil, Dr. Horstfried Laepple, stressed the importance of transparency in dialogue with workers, unions, and factory committees. In his institutional presentation, Laepple spoke about the positive results of the company in 2009 in Brazil, with R$3.8 billion in sales, about the possibility of business expansion, and also the positive projections for 2010. That includes investment of R$180 million in technology upgrades and amplification of plants. 
 
The company also presented the project Hamonia, a people management tool that uses the methodology of skills. The tool has recently been installed in its plant in Belford Roxo, in order to align human resource practices between the two businesses in that plant and set career tracks, as well as giving more transparency to the criteria for evaluation, promotion, and remuneration. The theme of &quot;Jobs and Wages,&quot; discussed by the Bayer Workers&rsquo; Network until 2008, was one of the instigators to this project. 
 
The signing of a term that will deal with Bayer's commitment to adopt and respect the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises in the restructuring theme should be discussed by company and workers network in the future.

Bayer Workers’ Network Seeks Regional Expansion Across Latin America

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Errol McLeod, the former head of the Oilfields Workers&rsquo; Trade Union (OWTU) of Trinidad and Tobago, was named Minister of Labour on Friday, 28 May, by newly-elected Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, the first woman to ever lead the twin island republic in the Caribbean. 
 
McLeod, also a former ICEM Executive Committee member, will head a Cabinet ministry entitled Labour, Small, and Macro Enterprise Development. He retired as President of OWTU a year ago after 21 years as leader of one of the world&rsquo;s most militant trade unions. 
 
The newly-founded Movement for Social Justice (MSJ) political party, which counted McLeod as a candidate for elections to Parliament a week ago, is part of a multi-party coalition&nbsp;called the People&rsquo;s Partnership that elected Persad-Bissessar and won 29 of 41 seats in Parliament on 24 May. 

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Those elections proved a crushing defeat to former Prime Minister Patrick Manning and his People&rsquo;s National Movement party. 
 
McLeod came on the political scene as a strong and charismatic leader of workers in the early 1980s when he founded the Committee for Labour Solidarity in Trinidad and Tobago. Even prior, his confident demeanor and apt leadership were apparent in the 1960s when he first worked at the former Texaco refinery in Pointe-&agrave;-Pierre. That complex is now part of state-owned Petrotrin and sits at the vanguard of workers&rsquo; militancy in Trinidad and Tobago. 
 
McLeod&rsquo;s fearless, honest, and tactful leadership over 30 years won working class gains for tens of thousands not just in his home country, but all across the Caribbean and the Commonwealth nations. 
 
&ldquo;The entire family of ICEM trade unions extends its hearty congratulations to Errol,&rdquo; stated ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda. &ldquo;His great number of achievements on behalf of workers bodes well for all citizens of Trinidad and Tobago and we truly look forward to working again with him.&rdquo;

Errol McLeod Named Labour Minister in Trinidad and Tobago

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The former ICEM Projects Coordinator in Thailand, Somyot Pruksakasemsuk, was released last night, 13 June, from a prison at a Thai army base. He had been imprisoned since 24 May, together with academic Suthachai Yimprasert from Chulalongkom University, after the two presented themselves to police after they heard arrest warrants had been issued for them. 
 
Yimprasert was released 5 June from a prison at the Adisorn military base in Saraburi, 115 kilometres north of Bangkok. Both were arrested under the government&rsquo;s Centre for the Resolution of the Emergency Situation (CRES), a hastily put together decree stemming from May&rsquo;s political turbulence in Thailand.
<img src="" width="200" height="123" alt="" />
Somyot&nbsp;Pruksakasemsuk
The release of Brother Somyot follows a criminal court&rsquo;s decision rejecting the CRES arrest order. Even after that decision, the government held him for another seven days. 
 
The CRES charges against him were for inflaming public sentiment against the government for holding a news conference on 21 May in which he called for the resignation of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. He also edited a newspaper that supported the viewpoints of the Red Shirts in recent political strife. 
 
The ICEM called the charges a serious breach of universal free speech rights. 
 
International human rights groups throughout the world, as well as several Global Union Federations, sent protests to the Thai government over the unfair arrests of Somyot and Suthachai. An online appeal by the Dutch-based Clean Clothes Campaign also generated pressure on the government.

Thai Labour Activist Somyot Pruksakasemsuk Finally Released

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The ICEM is demanding that PT Kayan Putera Utama Coal (KPUC), an Indonesian company, stop its attacks on the SPE-SBSI Mining Union in eastern Borneo in Indonesia. Recently, the Samarinda-based company dismissed seven trade union leaders at the Desa Separi mine near Tenggarong in the Kalimantan Timur coal fields and enlisted another organisation to attack the union. 
 
In a letter to KPUC managing director Arifin Harun in Samarinda, ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda said, &ldquo;If you do not cease and desist from your actions, we will take further steps to bring the weight of the ICEM and its affiliates comprising some 20 million members to bear on this situation.&rdquo; A copy of the letter was also sent to Andrew Vickers, Chairman of ICEM&rsquo;s Mining Sector and General Secretary of the Mining Division of the Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union (CFMEU) of Australia.
<img src="" width="200" height="92" alt="" />
The ICEM cited clear violations of ILO Conventions 87 and 98 on freedom association and collective bargaining in the letter. The letter can be seen <a href="/wp-content/migration/icem/1006%20Indonesia%20KPUC.pdf">here</a>. 
 
The ICEM intends to conduct a full investigation of the situation if it is not resolved. It will work closely with its affiliate, the Indonesia Prosperity Trade Union Central Board, the largest trade union representing miners in Indonesia. Indonesia is a major supplier of coal to China, and is now the largest exporter of thermal coal in the world. In the wake of the surge in coal mining in Indonesia, employers have become increasingly hostile to trade unions. 
 
PT Kayan Putera Utama Coal is listed as Indonesia&rsquo;s 42nd largest coal producer, with the latest figures citing it produced 322,826 tonnes of coal in 2008. 

&nbsp;

Indonesian-based Coal Mining Company Sacks 7 Union Leaders

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