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Global worker No1 2022

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With the ashes from the global financial crisis still about us, the ICEM has joined with the 11 other Global Union Federations (GUFs), as well as the International Trade Union Confederation and the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) to the OECD in issuing a joint 1 May statement. That statement follows below. 
May Day 2010 
 
Jobs, Justice and Public Services &ndash; Getting the Economy to Work
The Council of Global Unions, the voice of the global labour movement, has issued the following statement to mark May 1, 2010 
 
On today of all days, trade unionists around the world demand fresh steps to reform the global economy in favour of social justice, investment in jobs and fairness in society. This is no time for business as usual. 
 
Neo-liberal economists and reckless financial dealings have created a crisis that has put millions of people out of work and forced many more into precarious employment to survive. Social safety nets are being torn apart. Public spending that provides for cohesive communities is being savagely cut. 
 
With all of this in mind, Global Unions call on policymakers and democrats everywhere to support a new paradigm of recovery and social justice that will: 
 
&bull; Reassert in government at all levels the primacy of public interest over private gain and ensure that the protection of citizens&rsquo; rights is made a cornerstone of social and economic development; 
 
&bull; Defend the rights of workers and trade unions; 
 
&bull; Mobilise for the creation of sustainable, secure and good quality jobs for all workers, that allow workers and their families to live in dignity; 
 
&bull; Ensure that social justice is a central mission of government and take concrete measures to reduce income disparities and increase equality, in particular gender equality; 
 
&bull; Eliminate market abuse through short-term speculation and manipulation of financial markets by imposing binding and effective regulation; 
 
&bull; Promote sustainable development with job-centred policies, effective social protections and reversal of global warming and environmental degradation; 
 
&bull; Renew commitment to public service values in society and enhance the contribution of quality public services to fairer and more efficient societies, and to finance these services through progressive systems of taxation that provide sufficient resources while improving social equity; 
 
&bull; Commit to education for all and provide resources needed to achieve the enrichment of society that comes from high quality education and training; 
 
&bull; Improve the quality of people&rsquo;s lives by providing universal access to health care and other vital social welfare services, as well as such fundamental issues as clean water and adequate nutrition, and breathing new life into efforts to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals. 
 
May Day 2010 is a moment to change course, to meet the aspirations of workers and communities for a new beginning, to put to flight self-serving politics and corporate greed, and, above all, to build a new solidarity in society in support of people-centred values that will enrich the lives of all. 
 
 
The PDF of the statement can be found <a href="http://www.world-psi.org/Template.cfm?Section=Home&amp;CONTENTFILEID=29028&amp;TEMPLATE=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm">here</a>.

Global Labour’s Joint 1 May Statement

Making available a significant number of key statistics, including the ICEM&rsquo;s own, as well as a wide range of &ldquo;best practice examples,&rdquo; the ICEM issued a new comprehensive presentation on &ldquo;CAL and the ICEM CAL campaign.&rdquo; Slide by slide, this education tool provides information on the ICEM&rsquo;s national and international CAL work, highlighting, among many other items, what unions around the world are doing in their daily struggles against precarious work. The presentation can be found <a href="/wp-content/migration/icem/2010CAL.ppt">here</a>. 
 
The statistics indicate that the phenomenon of short-term, contract, agency and other precarious work is still growing in almost every part of the world. On the other hand, there also is progress being made. In a lot of countries, for example, laws have been changed for the better. In other cases, unions managed to gain improvements for precarious workers through successful collective bargaining. Trade unions are also increasingly looking towards their own structures and strategies, aiming to better protect and defend often non-affiliated CAL workers.

New CAL Facts and Figures Overview

As part of its strategy to improve working and living conditions for metalworkers in Europe, the European Metalworkers&rsquo; Federation (EMF) has adopted a coordinated collective bargaining policy. 
 
The first coordinated, or common, demand was adopted in 2005 and called for the individual right to training, guaranteed by collective agreements. Last November, at the 6th EMF Collective Bargaining Conference, the 75 unions affiliated to the EMF agreed on a second common demand &quot;for more secure employment - against precarious work.&quot; 
<img alt="" src="" width="135" height="180" />
EMF Deputy General Secretary Bart Samyn
&ldquo;The last years have seen an incredible increase of precarious work and the number of insecure jobs has exploded in all European countries,&rdquo; said EMF Deputy General Secretary Bart Samyn. &ldquo;Everyone agrees that we can no longer deny this very real problem. Hence, the importance of this second common demand of the EMF and the willingness of all EMF affiliates to put the fight against precarious work central in their demands, in their upcoming collective bargaining rounds all over Europe.&rdquo; 
 
EMF affiliates are developing specific demands, relevant to their national situation, on temporary agency workers (TAW), workers employed on fixed term contracts, the bogus self-employed, and those on projects-based and zero-hour contracts, and are including these demands in their collective bargaining. A number of EMF affiliates have also initiated awareness-raising campaigns for more secure employment. 
 
The EMF Second Common Demand brochure is available <a href="http://www.emf-fem.org/Press/Publications/EMF-Second-Common-Demand">here</a>.

European Metalworkers’ Second Common Demand for more secure employment

The annual ICEM Asia-Pacific Regional Contract and Agency Labour (CAL) seminar took place in Singapore on 18-19 April. The seminar, hosted by the ICEM with the assistance of Germany&rsquo;s Friedrich-Ebert Foundation (FES), brought together 52 delegates, including representatives of the ICEM, the Building and Wood Workers&rsquo; International (BWI), International Metalworkers&rsquo; Federation (IMF), International Textile, Garment, and Leather Workers&rsquo; Federation (ITGLWF), Public Services International (PSI), and Union Network International (UNI). 
 
Union leaders and activists from 14 Asian countries, members of the Western European Team of experts from Denmark and Sweden, and representatives of the ICEM Secretariat and the FES attended the meeting, spoke about the impact of precarious employment in their countries, and shared strategies which they had developed to deal with CAL issues. 
 
ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda had been scheduled to attend the seminar, but was unable to do so because of the disruption to European flights caused by volcanic ash from Iceland. 
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Participants discussed how CAL is being used to undermine the right to freedom of association, by companies who are letting go of permanent staff and hiring temporary workers in their place. Participants also discussed how the global economic crisis is being used by multinational companies as an excuse to reduce their permanent workforce, despite the fact that CEOs are receiving ever increasing pay packages. 
 
The participants proposed a number of next steps, including that unions should make CAL a priority issue and prioritise organising of CAL workers; that they should cooperate in campaigning at a national level for legislation which would make user enterprises responsible for agency workers;, and that collective bargaining should fully include CAL issues. 
 
Participants also proposed that a workshop be arranged to discuss how dialogue can best be arranged with labour-hire agencies to assure that labour rights and standards are upheld.

Global Union Federations Gather in Asia-Pacific Region to Develop CAL Tactics

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Trade unionists are encouraged to apply for the Global Labour University&rsquo;s (GLU) two upcoming Masters programmes, one at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India, the other in Germany at the University of Kassel and Berlin School of Economics. Both programs begin on 1 July 2012, and have 1 March deadlines for applying. 
 
The India programme is entitled Globalisation of Labour, while the German curriculum is titled Labour Policies and Globalisation. Both are 14-week semesters of course offerings followed by an internship placement with trade unions or labour research institutes, thus offering the chance to engage inside the labour movement in different countries and at the international level. 
 
In Germany, the Hans Boeckler Foundation has extended its grant programme for Labour Policies and Globalisation programme, which grants scholarships to colleagues from EU Member States. Further information and applications to the German programme can be obtained <a href="http://www.global-labour-university.org/74.html ">here</a>, or contact directly the coordinator, <a href="mailto:Glu.germany@uni.kassel.de">Simone Buckel</a>. 
 
For information and application to the GLU&rsquo;s Tata Institute programme, contact <a href="mailto:gluindia@gmail.com">Mandira Zutshi</a>. Or visit <a href="http://www.global-labour-university.org/">GLU&rsquo;s website</a> to complete and overall information. 
 
The GLO, part of the ILO, has trained 214 trade unionists in economics and social sciences since 2004, giving young national and local trade union activists the opportunity to learn specific curriculums tailored to improve their skills at home. 
 
Course offerings are in English, and the GLU awards a limited number of scholarships to participants from developing and transition countries. Applicants must have the endorsement of a trade union to apply for a scholarship.&nbsp;

1 March Close for Global Labour University’s Masters Applications in India, Germany

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With on-line voting about to end at midnight on 26 January, the United Steelworkers (USW) has issued a last-minute alert for global trade unionists to make the Brazilian mining company Vale the shameful recipient of the 2012 Public Eye Award, as bestowed by a Swiss NGO, the Berne Declaration, and Greenpeace. 
 
Going into the final week&rsquo;s balloting, Vale trails the Japanese electric energy company TEPCO by less than 300 votes &ndash; 17,276 votes for TEPCO, 16,996 for Vale. 
 
Visit the <a href="http://www.publiceye.ch/en/vote/">Public Eye website here</a> to cast your ballot, and push Vale into the number one spot. 
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In early January, the two organisations launched this year&rsquo;s version of the contest, with six multinationals judged as being the worst violators of environmental stewardship and human rights abuses. Besides TEPCO and Vale, the other nominees are the US mining company Freeport-McMoRan, Korean electronics manufacturer Samsung, Swiss chemicals company Syngenta, and the British bank Barclays. 
 
The winner will be announced at a press conference on 27 January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Vale, of course, besides heaping environmental damage the world over, extracted more than just minerals from the earth in recent years; it extracted deep and unnecessary economic concessions from USW members in 2009-10 strikes in Canada.

USW Makes Last-Ditch Appeal to Shame Vale as Public Eye Recipient

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Hundreds of garment workers staged a symbolic sit-in strike on 16 January in front of the National Press Club in Dhaka city, Bangladesh, demanding that Parliament takes up and passes a key piece of labour legislation. 
 
The legislation has been ready for presentation in Parliament for three years, but the Labour Ministry has stalled the process. Demonstrating workers warned of mass mobilisations before the Labour Ministry, Prime Minister&rsquo;s Office, and Parliament if the bill is not considered during the next session which begins, which begins this Wednesday, 25 January. 
 
The demonstration was organised by the National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF), a highly-active trade union affiliate of the International Textile, Garment &amp; Leather Workers&rsquo; Federation (ITGLWF). 
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NGWF President Amirul Haque Amin led speeches which included contributions of numerous labour leaders. All speakers agreed that the existing labour law of 2006 runs against the rights of workers, but also against industrial development, and is the cause of much labour unrest across the industrial sectors. 
 
The current government of Bangladesh repeatedly promised to amend the unjust labour law, both before and after the last general election in December 2008. The existing draft amendment was prepared through a long, tripartite process, consisting of viewpoints from workers, government and employers. But the draft amendment has been held up inside the Labour Ministry for the last three years. In that time three separate labour bills have been adopted by parliament. The first suspended trade union rights inside the country&rsquo;s Economic Processing Zones, the second exonerates factory owners from serving jail time for breaking labour laws, and the third also increases the rights of employers over workers.

Bangladeshi Garment Workers Lead Charge for Just Labour Legislation

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Several European trade unions, led by the European Mine, Chemicals, Energy Federation (EMCEF), are desperately trying to exert public and governmental pressure to keep the continent&rsquo;s independent petroleum refiner from going totally insolvent. 
 
In late December, a consortium of 13 banks froze a &euro;1 billion credit line on Swiss-based Petroplus, and immediately the oil company shut three of its five refineries &ndash; the Petite-Couronne refinery near Rouen, France, an Antwerp, Belgium, facility, and the Cressier refinery in the region of Neuch&acirc;tel, Switzerland. 
 
The publicly-listed company also reduced capacity at its Coryton refinery in Stanford-le-Hope, UK, and at Ingolstadt, Germany. At stake, is 2,500 jobs, with roughly half of that number already idle. 
 
EMCEF General Secretary Michael Wolters said there must be &ldquo;a financial solution to stop Petroplus from going bankrupt and we call on the responsible national and European authorities&rdquo; to safeguard these workplaces. 
 
But despite getting a temporary revolving credit loan on 11 January to keep Coryton and Ingolstadt partially operating, time is running short. Late last week, the Zug-based company said it was shutting down refinery equipment at Petite-Couronne and Antwerp, making a sale of these facilities and re-start much more difficult and expensive. 
 
The French unions CGT, CFDT, and CFE/CGC have been actively pressing their government to facilitate a sale, and Unite the Union in the UK has engaged with MEP Richard Howitt for Eastern England to find a solution. The Swiss union Unia has petitioned the federal government to intervene by calling for countries with companies exporting refined petroleum to Europe to pay added duties because generally those companies do not adhere to European environmental standards. 
<img alt="" src="" width="66" height="83" />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <img alt="" src="" width="177" height="69" />
The ABVV/FGTB and ACV/CSC in Belgium and IGBCE in Germany have also stepped up efforts to save Petroplus refineries in their countries. 
 
Of major concern for workers of Petroplus are imports of refined petroleum markets. But also not to be discounted are the faulty decisions made by senior leaders of the company after the private equity firms Carlyle and Riverstone took the company public in late 2006. Carlyle and Riverstone soon after exited ownership with huge dividends. 
 
And then on the front end of the economic collapse, new management paid a premium to buy Coryton from BP and Ingolstadt from ExxonMobil in 2007, and followed in 2008 with purchase from Shell of the French refineries Petite-Couronne and Reichstett near Strasbourg. Petroplus then shuttered Reichstett in 2009. It also shut a refinery in Teeside, UK, in 2009, as exports to the US dwindled and refining margins dropped. 
 
Since the Petroplus went public in 2006 on the Zurich bourse, the company has lost 98% of its value. The crisis the downstream oil producer is now in stands as a stark reminder of inept managerial decisions during an economic downturn, with workers suffering the ultimate consequences.

European Trade Unions Make Dire Efforts to Keep Petroplus Operating

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The unjust decision to dismiss Rodolfo Vecino Acevedo, President of ICEM affiliate Uni&oacute;n Sindical Obrera (USO), was reversed on 12 January. Heavy pressure was exerted on the Colombian government and the management of Ecopetrol, the 95% state-owned oil company. 
 
Letters were sent to Ecopetrol president Javier Gutierrez Pemberthy from all corners of the world, from trade union organisations and activists angered by the blatant attempt to derail the union and punish Vecino for his role in the strong campaign for improved conditions and salaries at Canadian-based Pacific Rubiales. 
<img alt="" src="" width="216" height="159" />
Rodolfo Vecino centre, with Manfred Warda and Carlos Bustos
The decision to dismiss Vecino and end his 27-year employment at Ecopetrol was taken on 13 December by the company&rsquo;s Office for Internal Discipline, and was only overturned after the company president bowed to pressure and instructed overturn the office&rsquo;s decision. 
 
This victory must now send a strong message to Ecopetrol&rsquo;s Office for Internal Discipline that they must end the ongoing attempts to dismiss other USO officials and activists. The USO General Secretary Edgardo Lozano was to be the next target. 
 
The shoddy charge used to dismiss Vecino had been linked to his participation at a political event marking the anniversary of the death of a previous Vice-President of the CUT. 
 
Legislation had been manipulated which stipulates individuals holding public office cannot be involved in partisan politics. This legislation clearly should not apply to trade unionists, and this decision being overturned has avoided a dangerous new precedent. 
 
See more details in the <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4832-ICEM-Affiliates-Called-on-to-Support-Sacked-Colombian-USO-President-Rodolfo-Vecino">ICEM news article</a> here.

Global Pressure Gets USO President Reinstated at Ecopetrol

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On 1 January, Rio Tinto&rsquo;s aluminium subsidiary Alcan threw 780 Canadian members of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 9490 out of work at the Alma smelter and refinery in Saguenay-lac-Saint-Jean region, Qu&eacute;bec. 
 
The callous lockout, as reported here in this <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4837-USW-Affiliate-in-Québec-Locked-Out-by-Rio-Tinto-at-Aluminium-Plant ">ICEM dispatch</a>, came exactly at contract expiration of a prior five-year labour pact and simultaneously, Rio Tinto did little to hide the fact that because global aluminium prices had slumped, a full 11% of Alcan&rsquo;s workforce would face layoffs. 
 
Last week, the ICEM and the International Metalworkers&rsquo; Federation (IMF) lodged a strong complaint with Rio Tinto CEO Tom Albanese over the assault by lockout on Syndicat des M&eacute;tallos d&rsquo;Alma members at this most modern of Alcan&rsquo;s smelting/refining facilities. That letter can be found <a href="/wp-content/migration/icem/3.ICEM-IMFletterRioTintoAlma1.18Jan.pdf ">here</a>. 
<img alt="" src="" width="239" height="160" />
photo: lapresse.ca
Trade union affiliates across the world are now being asked to also send letters to Albanese. We ask you to take the attachment herein, modify appropriately, place on your letterheads, and fax to Rio&rsquo;s corporate offices in London and Melbourne. 
 
Those fax numbers are +44 20 7781 1800 (London) and +62 3 9283 3707 (Melbourne). Be sure to e-mail this letter as well to the <a href="mailto:info@icem.org">ICEM</a>, <a href="mailto:unionrights@imfmetal.org">IMF</a>, and the <a href="mailto:bdavis@usw.org">USW</a>. As the USW&rsquo;s global campaign against Rio Tinto for fairness and justice mounts, more and more activity will ensue. 
 
Already, several Canadian trade unions and a few international ones have reached out to the USW and to Local 9490 to offer aid, assistance and support. One notable example came last week when another union representing metalworkers in the region, Le Syndicat National des Employ&eacute;s de l&rsquo;aluminium d&rsquo;Arvida (SNEAA), an affiliate of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), presented USW Local 9490 with an interest-free loan of C$1 million. 
<img alt="" src="" width="229" height="160" />
SNEAA President Alain Gagnon and Local 9490 President Mark Maltais
In making the presentation, SNEAA President Alain Gagnon expressed deep concern over Rio Tinto/Alcan&rsquo;s intransigence in bargaining with fellow Alma metalworkers. 
 
This intransigence is reflected in the single biggest issue in the dispute &ndash; the company&rsquo;s desire to have unlimited contracting out rights. Alcan has substituted the retirement of each full-time, USW-represented worker with a subcontracting employee. Company documentation reveals that the expected ratio of hours worked by subcontractors will go from 10% in 2010 to 27% this year. 
 
When Syndicat des M&eacute;tallos d&rsquo;Alma attempted to put a floor on outsourced work, or to put guidelines on addressing subcontract work, Alcan refused to address such issues. And at midnight, 31 December, Rio Tinto/Alcan showed its contempt toward any such dialogue with a lockout. 
 
Make sure your union takes action and registers its protest with Rio Tinto.&nbsp;

ICEM, Metalworkers Urge Action in Rio Tinto Canadian Lockout

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