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The three-day Coal Conference for global trade unions, held in Calcutta, India, 14-16 December 2007, produced a report presenting an overview of the current, unprecedented growth rates in coal consumption and production, and how that relates to safety and health and trade unionism. That report can be found <a href="/index.php?id=5&amp;doc=2552&amp;la=EN">here</a>. 
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The ICEM is grateful to its affiliated trade union, the Indian National Mineworkers&rsquo; Federation (INMF), as well as to the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), for hosting the conference, and to the ILO for its generous support.

Report Available from December’s Coal Conference in India

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A fresh report entitled &ldquo;Can Transnational Corporations Legally Apply Conditions to Companies That Supply Contract and Agency Labour?&rdquo; is now available on the ICEM web-site. The report, written as part of ICEM&rsquo;s ongoing campaign on Contract and Agency Labour, is a research effort that originated from the question whether or not a multinational company can impose social standards on its suppliers. 
 
The first of the three sections of the document deals with the international legal framework, examining existing language in labour law, commercial, trade and contract law. Issues dealt with include ILO Convention 181 on Private Employment Agencies and the ILO Recommendation 198, on the Employment Relationship. Other topics include the link between labour standards and global and regional trade agreements, and between contract law and labour standards. 
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The second section deals with corporate codes of conduct. The third section looks at national legal frameworks, both in labour and commercial law. Prominently focused in this last section is the question: what criteria determine the real employment relationship between a company and a worker, regardless of the contractual terms between them? 
 
Different countries are looked at in this respect, with examples, citing case law, from Canada, South Africa, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, the Philippines, UK, France, and US. The full report can be found <a href="/wp-content/migration/icem/0801BMCALreport.pdf">here</a>.

Transnationals and Agency Labour: ICEM Research Report Available

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The Ceylon Mercantile, Industrial, and General Workers&rsquo; Union (CMU) will commemorate its 60th year as a democratic mass organisation of workers on 1 February, 2008, a milestone deserving of recognition. 
 
The union has deep roots that go back even 20 years earlier in then, British-occupied Ceylon. A union of clerical workers organised others employed in mercantile houses that were mainly operated by British interests. 
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CMU General Secretary Bala Tampoe
The ICEM recognises CMU as a strong force in Sri Lankan civil society. CMU has been at the forefront in resisting efforts to weaken labour legislation. And CMU successfully resisted a police-enforced ban of 1 May as a public holiday in the 1990s, a feat deserving of acclaim. CMU also has proven to be a unifying force between public and private sector workers in Sri Lanka. 
 
CMU&rsquo;s Executive Committee will host a number of activities on 1 February, including a tribute to General Secretary Bala Tampoe, who has headed CMU throughout with great distinction. 
 
The ICEM congratulates CMU on this anniversary, a milestone for a trade union that brings cohesion and unity to the country&rsquo;s workers.

ICEM Sri Lankan Affiliate, CMU, Celebrates 60 Historic Years

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The ICEM was saddened to learn of the death on, 17 January 2008, in Japan, of Daisaku Kouchiyama, chairman of ICEM-JAF from 1992 until 2001. He was 68. 
 
&ldquo;Brother Kouchiyama was a driving force in establishing the present structure of the ICEM,&rdquo; stated General Secretary Manfred Warda. &ldquo;We have lost a brother and a leader whose name will be remembered in the context of the successes that, first, the ICEF achieved, and then the ICEM reached.&rdquo; 
 
Warda alerted many present and past leaders of the ICEF, MIF, and ICEM of his passing. That brought many written tributes and testaments that were forwarded to his family at his funeral on 20 January. Brother Kouchiyama was a leader in the reformation of the modern Japanese labour movement, as well as a champion of the rights of workers globally. 
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Daisaku Kouchiyama
He served as a Vice President and Chairman of the Asia-Pacific Region of the ICEF and ICEM until his retirement in 2001, and was one of the key negotiators in the merger between the ICEF and Mineworkers&rsquo; International Federation (MIF). In 1854, he started working at Takeda Pharmaceutical, and rose through the trade union ranks of Zenka Domei and later, UI Zensen labour federation. 
 
In Japan, he served on a number of important committees, including the Council on Statutory Social Insurance, the Council of Chemical Products, the Price Stabilization Committee, the Central Labour Relations Commission, and the Japanese National Commission for UNESCO. 
 
Brother Kouchiyama had been bed-ridden since mid-December 2007, suffering from the last stages of cancer. The ICEM extends its condolences to his family, and to the trade union movement in Japan over his passing.

ICEM Mourns Death of Daisaku Kouchiyama Japan

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In a 3 January letter to the Minister of Labour and Social Affairs of Iraq, Hassan Juma&rsquo;a Awad al Assadi, leader of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU), demanded enactment of a draft labour law upholding workers&rsquo; rights to join unions and bargain collectively. 
 
Iraq needs passage of the Labour and Social Security Law for stability, Hassan Juma&rsquo;a Awad said, and he also proposed that Iraq formalize a multiple trade union federation and union structure, based on professions and industries. That structure would be headed by a central council of labour federations &ldquo;to promote and advance the democratic work&rdquo; necessary to build trade unions that protect the best interests of the Iraqi workers, he wrote. 
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Hassan Juma&rsquo;a Awad, IFOU leader, speaking at the ICEM Congress in Bangkok
Hassan Juma&rsquo;a Awad and the IFOU call on the government to comply immediately with the part of the 2005 Constitution, which &ldquo;guarantees the right of forming and joining professional organisations and unions.&rdquo; The draft labour law, written in 2006, is now delayed up by Iraq&rsquo;s Council of Ministers, preventing it from reaching the Parliament. 
 
The Labour and Social Security Law, if passed, would guarantee trade union rights, for instance, to elect shop floor representatives. It would ensure full freedom of association, and it would grant protection from discriminatory actions, such as death or threat of death, due to trade union activity. 
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Hassan Juma&rsquo;a Awad&rsquo;s letter urged the Labour and Social Ministry to implement &ldquo;a pluralistic approach whereby sectoral federations and professional organisations are recognised in the union work.&rdquo; He also stressed that union participation must begin with trade union committees on shop floors in order &ldquo;to follow the bottom-top approach&rdquo; to building unions and trade union federations.
The ICEM insists that the Iraqi government act now to adopt this rights-bearing labour law. Reconciliation can really begin when living standards rise. The ICEM has condemned the union-crippling measures that were implemented by the occupying forces following the 2003 invasion, as well as renewal of those decrees by the Iraqi government since. 
 
The IFOU is a 30,000-member labour federation based in Basra that is the workers&rsquo; voice in some ten oil businesses connected with the Southern Oil Co.

Iraqi Labour Law Must Be Enacted Now, Says IFOU Leader

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Tomorrow, 29 January in Helsinki, Finland, ICEM pulp and paper affiliates Paperiliitto and Toimihenkil&ouml;unioni TU will hold a Public Meeting over Stora Enso&rsquo;s decision to close two mills in Finland, as well as a paper machine at a third mill. 
 
The event, entitled &quot;Work - Not a Support Package,&quot;&nbsp;is expected to draw thousands of concerned Finnish citizens, as the two unions and other groups bring pressure to bear on Stora Enso, as well as the Finnish government, which holds 16% of the company&rsquo;s stock. 
 
Concern is also expected to arise at the meeting over Stora&rsquo;s decision to close the Norrsundet mill in Sweden, and the company&rsquo;s cutting of white-collar jobs in several European countries. 
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The Public Meeting, to be held at the Marina Congress Center in Helsinki, will feature a panel discussion led by Paperiliitto President Jouko Ahonen and Toimihenkil&ouml;unioni TU President Antti Rinne. The panel discussion will include representatives from the government, including Defence Minister Jyri H&auml;k&auml;mies, who is responsible for enterprise ownership steering for the Nordic nation. It is hoped that Stora Enso&rsquo;s senior managers will also attend. 
 
The Public Meeting will feature an address entitled &ldquo;Life in the Shadow of a Mill&rdquo; by noted Finnish actor and film director, Kari V&auml;&auml;n&auml;nen. 
 
The meeting will begin at 10h00 outside the Congress Center with a meal of soup, and the programme opens inside at 12h00. Also addressing concerned Finnish citizens will be Lauri Ihalainen, President of SAK, the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions; Jaakko Kiander, Director of the Labour Institute of Economic Research; and Heikki Nivala, leader of a mass movement at Kemij&auml;rvi, one of the Finnish mills targeted for closure. 
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In late October 2007, Stora Enso announced another restructuring, this time aimed at closing mills, reducing paper capacity, and chopping jobs &ndash; 1,700 in total. Some 1,100 of those jobs were to be cut in Finland. 
 
Following incomplete social dialogue in mid-January, the company announced that the job losses in Finland would total 985. But it also announced that closure to its Summa, Finland, newsprint and book papers mill in Kymenlaakso would occur at the of January 2008, costing 450 jobs; the Kemij&auml;rvi pulp mill, employing 214, would shut, in April 2008; and a paper machine at the Anjala mill would stop producing in November 2008, costing 122 jobs. 
 
Stora Enso also intends to close the Norrsundet pulp mill in Sweden by the end of the year, idling 350 workers who are represented by Swedish ICEM affiliates Svenska Pappers and Unionen, the white-collar private-sector union in Sweden. 
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Paperiliitto and white-collar union Toimihenkil&ouml;unioni in Finland seek to delay the closings, and if necessary, to force Stora Enso through the state to sell the mills to companies or enterprises that will operate them. The unions have taken job actions over the past two weeks at the mills, with Toimihenkil&ouml;unioni also taking strike action last week at other Finnish companies partly owned by the state, including Finnair, telecommunications operators Elisa and TeliaSonera, alcohol manufacturer Altia, and Patria, a weapons manufacturer. 
 
The ICEM is strongly supporting the efforts of Finnish trade unions, as well as those in Sweden for job retention and a continuation of dialogue among social partners on Stora Enso&rsquo;s restructuring plan. Scores of protest letters were sent last week by global pulp and paper unions, as well as trade unions from the graphical and wood-products sectors, calling on the company to re-think its plans. 
 
In a letter to Stora Enso CEO Jouko Karvinen, ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda urged the company to &ldquo;seriously consider the multiplied devastation&rdquo; that the job losses will have in the affected communities. 
 
&ldquo;Stora Enso can expect this issue to arise within its own global operations, the operations of other pulp and paper companies worldwide, as well as with stakeholders who are concerned with good governance,&rdquo; the ICEM wrote.

Public Meeting in Finland on 29 January to Address Stora Enso’s Ill-Advised Paper Cuts

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The ICEM expresses condolences to the members and leaders of affiliate Zimbabwe Electricity and Energy Workers&rsquo; Union (ZEEWU) over the sudden passing of ICEM General Secretary Ian Munjoma on 23 December 2007. 
 
In a letter to ZEEWU President Angeline Chitambo, General Secretary Manfred Warda said: &ldquo;On behalf of the ICEM and its staff, I would like to convey to you, your union, and his family our sincere condolences and deepest sympathy.&rdquo; 
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Comrade Munjoma was a forceful advocate for workers&rsquo; rights, particularly inside both the Zimbabwe Electric Supply Authority (ZESA) and the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe (NOCZIM). He fought on behalf of workers&rsquo; interests and against corruption within ZESA, and undertook necessary and successful measures to ensure that ZEEWU members got sizeable wage increases in inflation-torn Zimbabwe. 
 
He died at his home in rural Bocha Mutare. Burial was on 25 December 2007.

ICEM Mourns Death of Ian Munjoma, Zimbabwe’s Electricity/Energy Union General Secretary

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As reported in an ICEM News Release in November 2007 (&ldquo;<a href="/en/?id=184&amp;doc=2479&amp;la=EN">Contract and Agency Labour - a Global and Negative Phenomenon</a>&rdquo;), the ICEM held a one-day conference on Contract and Agency Labour at the 4th ICEM World Congress in Bangkok, Thailand, on 21 November 2007. 
 
The 300 participants at the conference discussed tendencies and changes in global subcontracting and agency-work practices. They collectively noted an increase of the phenomenon in workplaces on all continents, and in almost all countries. In addition to taking note of the problem, many speakers also talked about the actions they are taking in their countries to deal with the issue. 
 
For a more <a href="/en/?id=73&amp;doc=2529&amp;la=EN">comprehensive summary of the conference</a>, overlooking the different contributions in more detail, please <a href="/en/?id=73&amp;doc=2529&amp;la=EN">click here</a>.

Report from Contract and Agency Labour Conference, Bangkok, is Available

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A key discussion conference will be held 24-25 January, in Brussels, by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) on Decent Work that will shape this year&rsquo;s European Commission report on the subject. The conference is entitled &ldquo;Decent Work for All &ndash; Mobilising EU and Partners,&rdquo; and is held ahead of the EC&rsquo;s expected mid-2008 progress report on a 2006 EC Communication on Decent Work.
Two sessions will occur each day, with a round-table discussion concluding the conference at 14h30 on 25 January. The four sessions will deal with Decent Work within Lisbon; Trade and Decent Work; Decent Work and Government; and Youth Employment, Migration, Mobility, Employment, and Development. 
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The Decent Work Agenda was also linked to sustainable development at last November&rsquo;s ILO Governing Board meetings in Geneva. The Working Group on the Social Dimension of Globalisation convened a round-table forum on Decent Work. Joaqu&iacute;n Nieto, Spanish labour federation CC.OO Secretary of Health, Safety, Environment, stressed that workers and their enterprises must be the first priority in transition to sound and sustainable development. 
 
He said, for example, that a &ldquo;great transition&rdquo; will need to occur in order to reduce carbon emissions, but that this must be fully accompanied by a &ldquo;just transition&rdquo; based on labour rights, social protections, and training.

‘Decent Work’ Campaign Elevated in 2008 in Europe

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Joining many others in the internet community, the ICEM is now also offering RSS news feeds on its website. Through this system of automatic (news headlines) links, ICEM news can be brought to you automatically via your RSS reader, or even via your website. 
 
RSS is a tool used in different ways for information distribution on the internet. It&rsquo;s most widespread usage is distributing news headlines. 
RSS (news) reader programmes allow you to easily check updates from your favourite (news) sites, or blogs. Headlines are brought to one centralised place (the RSS reader), and the user doesn&rsquo;t have to go to different websites directly. All that is necessary is to &ldquo;subscribe&rdquo; to the feed. A major advantage is getting the information you want, without spam, since the user doesn&rsquo;t need to provide his/her e-mail. 
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For those unfamiliar with RSS feeds, an easy way to find out more about the basics of RSS is this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU">short three-minute video on YouTube</a>. Another, shorter introduction can be found through <a href="http://www.google.com/reader/view/#directory-welcome-page">Google Reader</a>, one of the most used &ldquo;RSS feed readers&rdquo;. A short explanation on RSS feeds can also be found <a href="http://www.akimedia.eu/web-agency/news/fils-rss.html">here</a> in French on the web-site of Belgian Akimedia. The various language sites of Wikipedia can also be a source to find out more about RSS feeds in your own language. 
 
RSS feeds can also be inserted into e-mail applications such as Microsoft Outlook 2007 (for more, click <a href="http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA101595391033.aspx">here</a> - this page also includes general information on RSS feeds). 
 
There is one ICEM RSS feed per language used on the ICEM site, allowing you to only get the updates in the language that you are interested in. The ICEM web pages to go to in order to subscribe to the ICEM RSS news feed are as follows: 
English: <a href="/feed_en.rss">/feed_en.rss</a> 
French: <a href="/feed_fr.rss">/feed_fr.rss</a> 
German: <a href="/feed_de.rss">/feed_de.rss</a> 
Japanese: <a href="/feed_ja.rss">/feed_ja.rss</a> 
Russian: <a href="/feed_ru.rss">/feed_ru.rss</a> 
Spanish: <a href="/feed_es.rss">/feed_es.rss</a> 
Swedish: <a href="/feed_sv.rss">/feed_sv.rss</a> 
Turkish: <a href="/feed_tr.rss">/feed_tr.rss</a>
You can also click on&nbsp;<img height="14" alt="" src="" width="14" /> in&nbsp;the address line of your internet browser next to the ICEM address. (This may not be visible in certain older browsers). 
 
Through RSS feeds, there also is a possibility for your website to automatically publish ICEM news on one or more of your own web pages. You can easily have a part of your organisation&rsquo;s homepage, or of your international pages, to automatically carry ICEM news headlines. Once the system is set up, these pages will, through automatically renewed links, show the latest news headlines from the ICEM's homepage, in your prefered language, making the full ICEM articles available through a click of a button.

ICEM Introduces RSS News Feeds from its Website

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