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Effective 24 March 2009, the ICEM will be located in new office space in Geneva. The new offices, located in the Eaux-Vives section of Geneva near the old city, are located at 20 rue Adrien Lachenal, 1207 Geneva. 
 
The general phone number, fax number, and all individual extension numbers will remain the same. 
 
The new offices have 570 square metres of space spread across two floors of a modern building. It will serve as more functional and accommodating leased office space compared to the 150 square metres of temporary offices that the ICEM occupied since the April 2008 move from Belgium to Switzerland. 
 
We encourage all ICEM affiliates and their representatives, whenever in Geneva, to visit us at 20 rue Adrien Lachenal.

ICEM Relocates inside Geneva, Effective Tomorrow, 24 March

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In efforts to hold the government of &Aacute;lvaro Uribe responsible for prosecuting the real perpetrators behind the murders of trade union activists before a US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement is enacted, the US House of Representatives Education and Labor Committee heard vivid testimony last month on several murders. 
 
One was the 2001 assassination of Jorge Dar&iacute;o Hoyos, who was once the Colombian coordinator for the Miners&rsquo; International Federation (MIF), one of the predecessor trade union federations of the ICEM. 

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Yessika Hoyos
Testifying in Washington, DC, was his daughter, 25-year-old Yessika Hoyos. She said that despite police arresting two individuals who actually committed the crime, no effort has been made to apprehend and prosecute those who ordered the assassination. 
 
&ldquo;We know there is evidence of other perpetrators, including members of the national army,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;The investigation remains open, but with no follow-up of the evidence as requested, and no identification of other possible perpetrators.&rdquo; 
 
Dar&iacute;o Hoyos, then 61, was gunned down in his home town of Fusagasuga, in central Colombia near Bogot&aacute;, on 3 March 2001.At the time, a paramilitary group called the Block Centaurs was thought to have carried out the killing. He was MIF&rsquo;s national coordinator from 1984 to 1991, and then served as an organiser and collective bargaining advisor to unions representing teachers, bank workers, and telecommunications staff. 
 
At the February 2009 US Congress hearing, the House Education and Labour Committee stated, &ldquo;The Colombian government has not done enough to stem the rising violence against trade union leaders or address the backlog of labor union leader killings.&rdquo; A representative from Colombia&rsquo;s National Labour School testified that 60% of all murders of trade union activists throughout the world occur in Colombia.

US Congressional Committee Hears Testimony of Slain Colombian Mine Union Activist

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Yao Fuxin, a Chinese labour activist who led a 2002 peaceful protest against the corruption that drove a steel mill into bankruptcy, was released from prison 16 March. He served a full seven-year term for &ldquo;subversion of state power.&rdquo; 
 
In March 2003, after a hasty four-hour trial two months earlier, Yao Fuxin and Xiao Yunliang were sentenced to prison terms for leading worker protests demanding back wages and pension payments at the Liaoyang Ferroalloy mill in northeastern Liaoning Province. 

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In March 2002, some 15,000 workers at five metal-working operations protested against government and management corruption at state-run enterprises in China&rsquo;s steel belt. At the Liaoyang Ferroalloy facility a year earlier, workers there alleged that 2,000 tons of iron ore disappeared, leading to bankruptcy and non-payment of wages and benefits. 
 
Xiao Yunliang, a retired metalworker, was released just three weeks before his four-year prison term was up in March 2006. 
 
But Yao Fuxin persevered through harsh conditions at Lingyuan No. 2 prison where he suffered two heart attacks, a stroke, and was consistently placed before an open window in the cold of winter. He also suffered from sleep depravation. Prison officials ordered other prisoners to step on him when he fell asleep. 
 
Upon his release last week, Yao Fuxin, now 63, expressed no remorse. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing wrong with what I did,&rdquo; he said in a telephone interview with a news wire service, adding he and others were only exercising their rights under China&rsquo;s constitution. &ldquo;I feel no regret at all. What I did was protect the interests of the country and the interests of the people, the law-given interests of the workers.&rdquo;

After 7 Years, China Releases Metalworker Labour Activist

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The ICEM supports the actions of its Ukrainian affiliate, the Coal Mining Industry Workers&rsquo; Union of Ukraine (PRUPU), as it announced a series of mass rallies throughout the country, protesting the situation facing miners in an industry in crisis. 
 
The decision to commence with mass protest actions on 25 March was taken by the union&rsquo;s Shop Stewards at the 3rd Plenary Meeting of PRUPU&rsquo;s Central Committee, held on 27 February. Delegates resolved to launch the mass protest actions, starting this Wednesday, including the picketing of the seats of the state authorities in Kiev and other major coal-mining towns in the eastern Donbass region. 

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PRUPU President Victor Turmanov
Ukrainian miners face ongoing violations of their right to timely remuneration, significant wage arrears, and a reduction of 4.6 times of the budgetary allocations for the industry in 2009 over that of 2008. 
 
The Ukrainian Federation of Trade Unions, in a statement released 11 March, accused the country&rsquo;s leadership of &ldquo;ignoring the interests of the people to please international financial magnates.&rdquo; 
 
In exchange for a US$2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund, the Ukrainian government agreed to restrictive conditions for the loan. Notable promises were the cancelling of social utility discounts for poor families, raising the retirement age by five years, and a six-fold increase in gas prices for Ukrainians.

Ukrainian Miners’ Union, PRUPU, to Launch Government Protest Rallies This Week

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On 10 March, the labour-backed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) was introduced in both houses of the US Congress. If passed, the legislation &ndash; which has the support of global labour &ndash; would remove many of the advantages an employer now routinely uses to avoid unionisation in the US. 
The proposed law would entitle a union to be authorised to represent workers&rsquo; interests if a simple majority signed cards or a petition requesting union representation. Currently, as mandated under the 1935 US National Labor Relations Act, union recognition can occur either through such a &ldquo;card check&rdquo; measure, or through a government supervised election. 
But it is an employer that chooses which of the two methods is used and in nearly all instances, a government ballot is the bosses&rsquo; choice. This gives an employer the necessary time on a jobsite to implant fear and counter the merits of unionisation. 
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Statistics reveal that in 25% of all US organising drives, employees with pro-union sympathies or those who openly support a union are sacked. Further, in 78% of all campaigns leading to a government ballot, employers use intimidation by delivering harsh anti-union messages on the shop floor, including threats of plant closure, layoffs, and other negative impacts if a union is elected. 
The EFCA would grant workers, not employers, the right to choose the method for union representation, either through a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) secret-ballot election or through a majority card-check or petition. (Business interests in the US are now engaged in an intense lobbying effort against EFCA, saying it absolutely denies secret-ballot elections, a falsehood.) 
Secondly, the proposed law contains mandatory government arbitration so that a collective agreement can become effective if the two parties cannot reach one after a period of time. Similar to industrial relations in many developed countries, both labour and management submit proposals to a government panel, which then would put in place a collective agreement for a two-year period. 
Currently, after a union is certified, many employers in the US practice what is called &ldquo;surface bargaining,&rdquo; meaning they adhere to the 1935 law which states they must engage in bargaining, but do so without ever intending to enter into a collective agreement. In such practices, the result is to delay the process and to frustrate the legitimate desire of workers to be part of a collective labour agreement. 
Another major US labour law reform contained in the EFCA is a financial penalty on employers who discriminate against workers exhibiting lawful union activity. Now, there is no risk to an employer who fires union activists during organising campaigns. A worker must prove such bias, with the NLRB sometimes taking years to determine a case, including inevitable employer appeals. Even when a case is concluded in favour of a worker, the award is mere back pay, minus wages and other compensation the worker may have received following the discharge. 
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The EFCA contains triple back pay damages for workers found to have been illegally sacked. 
This is the fourth time the EFCA has been introduced in the US Congress. The last time, in March 2007, it passed the House of Representatives by a 241-185 count, but died three months later in the 100-member US Senate, where an archaic rule mandates 60 votes necessary to invoke cloture, or the required number needed in a vote to halt a filibuster. The measure then had 51 US Senate supporters, although President George Bush promised a veto. 
This time the EFCA has the support of President Barack Obama. Two weeks ago, when introduced, the EFCA had 223 of 565 House members signed on as co-sponsors, while the Senate side had 40 co-sponsors. 
In this session of Congress, sponsors will attempt a different strategy by first bringing EFCA forward in the Senate. It is expected to begin receiving committee hearings in late April, with the bill brought to the Senate and then House floors during the summer. 
Global labour, through the Council of Global Unions, is encouraging national unions to bring the American EFCA to the attention of their respective governments, as well as to employers who have operations in the US. More can be learned about this important US legislative proposal by clicking <a href="http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/">here</a>.

Employee Free Choice Act Again Introduced in US Congress

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Fair Work now will replace former Prime Minister John Howard&rsquo;s draconian WorkChoices as the industrial relations law of the land in Australia. That was assured this past Friday, 20 March, when Parliament&rsquo;s Senate passed the Labour Government initiative.
But it didn&rsquo;t come without a political struggle. A compromise was struck between Labour and its allies and the Liberal Party, most notably over the definition of a small business and the inter-connected protection against unfair dismissals. 
The compromise sets the small business definition at 15 full-time workers, part-time workers not included for the first 18 months, or until 1 January 2011. But thereafter, workers with one year of service &ndash; no matter; full-time, part-time, or casual &ndash; will have protection. Under Howard&rsquo;s WorkChoices, businesses with fewer than 100 workers were exempt from the unfair labour dismissal statute. 
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The Labour Party also compromised on some restrictions to union access to worksites and union access to certain types of information. In all, 231 Senate amendments were submitted to a Fair Work House version, which passed in December 2008. But the new law is fairer and gives workers far better protections in an economic downturn than what was on the books under Howard. 
It creates ten national job standards, charters collective bargaining as the main tenet in labour-management relations, and creates a national industrial umpire with enforcement powers, the Fair Work Commission, thus replacing six Howard-era agencies that essentially were charged with removing workplace regulations. 
It also spells out workers&rsquo; rights to representation; access to arbitration; establishes a 38-hour workweek; grants four weeks annual leave; and allows the practice of flexible work schedules and conditions to take hold. Additionally, it sets out a standard process for regularly raising the minimum wage. 
The unfair dismissal statute, plus implementation of good-faith enterprise bargaining takes effect 1 July 2009, while the remainder of the provisions take effect 1 January 2010. 
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Sharon Burrow
Sharon Burrow, President of the Australian Council of Trades Unions (ACTU), called the Senate passage a &ldquo;major step forward for working Australians,&rdquo; marking &ldquo;a historic moment in restoring workers&rsquo; rights. After a decade of attacks on working people by the Liberal and National Parties the tide has turned,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We can take pride in what we have achieved.&rdquo;

Australia’s Senate Hammers Final Nail into WorkChoices Coffin

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The Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), consisting of 140 countries, took a landmark decision at its deliberations in Nairobi in February 2009. The council moved to start negotiations toward an international treaty on mercury that either bans or places very strict restrictions on the dangerous chemical. 
 
UNEP&rsquo;s unanimous decision may mean the beginning of the end for mercury, although the transition to either a no-mercury or low-mercury world will still take time. 

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UNEP has, for seven years, coordinated the intense scientific and policy debate on how best to deal with mercury, said the agency&rsquo;s executive director and UN Under-Secretary, Achim Steiner. Now &ldquo;the world&rsquo;s environmental ministers, armed with the full facts and full choices, decided the time for talking was over &ndash; the time for action on this pollution is now.&rdquo; 
 
The Governing Council also was unanimous on the risk to human health. Mercury and its compounds are highly toxic to humans, especially to the nervous system at even relatively low levels of exposure. It is particularly harmful to the development of unborn children. It accumulates in humans and animals and can be concentrated throughout the food chain, notably in certain types of fish. 
 
The EU has called for a ban to begin on mercury by 2011. UNEP&rsquo;s main function is to promote international policy cooperation in the environmental field.

Say Farewell to Mercury? UNEP’s 2009 Nairobi Action Sets the Stage

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Over the past decade, multinational tyre companies considered Central Europe as an investment utopia, shifting production and expanding factories at a rapid rate. Recently, US-based Goodyear invested US$100 million in its existing plant in Debica, Poland, while Bridgestone of Japan moved to construct a second plant in Poland. 
 
In Hungary, Hankook of South Korea, established a production unit, and Bridgestone`s new plant is close to start-up. Apollo Tyre of India is also a plant in Hungary. Similarly, in Romania, Pirelli just started an operation in Slatina, where the Italian company has teamed Continental AG in steel-cord production. 

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This Central European growth, however, brings with it some consequences concerning job conditions and trade-union representation. Wages, working conditions, health and safety regulations also fall short of the level common in West European countries. In some of the new plants, trade union rights are denied or companies prefer plant-level and company-based unions. 
 
This has led the ICEM to boost national trade unions to challenge these circumstances by creating a regional network of rubber unions. Trade union leaders from Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, and Slovenia came together to discusses these challenges, as well as the effects of the economic crisis at a meeting in Budapest on 8-9 April. 

Hosted by ICEM Hungarian affiliate VDSz, the meeting was sponsored by the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation (FES) of Germany, and was also attended by French and Spanish trade union representatives and ICEM&rsquo;s sister organisation, EMCEF. 

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VDSz President Gy&ouml;rgy Paszternak
Following presentation by the ICEM on the global picture of the industry, the participants gave reports about individual situations in their countries. Hungary has always been the centre of the rubber industry in the region, but the union organising ratio has fallen since the level is what at before 1990, a VDSz representative reported. Unions are blocked from being freely established in some companies, like Hankook and Bridgestone. 
 
The ICEM was asked to continue to support the struggle at both companies to achieve union recognition. In Slovakia, the financial crisis has substantially decreased production, with work hours reduced and workers&rsquo; typically paid 60% of their normal salaries. Slovenia has just adopted a law for a shorter work-week, which was supported by the trade unions. 
 
The crisis has dramatically impacted the auto and auto-supply industries in Slovenia. Initially, wages were not cut but workers were forced to use their holidays. As the crisis dug deeper, wages and working hours were reduced. Likewise in Romania, the auto industry is in a significant crisis, seriously affecting the tyre industry. One positive note is that the union organising 1,500 workers at the new Pirelli factory in Slatina won 10% wage gains. The meeting also heard EMCEF&rsquo;s presentation on the crisis as well as its activities regarding social dialogue, collective bargaining, and the European Works Councils. 
 
&ldquo;We must not let the crisis destroy our earlier achievements,&rdquo; said VDSz President Gy&ouml;rgy Paszternak. &ldquo;We must be vigilant in not allowing employers to misuse the current conditions. Our entire social future depends on trade union recognition, representation, and increased pay and working standards.&rdquo;

Central European Rubber Unions Form Joint Strategies on Financial Crisis

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The 4th ICEM World Congress in Bangkok in 2007 mandated that the ICEM develop a policy on sustainability as a basis for future initiatives, including discussions with employers, governments, and other Global Union Federations (GUFs). An initial meeting of a Working Group toward this end occurred early in 2008, and it established some parameters for ICEM positions and created the basis for development of an initial discussion paper. 
 
Last week, on 14 April, this Working Group reconvened in Geneva to review and comment on the discussion paper. Based on their deliberations, the paper will be revised and will become a draft policy for submission to the ICEM Executive Committee on 23 June 2009. 
 
Representatives from all ICEM Sectors and Regions were invited. The meeting was chaired by Lars Myhre of Norway's Industi-Energi (IE). Other participants included Ivan Mokhnachuk and Victor Miachin of Russia's mining union, Rosugleprof; Jan Str&oslash;mme of IE; Dave Shier of the Canadian Power Workers Union (PWU); Alfons de Potter, Belgium's CSC Energie Chimie; Marc Blanc, France's F&eacute;d&eacute;ration Chimie Energie, CFDT; Ralf Bartels of Germany's IGBCE; Anabella Rosemberg, representing the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC); and Ana Belen Sanchez of the ILO. ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda was also a participant. 

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In general, the Work Group expressed satisfaction with the ICEM's initial discussion paper. The group suggested that the final ICEM policy needs to clearly express the viewpoint of an industrial union federation on all aspects of sustainability. 
 
Participants also pointed out that opportunities for a new focus and new dialogue between governments, employers, and unions &ndash; as the drive towards sustainability takes shape &ndash; must not be overlooked. In that regard, all agreed that the recent financial collapse has opened opportunities for discussions that might not have been possible a year ago. 
 
The role of energy in development, social security, and sustainable jobs were crucial issues to the Working Group, and the ICEM must demand a balanced energy future that includes cleaner use of fossil fuels (including carbon capture and storage/sequestration), nuclear, and, of course, renewable energy sources. The future of energy must consider questions about access to energy and price fairness and stability. 
 
Pulp and paper, chemicals, rubber, and materials sectors all have their particular sustainability challenges, which the ICEM acknowledges. Finally, the Working Group reiterated that sustainable jobs must be decent jobs that recognize the principles of human rights, labour rights, and particularly the respect for the rights of women and other disadvantaged groups. 
 
Warda closed the meeting by explaining the next steps on sustainable development, which will include a draft policy incorporating input from the Working Group, acceptance of the final paper by the ICEM Executive in June, and a possible multi-GUFs&rsquo; conference on sustainable development sometime&nbsp;in the future.

ICEM Holds Second Work Group Meeting on Sustainable Development

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Every year, on April 28, the world commemorates workers killed, injured, or made ill as a result of their jobs. 
 
How many are there? Collecting good data on occupational injuries and deaths is very difficult. The most credible source of international statistics is the ILO. Their numbers are staggering. The ILO has estimated that globally, there are two million work-related deaths annually. That's more than 5,000 every day, and for every fatality, hundreds more injuries and illnesses occur. 
 
These numbers, as incredible as they seem, are generally believed to be gross underestimates. 
 
Fatalities are under reported by workers and employers. Often, an occupational fatality is not identified as such. Once reported, a fatality must be &quot;accepted&quot; or recognized by a country's regulatory authority or workers' compensation board to be counted among the statistics. In many jurisdictions, large numbers of workers are exempt from workers' compensation coverage. Data for injuries are even less reliable than for fatalities. 

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Worker deaths that are immediate and obvious tend to be recognized. Deaths due to illnesses that have an occupational origin are rarely recognized. Cancer is one of the biggest work-related killers, but rarely is it properly acknowledged. Relatively few occupational diseases are recorded in official statistics. 
 
Injury and illness data are notoriously subject to bias and methodological problems. Many workers' injuries, illnesses, and even fatalities, are simply never recorded. Workers' compensation assessments and insurance premiums are often based on these statistics, creating a huge financial incentive for employers to suppress or discourage the reporting of accidents. 
 
This is done in a number of ways, ranging from schemes that bring injured workers into the workplace so their injuries won't be counted as &quot;lost time,&quot; to sophisticated psychological techniques like &quot;behaviour-based&quot; safety programs. Threats of discipline or discharge following a reported accident are not uncommon. &quot;Post-incident drug-testing&quot; has been highly effective in causing workers to conceal injuries rather than risk a false-positive test result. 
 
In the days leading up to 28 April, many statistics will be quoted. Appalling as the numbers may be, the truth is probably far worse. 
 
In the end, 28 April is not about numbers, it is about people. Next week, on Tuesday, let us pause and remember those who paid for their livelihoods with their lives or their health. Then let us renew the fight for safe and healthy workplaces.

28 April: Day to Renew Fight for Safe and Healthy Worksites

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