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The coal-mining dispute in Australia between the Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union (CFMEU) and Peabody Energy at the North Goonyella mine intensified when the US-based company used the country&rsquo;s new Fair Work law to lock 280 miners from their jobs in central Queensland. Just as CFMEU was to ratchet up industrial actions in protest to a radical Peabody overhaul to an enterprise labour agreement, the company imposed a 10-day, unpaid lockout on 9 December. 
 
The very next day, some 20 CFMEU miners from Mackay, Queensland, flew to Brisbane where they were joined by 100 others in a protest at Peabody&rsquo;s Australian offices. The Brisbane protest happened while police and private security 800 kilometres away in Mackay erected barricades at mine gates, expecting the protest there. 
 
The dispute started in early November (see InBrief No. 144 article <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/3507-CFMEU-Begins-Job-Actions-at-Peabody-Coal-in-Australia">here</a>) when strike actions began following Peabody&rsquo;s intransigence over a CFMEU proposal to again extend the enterprise agreement, while giving a long overdue pay raise. 

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Miners at North Goonyella have been without a pay increase since May 2008. The labour agreement expired in March 2008 and was extended for one year. The two sides then began bargaining toward a new agreement but seven months later Peabody&rsquo;s steep concessionary demands brought forth a formal dispute. 
 
The mining company is seeking a radically changed work shift structure, one that would negatively impact pay grids. CFMEU members are concerned about fatigue and work safety, and also have grievances over living conditions in on-site housing. 
 
A Peabody spokeswoman termed the lockout an employer protective action under the Labour government&rsquo;s Fair Work law, which took effect 1 July 2009. It is one of the first defensive lockouts used by bosses under the Labour government&rsquo;s new law. 
 
At last Thursday&rsquo;s manifestation in Brisbane, CFMEU District Vice President Glenn Power said, &ldquo;We are here to protest and send a clear message to Peabody that their corporate greed and bullish attitude around the negotiating table needs to be reconsidered.&rdquo; 
 
The two sides were to meet today, 16 December, for further talks. Peabody mines coking coal from the underground mine at North Goonyella that is exported from Dalrymple Bay, Queensland, and used in steel-making. The mine and the adjacent open-cast Eaglefield mine produce three million short tons of coal per annum. Peabody bought the mines from Germany-based RAG AG in 2003.

Peabody Locks Out CFMEU Coal Miners in Australia

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The ICEM has participated at events each day of the Conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and will continue to do so. 
 
Find below a brief report from each day. 
 
6 December: COP15 is the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. As many as 400 trade union representatives from around the world will be here in Copenhagen to make the case for working people. COP15 is considered to be a particularly important Conference of the Parties, since the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, and COP15 is supposed to be the Conference at which a successor to the Kyoto Protocol is agreed upon, or at least substantially mapped out. There is a sense of urgency since the most recent assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is bleak. The world must act quickly. 

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The earth is a high-tech animated, illuminated model of the earth at the USA pavillion that can display multiple climate variables
The ICEM says that we need a fair, ambitious and binding agreement on greenhouse gas emissions to deal with the problem of climate change. However, an agreement that fails to include a strategy for job creation, job protection, and a Just Transition plan, will fail to create a sustainable future. It cannot be jobs versus the environment. It must be both, or it will ultimately be neither. 
 
7 December: COP-15 officially opened today, with the expected chaos at the registration tables as tens of thousands of official negotiators, observers, and press tried to obtain the badges that would allow them to pass through the tight security. 
 
At the first plenary session on &quot;Longterm Cooperative Action&quot;, there were no surprises as both rich, developed nations and poorer, developing nations staked out their initial positions. 
 
One thing is certain: when the bill for environmental collapse comes due, it is ordinary people - workers, their families, and the communities that depend on them - that will pay the price. Another path is possible, a path that seeks prosperity and sustainability through the transformation of existing jobs and the creation of a greener economy. Do we have the wisdom to choose it? 
 
8 December: The big news of today was a &quot;leaked&quot; draft final agreement that allegedly was produced by the Danish Prime Minister's office in consultation with other countries. Presumably, it is meant to be a fall-back agreement should the two weeks of COP15 fail to reach a substantive agreement. As such, it proposes no firm greenhouse gas emissions targets, no defined levels of financial assistance for developing countries, and is stripped of all references to social impacts including sustainable jobs or Just Transition. Most alarmingly, it raises the possibility that years of work leading up to this conference may be by-passed in the last minute, simply to have something signed at the end. Obviously this is unacceptable. As this story evolved, it emerged that there are several alternate texts being prepared or circulated outside of the &quot;official&quot; process. 

<img height="169" alt="" src="" width="225" />
Michael Cutajar,&nbsp;the chair of the &quot;Ad-Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action&quot;
9 December:&nbsp;a Wednesday, 9 December, meeting.&nbsp;The&nbsp; Ad-hoc Working Group on Longterm Cooperative Action released a new version of its &quot;Shared Vision&quot; paper, and a key demand of labour - a paragraph on Just Transition - is retained, so far. In the plenary meetings, much of the discussion was about financing, with several proposals to fold funding for climate mitigation and adaptation into overall aid funds, and allow it to be managed by &quot;international financial institutions&quot; such as the World Bank. Costa Rica and Tuvalu proposed fairly strong emissions reduction targets for both developed, and developing countries. This has at least temporarily split the G77 group of countries, as a number of members of that group were opposed to the proposal. 
 
10 December: 10&nbsp;December was a day of many closed-door meetings and rumours. On labour's key paragraph (in the &quot;Shared Vision&quot; document of the working group on Longterm Cooperative Action) covering decent work and Just Transition, there was support from Argentina, the EU, and the US, but the paragraph is still vulnerable to hostile amendments or outright deletion. This is the wording so far:
&nbsp; 
&quot;Realizing that harmonizing sustainable development while addressing climate change and demands for a more equitable utilization of the global atmospheric resource necessitate a paradigm shift that adjusts global economic growth patterns towards a [low-emission] [high-growth] sustainable climate-resilient development, based on innovative technologies and more sustainable production and consumption, while ensuring a just transition of the workforce which creates decent work and quality jobs, and seeking the active participation of all stakeholders be they governmental, including subnational and local government, private business or civil society, including the youth, and addressing the need for gender equity.&quot; 

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The &quot;Fossil of the Day&quot; is awarded by environmental groups to the country or countries that have been the worst behaved that day in their opinion
11 December: At today's plenary meeting of the Adhoc Working Group on Longterm Cooperative Action, &quot;labour's paragraph&quot; (discussed in yesterday's dispatch) survived - at least in concept - and will likely be retained in the final report of the &quot;Shared Vision&quot;! As several amendments were proposed labour must be cautious in our celebration until a final version of the paragraph emerges. However, this is an important milestone, and testimony to the effectiveness of many months of preparatory work and a week of lobbying here at COP15. We must now get to work to make sure the final version contains acceptable wording, and that politicians talk about it when the Copenhagen outcomes are announced. 
 
In other fora, debate continued between developed and developing countries over targets and financing. 
ITUC Copenhagen Reports <a href="http://climate.ituc-csi.org/2009-ituc-statement-on-climate.html?lang=fr">here</a>.

ICEM: First Week Diary and Commentary at Copenhagen

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With pressures mounting on Brazilian-based Vale to return to bargaining in the Canadian nickel strike now entering its sixth month, the company and United Steelworkers (USW) are fighting battles in the courtroom and before the public in what has become a pitched, bitter dispute between working-class Canadians and a rich, profitable multinational. 
 
If the public war of words over who first must amend its position so bargaining can resume is not enough, the two sides are now belligerent combatants in face-to-face side dramas, including changes to a picket line protocol agreement and grievances and unfair work practices before the Ontario Labour Relations Board. The latter is over Vale&rsquo;s intent to make non-striking USW members perform struck work. 
 
Canadian management of Vale has also deployed divide-and-conquer tactics by trying to drive a wedge between striking steelworkers, as well as giving the false public perception that its social rollback proposals to USW branch unions are a necessary ingredient to sustainable mining in Canada. 

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Some 3,250 miners and metalworkers went on strike at Vale&rsquo;s nickel mining, smelting, and processing operations in Sudbury and Port Colborne, Ontario, on 13 July 2009, while another 350 copper and nickel miners from Goose Bay and Voiseys Bay, Labrador, joined the strike on 1 August. Vale, which bought Canada-based Inco&rsquo;s assets late in 2006, is seeking to strip away a production bonus from Canadian steelworkers, impose a two-tiered pension plan, and gain contract language to allow it greater flexibility on using sub-contractors, which ultimately jeopardizes job security and the sustainable future of workers themselves. 
 
For ten weeks now, Vale has made threatening moves that it would re-start production at its mines and processing facilities in northern Ontario near Sudbury, something never before done in a labour dispute at Sudbury. The company most recently posted notices that it will re-start the massive Copper Cliff smelter using a selected contractor. 
 
The union has filed an unfair labour practice with the Ontario labour board because Vale insists on using USW Local 2020 members &ndash; clerical, admin, and technical workers &ndash; to perform mining and processing work. Local 2020 itself has filed serious safety grievances against Vale for assigning its members work they are not trained for. 
 
A picket-line protocol agreement signed on 29 July has been a subject of contention, primarily due to Vale&rsquo;s desire to amend it. The company wants to include in the protocol the transfer of buses carrying replacement workers across strike lines. This courtroom conflict also involves how long USW Local 6500 strikers can delay vehicles upon entry to company property, as well as lesser issues such as Vale&rsquo;s failure to supply strikers&rsquo; firewood, as stipulated in the original agreement. 

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Those and other picket-line issues are before an Ontario Superior Court justice, who is expected to rule on revised picket-line conduct before the end of December. 
 
Vale has also made an overture to the 200 USW Local 6200 members in Port Colborne, 400 kilometres south of Sudbury, to resume negotiations without Local 6500. This move is a blatant effort to divide the two workforces. Locals 6500 and 6200 share the same labour agreement. Local 6200 President Wayne Rae says separating the two workforces will never happen. 
 
And last week, Vale&rsquo;s Canadian managers circumvented official union structures by sending a letter directly to all workers on strike. The letter urged workers to call on their unions to return to bargaining and accept Vale&rsquo;s concessions because the company intends &ldquo;moving ahead on business,&rdquo; meaning a return to production using replacement workers and contractors. 
 
The USW responded in an 11 December press release, stating that it has already put forth a good-faith invitation to Vale to return to talks under no pre-conditions. &quot;We are publicly reiterating our position today because Vale's letter attempts to misrepresent our willingness to resume meaningful discussions,&quot; read the statement. 

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&quot;We are ready and willing to get back to the bargaining today, unconditionally. Given the impact this dispute is having on our working families and our community as a whole, it is incumbent on the union and the company to drop all preconditions and start talking to each other again. 
 
&quot;Unfortunately, Vale Inco continues to stick by its preconditions and its argument that it needs concessions to maintain its 'sustainability,' when its demands such as cutting the nickel bonus do not affect its sustainability whatsoever. Vale had to win a bidding war to purchase this profitable company. Inco made profits each year with nickel prices lower than today's. Vale has reaped huge profits under the current contract. No one can say Sudbury's rich nickel mines are not sustainable.&quot; 
 
USW branch locals in Ontario and Labrador have been buoyed by a private member&rsquo;s bill in the Canadian Parliament by MP Claude Gravelle. The proposed legislation would give transparency to all deals made within the Investment Canada Act, a haunting lesson on democracy to many Canadians since details between the federal government and Vale were kept secret when the company bought Inco. 
 
Gravelle has also submitted two additional bills aimed at making public all facts surrounding Vale&rsquo;s purchase of Inco and Xstrata&rsquo;s buy-up of Canadian-based Falconbridge, a deal that also included valuable copper-nickel assets in northern Ontario. 
 
For Sudbury Local 6500, the 3,100-member union continues promoting solidarity within its own ranks through unity, fraternity, and an acute community awareness that says successfully resisting Vale&rsquo;s take-aways is the real path for a sustainable future. 
 
From 10 to 15 December, Local 6500 embarked on a Week of Action that include several activities in Sudbury. Those activities included a 10 December, International Human Rights Day candlelight vigil and march done in unison with the Sudbury District Labour Council of the Canadian Labour Congress. The next day, 11 December, students and the faculty union association of nearby Laurentian University conducted &ldquo;Out of the Classroom and Onto the Picket Lines,&rdquo; in which class sessions were moved to the picket lines of the Copper Cliff smelter in order to study the causes and effects of the strike. 

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A Families Supporting the Strikers&rsquo; fundraiser was held on the weekend, 12-13 December, while a Steelworker Solidarity Support caravan from Toronto also visited picket lines on 13 December. Today, 14 December, union veterans and retirees will conduct a symposium entitled &ldquo;Lessons From the Past &ndash; What We Have Won,&rdquo; complete with reflections on a strike in 1978 and the necessity to retain what has already been gained. 
 
And tomorrow, 15 December, Local 6500 members and their families will hold a &ldquo;Fair Deal for Our Families&rdquo; march and manifestation at Vale-Inco&rsquo;s Copper Cliff offices. 
 
On 3 December, in another outpouring of support for the striking Canadian miners, scores of members from the US-based union Unite-Here joined Local 6500 and Local 6200 members who bused to New York City to protest an award by the Business Council for International Understanding to Roger Agnelli, Vale&rsquo;s CEO. 
 
The joining of hands by Unite-Here, who recently returned to the AFL-CIO, with the USW was symbolic of renewed unity inside the American trade union movement, solidarity now extending into Canada. 
 
The ICEM has been joined by the International Metalworkers&rsquo; Federation (IMF) in waging a global campaign in support of Canadian miners. The miners&rsquo; own English-language website gives complete and up-to-date details of the bitter strike. It can be found <a href="http://www.fairdealnow.ca">here</a>.

USW, Vale Spar Over Picket Line, Scab Threats in Canadian Nickel Strike

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Turkish public sector employees have legally had the right to organise and form their own unions since 2001, as stipulated by the Public Employees' Trade Unions Act No. 4688. Although the law recognizes the right to organise, there are numerous groups of employees who are excluded, lawyers, civil servants at the Ministry of Defence and Turkish Armed Forces, employees at penal institutions, special security personnel, public employees &quot;in positions of trust&quot;, presidents of universities, and directors of high schools. 
 
In terms of negotiating and taking strike action, these workers have no rights at all. Act 4688 allows for &ldquo;collective consultative talks&rdquo; for the negotiating of working conditions with government, it is then the government that makes the final decision on salaries, allowances, compensation, and bonuses. Likewise, there is still no formally recognised right to strike for public employees. This clearly is not in line with core ILO Convention 98. The International Labour Organisation repeatedly criticises this and urges the Turkish Government to make necessary modifications to the Act. 

<img alt="" src="" width="205" height="133" />
Centre&nbsp;Sami Evren, President of KESK,&nbsp;right Bircan Akyıldız, President of T&uuml;rkiye Kamu-Sen
The collective consultative talks have proved inadequate in achieving the deserved working conditions for public sector employees, two major Turkish trade union confederations, T&uuml;rkiye Kamu-Sen and KESK, have decided to take joint strike action on 25 November to urge the government to change the law and recognise the right to bargain and strike. On that day, both confederations report, aircrafts, trains and ships will not work, education will not be done, taxes will not be collected, &ldquo;all the public services will be stopped&rdquo;. 
 
The President of T&uuml;rkiye Kamu-Sen Bircan Akyıldız stated that eight years of commitment to collective consultative talks have produced nothing for workers. &ldquo;The strike on 25 November will not just be done on behalf of Kamu-Sen and KESK, but also for defending the rights of all public emloyees&rdquo;, he added. The President of KESK, Sami Evren, stated that the parties have never bargained from equal positions during the collective consultative talks, leading to the Government ignoring the demands of public employees. &ldquo;We have exhausted all internal judicial possibilities, and then applied to the European Human Rights Court, which ruled that Turkish public employees should have the right to bargain collectively&rdquo;, he added. 

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The ICEM has affiliates from both confederations and fully supports the strike on 25 November, in line with the decision of the ICEM Turkish Coordinating Committee, which met on 2 November in Izmir. In his letter to the Presidents of T&uuml;rkiye Kamu-Sen and KESK, ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda has conveyed the solidarity of the whole ICEM family to the Turkish public employees in their struggle for bargaining and striking rights. &ldquo;We cordially convey to you our deepest sympathy and solidarity for your rights which are guaranteed by international conventions that have been ratified by Turkey. It is our firm belief that your struggle, fought since the 1990s, for empowered unions with all rights, will be successful. The joint strike on 25 November is a clear signal for this. The ICEM has been and will always stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you in this honourable and rightful fight&rdquo;.

Turkish Public Employees to Stop Work on 25 November Calling for Right to Bargain, Strike

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Editor&rsquo;s Note: ICEM Health, Safety, and Sustainability Officer Brian Kohler provided daily COP 15 commentary from Copenhagen at the failed UN Climate Change Conference. 
 
12 December: A mass &quot;civil society&quot; demonstration demanding action on greenhouse gases took place today. Tens of thousands of demonstrators took part in mostly peaceful fashion, although there are reports of several hundred arrests, and some police brutality. The Copenhagen negotiations are troubled. The US negotiators in particular are so far reluctant to agree to anything substantive on targets and financing. China is unwilling to accept external verification of its progress, which is a US demand. Developing countries are anxious to defend the principles in the Kyoto Protocol and secure funding for mitigation and adaptation. Targets, and even a baseline year, remain far from agreement. 

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13 December: No formal meetings of the parties were scheduled for today. A limited number of meetings of observers and informal groups occurred. The trade union delegation met in caucus. Union lobbying is making a difference, and many governments seem favourably disposed to accepting some version of &quot;labour's paragraph&quot; in the final text. This may be due, in part, to the economic crisis and the wish of political leaders to be able to say something positive about jobs when spinning the Copenhagen outcome. However, attempts to modify the text or move it from the body of the &quot;Shared Vision&quot; document to the preamble of the final document, may create problems for us. 
As far as the broader progress of the talks is concerned, it is at present difficult to predict the outcome. The outcome may be a bad agreement (neither fair, nor ambitious, nor legally binding) with or without the wording on Jobs and Just Transition that labour wants. 
 
14 December: Today, at what was to be a meeting with the COP15 President, it was instead announced to those present that security issues would trump public participation in the remaining days of the Copenhagen talks. Of some 40,000 registered delegates, only 9,000 &quot;observers&quot; (all NGOs, all labour unions) would be admitted tomorrow and Wednesday; 1,000 &ldquo;observers&rdquo; on Thursday; and 90 &ldquo;observers&rdquo; on Friday. Security issues and problems at the registration desk have created a nightmare for people trying to get into the Bella Center. Fortunately, the next three days feature a number of events at labour's off-site World of Work pavilion, where access will be unaffected by developments at the Bella Center. Events today include: 1.) Trade Unions and Climate Change: the need for Just Transition, presented by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC); 2.) Low Carbon Diet: The trade union vision of sustainable food production and the right to food, presented by the International Union for Food and Agricultural Workers (IUF); 3.) Australian Labour/Environment Alliance: Green Jobs and the future, presented by the Australian Congress of Trade Unions (ACTU); 4.) Carbon Capture and Storage: Challenges Ahead for Energy and Industry, UK Trades Union Congress, United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), and Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union (CFMEU), Australia; 
 
5.) Climate Change Challenge: Social Standards and Sustainable Construction as Trade Union Agenda, presented by the Building and Woodworkers International (BWI); 6.) Environment and Social Dialogue in France, presented by the Conf&eacute;deration G&eacute;n&eacute;rale du Travail (CGT) and Conf&eacute;d&eacute;ration Fran&ccedil;aise D&eacute;mocratique du Travail (CFDT), France 7.) Public Services: Key to getting us out of climate crisis, presented by the Public Services International (PSI); and 8.) Building consensus for strong US climate policies through Blue-Green partnerships, presented by the Blue Green Alliance. 

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15 December: Reports continue of delegates trying to register standing in the cold for hours, only to be turned away. Keep in mind that the capacity of the Bella Center is only 15,000 according to fire safety regulations, but the secretariat accepted some 40,000 registrations. Today's World of Work events include: 
1). Low carbon industrial policies, presented by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) with European Metalworkers&rsquo; Federation (EMF), European Mine, Chemical and Energy Workers&rsquo; Federation (EMCEF), and other European federations; 2.) Visit to Danish Green Workplaces, organized by LO-Denmark; 3.) Climate and Social Justice: creating an economy for people and environment, presented by the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA); 4.) Climate Change and Employment: An alternative model for transport, presented by the International Transport Workers&rsquo; Federation (ITF); 
 
5.) Sustainable mobility: Comisiones Obreras&rsquo; practical approach, presented by the Comisiones Obreras (CCOO), Spain; 6.) Green Workplaces in the Netherlands, presented by the Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging (FNV). 7.) Climate Change and Social Dialogue, presented by the Social democratic parties and trade union councils in the Nordic countries (SAMAK) and Council of Nordic Trade Unions (NFS); 8.) A Green Economy Without Unions? - Analysis of the &lsquo;Green Growth&rsquo; policy of Korean government and strategy for unions and civil society, presented by the Korean Congress of Trade Unions (KCTU), Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU), and Korean Energy and Climate Policy Institute 
(ECPI); 
 
9.) Green Jobs in India: the SEWA experience, presented by the Self-Employed Women Association (SEWA); 10.) Economic Recovery and Green Jobs: win-win for development, climate and labour, presented by the ILO; and 11.) Resource Efficiency at the Workplace in Germany, presented by the German Dachorganisation der Gewerkschaften (DGB) and DGB Bildungswerk. 
 
16 December: This morning, an informal meeting of trade unionists affiliated with the ICEM, as well as the IMF, the EMF and EMCEF took place at the headquarters of the Danish union 3F. Thanks must go to Jesper Lund Larsen of 3F for helping ICEM obtain the venue in an over-crowded and chaotic city. 
In the afternoon, the four organisations&rsquo; joint World of Work event, &quot;Cutting Emissions: Transforming Industrial Jobs&quot; took place. It was a huge success, with a standing-room-only crowd, high-profile speakers, and plenty of interest in our message. 
 
Other World of Work events that took place today include: 1.) Japanese Experience on Energy Conversion, presented by the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (RENGO). 2.) Sustainable Energy Supply, presented by the German Dachorganisation der Gewerkschaften (DGB) &ndash; BMU; 3.) Visit to Danish Green Workplaces, organized by LO-Denmark; 4.) Women Workers and Green Jobs: employment, equity and equality, presented by Sustainlabour, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC); 5.) Climate Change Challenge: Social Standards and Sustainable Forestry as Trade Union Agenda, presented by the Building and Woodworkers&rsquo; International (BWI); 6.) Providing real access to energy for all, presented by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), and F&eacute;d&eacute;ration G&eacute;n&eacute;rale du Travail de Belgique (FGTB) and Conf&eacute;deration des Syndicats Chr&eacute;tiens (CSC), both of Belgium; 
 
7.) Climate Solidarity: Trade Union Responses from Greener Workplaces to International Policy, presented by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), UK, LO-Denmark, AFL-CIO of US, and OHSE Bangladesh; 8.) The Sustainable Company &ndash; importance and role for workers interest representation, presented by the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI); 9.) Financing Climate Change, presented by Sustainlabour, Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), Nepal&rsquo;s General Federation of Nepalese Trade Unions (GEFONT) and the Trade Union Congress (NTUC), Nepal, the ITUC Africa Region, and Trade Union Confederation for the Americas (TUCA). 

<img src="" width="150" height="146" alt="" />
17 December: Admission to the Bella Center is all but impossible. &quot;Observer&quot; delegates admitted to the Bella Center today were supposed to be restricted to 1,000, but before this number was reached all new admissions were completely closed except to official government negotiators. A morning meeting of labour delegates took place at the LO-Denmark building, but a snowfall this morning was the final straw that broke the back of Copenhagen's already overstressed public transport system. I was not able to get there in time. Truly, this conference has become a catastrophe for the city of Copenhagen. Reports from those few still inside the Bella Center provided first indications that the entire negotiating work to date was being trashed in favour of a political agreement negotiated between only a few of the major participants. In this scenario, &quot;labour's paragraph&quot; will disappear, at least temporarily. 
 
18 December: Only 90 &quot;observer&quot; delegates, including only 9 trade unionists, were to be admitted to the Bella Center. It is now hopeless for any others to try to interact directly with any of the negotiators. 
The political leaders of the world, unable to reach a consensus on prepared texts, have crafted a face-saving document. In fact, the document was negotiated primarily between the US, China, and some 20 other countries, short-circuiting the UNFCCC process. Now called the Copenhagen Accord, the document itself meets none of the criteria of labour and civil society groups necessary to the final accord, and it contains no references to sustainable jobs, decent work, or Just Transition. However, it does make reference to political will to keep global warming below 2 centigrade degrees global average, with a scientific review following the release of the IPCC's fifth review. It also has some non-specific references to financing and targets. After two weeks of meetings, and months and years of preparatory work, many would describe this weak result as a disgrace. In the interests of fair reporting, some optimists say that at least it creates a political basis for a potential agreement at a later meeting. The work of the Ad-hoc Working Group on Longterm Cooperative Action, where &quot;labour's paragraph&quot; resides, is mandated to continue and may be incorporated in a subsequent, more detailed agreement. Let us hope that the pessimists are wrong and the optimists are right. In either case, we still have much work to do.

ICEM: COP 15 Second Week Diary and Commentary, 12-18 December

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The ICEM condemns the police violence taken against Trinidad and Tobago trade union leader David Abdullah and others on 18 December. Abdullah was one of the organisers of a peaceful protest outside Parliament. He was detained by riot police and charged with &ldquo;obstruction of free passageway.&rdquo; The protest was part of the campaign against a proposed Property Bill in the Caribbean islands nation. 
 
A number of other demonstrators, including members of ICEM affiliate Oilfields Workers&rsquo; Trade Union (OWTU), suffered injuries during the mid-December demonstration, as police attacked with batons. 
 
The movement opposing the property tax bill, called People&rsquo;s Democracy, is an umbrella group of trade unions, NGOs, and others in civil society. It organised the 18 December protest outside Parliament to coincide with deliberations on the bill inside the Lower House. OWTU President-General Ancel Roget also participated in the organization of the protest. 

<img src="" width="147" height="205" alt="" />
David Abdullah centre (Photo T&amp;T Newsday)
Several international groups have also condemned the unprovoked police attacks and arrest of Abdullah. UK Trades Union Congress General Secretary Brendan Barber, in a letter to the country&rsquo;s authorities, urged that &ldquo;the charges against Mr. Abdullah are dropped and that all citizens are allowed the free exercise of their democratic rights without interference from the State.&rdquo; 
 
Roget told police, who demanded the manifestation stop any noise making, that they were doing nothing illegal. It was then that police became violent, using batons against protestors holding only placards. Abdullah complained about the violence and was thrown into a police vehicle, while government police beat OWTU members who tried to follow. 
 
Following Abdullah&rsquo;s arrest on 18 December, four members of the opposition in Parliament came out and joined the march around the Parliament. 
 
Upon release, Abdullah said, &ldquo;This will further strengthen the resolve of those who are interested in (our country&rsquo;s) future because we saw physical evidence today of the dictatorship in Trinidad and Tobago. The right to peaceful picketing is a right we will never, ever give up. We have not and will not engage in anything illegal. And even the police could not tell us that we were violating any law by communicating our message by singing, chanting, and clapping our hands.&rdquo; 

<img src="" width="130" height="162" alt="" />
Ancel Roget
Roget accused the government of beating citizens into submission. 
 
Court action against David Abdullah will continue on 13 January and People&rsquo;s Democracy members intend to turn out at the court proceedings in support of their leader. The movement picketed the offices of Prime Minister Patrick Manning on Thursday, 7 January. 
 
The campaign against the Property Tax, seen as an ill-advised national policy to offset government shortfalls and wasteful spending, will continue. The campaign can be viewed <a href="http://www.peoplesdemocracytt.org/ ">here</a>.

Trinidad/Tobago Police Use Brutality to Stifle Free Speech, Assembly Rights

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ICEM Women’s Bulletin No. 37/ Boletín de noticias de la mujer de la ICEM No. 37

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In the US, the ICEM intervened on behalf of the affiliated Teamsters Union in a strike that started on 3 November and ended 14 November against specialty chemicals manufacturer Rhodia. General Secretary Manfred Warda contacted the Paris-based company directly in efforts to bring the two sides together. 
 
The plant is in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and it is part of Rhodia&rsquo;s Eco Services division, producing sulfuric acid and organic chemicals. The 135 members of Teamsters Local 5 went on strike following rejection of a company proposal given 1 November, but accepted a new three-year agreement with modifications on 13 November after managers and the bargaining committee reached agreement that day. 
 

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Teamsters Local 5 Members Last Week on Strike, a Strike that Ended on 13 November 
The strike was primarily over rising health care costs and co-payments that Teamster members were asked to make. The negotiated settlement includes wage increases in each of the three years. It also includes positive modifications for workers to an on-call procedure, or provisions for calling staff to work during their off hours. That was a further cause in the ten-day strike. 
 
The ICEM has a constructive Global Framework Agreement with Rhodia. The difficult American issue of private and for-profit health care delivery systems is generally the leading cause of US labour-management disputes.

Ten-Day Strike by US Union against Rhodia Ends on 14 November

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ICEM&rsquo;s two-year project in Turkey on Organising and Social Dialogue, supported by a Dutch labour confederation&rsquo;s international solidarity arm, FNV Mondiaal, moved forward with its second seminar on 5-6 November, this time in the western Turkish city of Izmir, where ICEM-affiliated trade unions have a strong presence. 
 
The overall objective of the project is to help contribute to the unions&rsquo; ability to recruit new members, as well as to discuss the establishment of a base to create a functioning industrial relations system, prioritizing human and trade union rights, and to promote healthy social dialogue in Turkey&rsquo;s industrial relations system. 
 
The seminar was opened by ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda, who presented the Global Union Federation&rsquo;s activities and current work plan. The 60 trade union leaders in attendance then heard a report from ICEM Chemicals and Rubber Industries Officer Kemal &Ouml;zkan called, &ldquo;In the Framework of Globalisation and the European Union Organising and Social Dialogue.&rdquo;
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Delagtes at&nbsp;ICEM/FNV Project Workshop in Izmir&nbsp;
Besides Turkish local trade union leaders, shop stewards, and militants in attendance, the meeting also saw participation by several international trade union leaders from the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. Celil &Ccedil;oban and Mail &Uuml;rker of FNV Bondgenoten, the Netherlands, exchanged their experiences and knowledge with Turkish colleagues, while Fons Welters, Chairman of Works Council of the Dutch chemicals company, Akzo Nobel, explained social dialogue inside his company. 
 
Akzo Nobel operates in Turkey without union representation. In this framework, FNV Bondgenoten and ICEM Turkish affiliate Petrol-İş made a pact to cooperate on organising Akzo Nobel&rsquo;s staff in Turkey. 
 
Other speakers, giving their respective country perspectives and presenting their trade union structures, included Michael Mersmann, Head of the International Department, Germany&rsquo;s IGBCE; Jorgen Juul Rasmussen, the General Secretary of Dansk El-Forbund, Denmark&rsquo;s Electricians&rsquo; Union; and Mats Svensson, Advisor to the President of IF Metall in Sweden.
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A presentation by ICEM&rsquo;s Information, Campaigns, Pulp &amp; Paper Officer, Dick Blin, on the trade union situation in the US attracted much attention, specifically by participants who compared the many similarities to the current Turkish union model &ldquo;imported&rdquo; from America in the late 1940s following World War II. 
 
The last presentation was made by &Uuml;zeyir Ataman, Director of Education and Collective Bargaining of Turkish union Lastik-İş, who covered the history and current situation of the union movement in his country. 
 
Comrade Ataman&rsquo;s presentation focused on Power and Weak Points, Challenges and Opportunities, and Concrete Organising Targets inside Turkey. Each of the near 60 participants took the floor and put forward his opinions on these issues in Turkey. 
 
&ldquo;Our seminars in Izmit and Izmir have clearly shown that there is a major need in Turkey to reinforce capacity of trade union leaders on organising and social dialogue,&rdquo; said the ICEM&rsquo;s &Ouml;zkan, who runs the project. &ldquo;Turkey has big potential in terms of trade union growth, and our objective is to mobilise this growth. So far, we are gaining on that objective.&rdquo; 
 
The FNV project will encompass several more issue-focused seminars through 2010. The next one will be a special women&rsquo;s seminar, scheduled for 15-16 December in İstanbul. In 2010, there will be seminars in the cities of Adana and Bursa, as well as in the region of Tracia.

FNV’s Organising, Social Dialogue Forum in Turkey Comprehensive

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Rolling work stoppages began at a Peabody Energy coal mine in central Queensland on 7 November. The legal industrial actions, brought on by the American company&rsquo;s proposed rollbacks in an enterprise labour agreement at its North Goonyella mine, could intensify in coming weeks, as members of the Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union (CFMEU) balloted this weekend on whether or not to take further industrial actions. 
 
A prior enterprise agreement expired early in 2008. But that was extended one year, until 31 March 2009. The dispute now centers on work rosters, rates of pay, and conditions of living in a mining camp. 
 
The CFMEU members took four three-hour work stoppages over a 24-hour period in the middle of last week. Further three-hour industrial actions could occur this week, and if this weekend&rsquo;s ballot passes, legalized work stoppages could extend to 24- or 48-hour periods. Unrelated to the dispute, Peabody announced on 11 November that 34 miners would be made redundant by year&rsquo;s end at North Goonyella.
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Peabody owns other coal-mining operations in Queensland and New South Wales, and is the major stakeholder of other collieries that operate with sub-contractors. All miners at these enterprises are represented by the CFMEU. Peabody bought the North Goonyella colliery from RAG AG as part of a three-mine purchase in 2003. 
 
The US multinational began mining coal in Australia through predecessor companies in the 1950s. Over the years, the CFMEU has developed close ties with the US mining union, ICEM affiliate United Mine Workers&rsquo; of America (UMWA), over Peabody&rsquo;s collective agreements and organizing efforts.

CFMEU Begins Job Actions at Peabody Coal in Australia

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