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Branch leaders of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 7-669 in Metropolis, Illinois, took their 11-month lockout at a US uranium processing plant of Honeywell to Europe and won the support from major trade union federations. They also won support from Honeywell&rsquo;s European Works Council (EWC) Chairman, who put Honeywell&rsquo;s risky American lockout in front of the American company&rsquo;s 30,000 European staff. 
 
The European Mine, Chemical, Energy Workers&rsquo; Federation (EMCEF), European Metalworkers&rsquo; Federation (EMF), and European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) all endorsed the struggle and called on global technology giant Honeywell to end the lockout. The plant employs 228 steelworkers, who convert yellow-cake uranium into uranium hexafluoride (UF6) for enrichment use in nuclear reactors. 
 
See a previous <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4120-Talks-Again-Fail-in-Honeywell-s-US-Lockout-of-Steelworkers">ICEM news article</a> on this critical US labour dispute.&nbsp; 
 
USW Local 7-669 leaders John Paul Smith and Steven Lech, together with USW District Director Dan Flippo, were hosted by UK&rsquo;s Unite the Union in Europe and met with national works council members in Germany and the European trade union federations in Belgium, as well as with members of Honeywell's EWC in Brussels. While in Germany, the USW delegation also met with leaders of ICEM affiliate IGBCE in Hannover.
The European trade union federations demand an end to the lockout, &ldquo;with all workers welcomed back to their plant without reprisals, and with full agreement of the union the United Steelworkers.&rdquo; 
 
The EWC member called out Honeywell&rsquo;s careless contingency plan to operate the facility during the lockout, as did a Unite officer from the UK, Ian Tonks. &ldquo;We believe the safety of the plant has been compromised on several occasions by the present temporary workforce,&rdquo; Tonks and EWC Chairman Michael Petersen said jointly. 
 
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) gave Honeywell approval to re-start the conversion plant on 3 September 2010. Two days later, a hydrogen blast happened when accumulated hydrogen reacted with another gas during a venting process. The plant in southern Illinois also has seen uranium hexafluoride and hydrofluoric acid releases since replacement workers took up the jobs of skilled steelworkers in July 2010. The lockout started on 28 June. 
 
In Metropolis, the USW and Honeywell continue bargaining and talk more frequently than the once monthly set of negotiations in the first half of the lockout. But progress has been slow and Honeywell has been elusive and reprehensible at the bargaining table over the main issues in this long dispute &ndash; seniority, work rules, contracting out, a two-tier pension scheme, and health care costs. 
 
Following the last round of bargaining on 4 May, a Steelworkers spokesman told of the frustration: &ldquo;Every time we address the company&rsquo;s concerns, they say it&rsquo;s not good enough and demand more. (They) change their position with respect to their own proposals, and we cannot bargain with a moving target.&rdquo;

EMCEF, EMF, EPSU Condemn Honeywell Lockout in US

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The Independent Trade Union of Miners&rsquo; of Ukraine (NPGU) held its Sixth Congress at mid-month in Kiev and besides hearing a 2005 to 2011 report on the union&rsquo;s activities, the Congress elected governing bodies and adopted several resolutions. 
 
Mikhail Volynets was re-elected President of the Independent Miners Union by secret ballot. The Congress was attended by the ICEM and representatives from the ILO, the US Solidarity Center, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) of Germany, representatives of Ukrainian ministries and departments, deputies of the Verkhovnaya Rada, or Parliament, the leaders of other trade unions of Ukraine. 
<img src="" width="209" height="207" alt="" />
Mikhail Volynets (left) and NPGU Vice President Anatoly Akimochkin
Delegates and speakers voiced concern that the new law on Social Dialogue in Ukraine, adopted by the Rada, with many stating that it jeopardizes the gains made over the past 20 years. Specific resolutions of the Congress singled out harmful passages of the Social Dialogue law regarding pension reform and health and safety in Ukraine&rsquo;s coal mines. 
 
The Congress also resolved to: demand that the state establish a system of preferences for employees who are actively involved in creating safe working conditions and for employers who prove that they maintain a steady level of safe working conditions; demand that the work state mine regulatory agencies do be judged on hours worked without incidents, accidents, and fatalities, rather than on the number of orders, reprimands, and fines issued; demand that public institutions in the field of occupational safety and health should be an integral part of safety and health management systems. 
 
Delegates also called on the Rada and the Cabinet of Ministers not to adopt the draft law on pension reform; develop wage reform aimed at legalizing the maximum wage and to significantly increase the wage proportion in a company's production costs to the level of 20-25% to serve as the basis for calculating pension contributions; eliminate the corruption phenomenon in the extractive industries where the shadow market of coal reaches three million tons per year, and to close coal mining off to so-called &ldquo;slave labour,&rdquo; or &ldquo;Kopanki&rdquo;; and improve legislation for heightened liability against employers for violating workers&rsquo; rights.

Independent Miners’ Union of Ukraine Holds Sixth Congress

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On 13 May in Madrid, two great unions from the Spanish UGT confederation merged to form a new union, the 150,000-member FITAG-UGT, the UGT&rsquo;s new union for food and industrial workers. 
 
Dissolution congresses of the two predecessor unions, FTA-UGT for food and FIA-UGT for chemicals and industrial, preceded the founding congress, with delegates voting better than 97% in both congresses to go ahead with the merger. Antonio Deusa Pedrazo was elected General Secretary of FITAG-UGT. The new Executive is made up of 17 members, six of whom are women. Roughly 32% of the new union&rsquo;s membership is women. 
 
The union will negotiate 31 collective agreements in sectors that cover 10% of Spain&rsquo;s total industrial base. 
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Mari Luz Rodriguez
The founding Congress made it clear that special attention will be given to sectors that are more difficult to organise such as ones containing small- and medium-sized companies. One focus will be immigrants who work in great numbers in some of the sectors that the new federation will represent. 
 
Spanish Secretary of State for Employment, Gender and Youth, Mari Luz Rodriguez, spoke at the founding 
Congress. She recognized the new union for its reinforced union structures and for defending the interests of workers. 
 
FITAG-UGT also made it clear it was laying the foundation for facing the challenges that confront trade unions, both at national and international levels. Those include: to respond to globalization and fight neoliberalism; strengthen the union role and strengthen European Works Council roles in facing multinationals; to make the most of international trade unions; to demand and get more stable and secure employment with more rights; and to demand more appropriate social protections and defend the welfare state. 
 
To meet these goals, FITAG-UGT resolved to organise more workers in all sectors that the new union serves, and to get more shop stewards to be present in all workplaces and to increase the union&rsquo;s influence. The union believes better training, information, and structures will be put in place to achieve these goals. 
 
ICEM affiliate FIA-UGT itself is a product of mergers in Spain&rsquo;s labour movement. The former Chemical Workers&rsquo; Union first merged with UGT branches representing oil and gas workers and then merged again with branches of miners and textile workers.

Industrial, Food Workers of UGT in Spain Merge

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The end to bitter strikes by 4,000 members of Ammattiliitto Pro against Finnish paper producers came to an end last week, 18 May. After six weeks of tension, the union and the Finnish Forest Industries Federation (FFIF) came to terms over a second-year wage renewal. 
 
The ICEM white-collar affiliate in Finland won an across-the-board national salary increase, something FFIF had denied at the outset, but most importantly they narrowed the pay gap among the clerical, technical, and front-line managerial ranks of the pulp and paper industry. 
 
The 2011 national pay award, effective 19 May, is 1.5%, or &euro;48-per-month minimum, whichever is higher. The effect is to weight the package toward lower-wage clerical workers in order to narrow the pay gap. In the face of rampant administrative redundancies in the Finnish paper sector, these workers are working harder and taking on more responsibilities. 
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The government-mediated settlement calls for an additional 1% to be negotiated at the local level by 17 June. If talks on local issues such as training, development, skill requirements, and work tasks do not conclude by then, the 1% will be awarded on 1 July. Pro and FFIF also agreed to address and develop salary structures in the future in a more transparent direction. 
 
The union had been <a href="-Walkouts-Intensify-Because-of-Strike-Breaking due to strike-breaking">increasing strike pressure</a> and threats and intimidation in attempting to break a lawful overtime ban. Since early April, all Finnish-based companies were met with multiple strikes lasting up to two weeks and South-African-based Sappi was in the middle of a two-week strike last week when government mediator Esa Lonka finally succeeded in putting together a compromise. By last week, about 75% of white-collar staff in Finland&rsquo;s paper industry was on strike. 
 
Following the late night 18 May agreement, shift workers returned to their jobs at 6h00 on 21 May, while day workers returned today, 23 May. 
<img alt="" src="" width="80" height="103" />
Jukka H&auml;m&auml;l&auml;inen
Ammattiliitto Pro paper industry Chief Negotiator Jukka H&auml;m&auml;l&auml;inen said the solidarity among Pro members is reflected in the fact that the union was united in closing the pay gap between men and women. He said improved salary equality between men and women was a major accomplishment in the one-year agreement. 
 
Pro received widespread global labour attention to this bitter white-collar dispute and issued this statement: &ldquo;Pro and its members on strike have received many messages of solidarity during the strike. Pro wishes to thank everyone for these important messages, which served as a significant incentive in this difficult industrial action.&rdquo; 
 
A day after the Ammattiliitto Pro/FFIF settlement, government mediator Lonka crafted a compromise between the Media Sector of Industrial Union TEAM with Finnish print employers, preventing possible industrial actions.

Ammattiliitto Pro Cuts Gender Pay Gap in Finland Paper Agreement

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Today, the ICEM Presidium held its bi-annual meeting in Geneva, with the annual meeting of the Executive Committee scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, 24-25 May. The meetings are being held at the ILO. 
 
Besides presenting a Secretariat Report and preparations for ICEM&rsquo;s Fifth Statutory Congress, the decision-making bodies will receive an ICEM Action Plan for the Congress and beyond. The Action Plan will be a working document through to the Congress, scheduled for 24-26 November 2011 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. 
 
On Wednesday afternoon, 25 May, the Executive Committees of ICEM, International Metalworkers&rsquo; Federation (IMF) and the International Leather, Textile and Garment Workers&rsquo; Federation (ITGLWF) will meet in joint session to review the integration progress. IMF and ITGLWF statutory bodies are also meeting separately in Geneva this week. 
 
The three Global Union Federations (GUF) have been conducting joint task force deliberations to explore integration and to lay the groundwork for it. The task force has met four times since September 2010, with the most recent meeting &ndash; in Frankfurt on 5 May &ndash; producing a tangible outline for a new and dynamic industrial GUF. In Frankfurt, Nordic trade unions stepped forward and offered Copenhagen as the site for a founding Congress, likely to be held in 2012.

ICEM Statutory Bodies Meet in Geneva this Week

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A two-year labour dispute in Queensland, Australia, broke into a continuous strike on 27 July when 233 miners of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) downed tools at open-pit coal mines operated by Theiss Contractors, a division of mining contractor Leighton Holdings. 
 
The mine in Collinsville in northern Queensland is owned by the Swiss-Anglo company Xstrata. 
 
CFMEU miners and their families are angry that the contract operator pays workers who fly-in and fly-out of the colliery far more than local residents. Despite efforts by the company to run the mine with scab labour, the 15-day strike has rendered the mine inoperable since emergency response teams are also part of the strike. 
 
On 2 August, some 18 wives and partners of striking miners blocked trains loaded with coal from leaving the Collinsville area, causing the trains to return to the mine. That scene was repeated over the weekend and today, 9 August, resulting in the arrests of four women for railway-related trespassing offenses. The trains are operated by the QR National rail line. 
<img alt="" src="" width="130" height="132" />
The CFMEU is seeking job security protections from Theiss in a new enterprise bargaining agreement, as well as pay packages that miners in other areas of the Bowen Basin receive. Collinsville miners have lost 24% in wages over the past several years as Theiss continues to stall bargaining. 
 
The contractor has offered a 6% increase this year, and 4% hikes in each of the next two years, but Collinsville miners are seeking increases of 9%, 6%, and 5% to bring them close to parity with other mining enterprises of Queensland. The CFMEU also is seeking super-annuation contributions lifted by 12% on a supplemental pension scheme. 
 
Xstrata Coal owns 55% of the Collinsville mine that produces and exports thermal coal, while Japan&rsquo;s Itochu Coal Resources and Sumitomo hold 35% and 10% stakes, respectively. 
 
Meanwhile, the 21-month dispute between CFMEU and Xstrata at the Tahmoor colliery in New South Wales continues. The union is seeking solution by an independent arbitrator of Australia&rsquo;s Fair Work Tribunal in order to retain union work rights at the mine, but the company is resisting. The livelihoods of some 240 miners are at stake.

Angry CFMEU Miners Strike Contract Operator at Australian Colliery

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Efforts to resolve a 2010 industry pay settlement for 4,000 UK paperworkers failed in late July, with ICEM affiliates Unite the Union and GMB now deferring further talks with the employers&rsquo; Confederation of Paper Industries (CPI) until 6 October. The negotiations cover workers in the corrugated boxboard sector of the paper industry, with the major employers being SmurfitKappa, DS Smith, and SAICA, the Spanish company that bought the UK operations of Swedish SCA in 2008. 
 
Following negotiations on 22-23 July, union negotiators were willing to put the corrugated industry&rsquo;s final offer up for a ballot, but without recommending approval or rejection. This was not agreeable to the CPI and the final offer was withdrawn. 
<img src="" width="140" height="84" alt="" />
In Unite&rsquo;s GPM Sector newsletter, Unite National Officer Peter Ellis said the unions are seeking a one-year pay deal, but &ldquo;various options were considered ranging from a one year deal, a deferred payment deal, a two-year deal, and a mixture of all three. 
 
&ldquo;However, the level of settlement offered by the industry was below the level that unions would be prepared to recommend to their members,&rdquo; said Ellis. 
 
The recess in corrugated talks until early October is due to scheduling. The unions and CPI have a 14-member joint negotiations body charged with reaching pay terms. Meanwhile, Unite&rsquo;s 2010 pay settlements in the print, packaging, and newspaper sector, covering some 70 employers, are averaging between 2% and 2.5%.

Corrugated Paperboard Talks in UK Put on Hold Until October

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Bumper pay packages were negotiated last week between British unions, including Unite the Union, and Corus, the steel producer owned by India&rsquo;s Tata Group. In what Unite termed a &ldquo;breakthrough&rdquo; in talks that dated to last May for 12,000 UK steelworkers, labour and management agreed to a 2010 pay deal of 3.2%, backdated to 1 April. 
 
The tentative agreement, which also includes a &pound;200 lump-sum bonus, will now be voted on by Unite&rsquo;s 8,000 members, with results due in early September. Two other UK unions representing Corus workers, GMB and Community, accepted the same deal, with its bargaining leaders empowered to ratify the agreement. 
 
The 2010-2011 collective agreement covers steelworkers at some 15 Corus worksites. 
 
In June, the pay offer by Corus was between one and two percent. The culmination of hard bargaining last week pleased trade union leaders of all three organizations, particularly since workers agreed to take a pay freeze last year that was included in &pound;1 billion in savings served up to the steelmaker in order to help the company through the recession. 
<img alt="" src="" width="150" height="153" />
&ldquo;This new deal offered by Corus will go some way to rebuilding trust with management,&rdquo; stated Unite National Steel Officer Terry Pye. &ldquo;Whatever the outcome of the ballot with our members on the revised pay offer, we are pleased that the company has made a significant improvement to the pay offer, which we are recommending to our members.&rdquo; 
 
GMB National Secretary Keith Hazlewood said, &ldquo;After last year&rsquo;s pay freeze and a very turbulent 18 months it would be nice to think that we have seen the worst, and have the makings of a foundation to build on for a secure future for our members and local steel communities going forward.&rdquo; 
 
India&rsquo;s Tata Group bought Anglo-Dutch Corus in 2006 for US$12 billion. UK unions remain hopeful that one Corus site that was partially shuttered in February in North-east England will reopen under new ownership. Union leaders, together with national and local officials have been negotiating with Sahaviriya Steel Industries of Thailand to operate the Teesside Cast Products mill.

UK Metal Workers Realize Pay Dividends with Tata’s Corus Steel

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Oil and transport trade unions in the Suleymania area of Iraqi Kurdistan returned home from a recent meeting of the ICEM, International Transport Workers&rsquo; Federation (ITF) Oil &amp; Gas Trade Union Alliance in Beirut and quickly organized a wider meeting of unions from both petroleum and transport sectors at the regional level. (See the ICEM/ITF story <a href="/en/3-Energy-Oil-and-Gas/3932-'Well-to-Wheel'-Forum-in-Beirut-Focuses-on-Oil-Transport-Work-in-Iraq ">here</a>.) 
 
Salam Rachid of the Iraqi Kurdistan Workers Syndicat Union of Suleymania arranged the meeting of local union activists to report back on the results of the seminar and explain the importance of the Alliance. 
<img alt="" src="" width="240" height="160" />
ICEM, ITF, and the Solidarity Center of the US, which supports the &ldquo;Well to Wheel&rdquo; Alliance in Iraq, are delighted to see the immediate follow-up work at local level, which is considered essential to the success of the Alliance. This is especially important given the draconian measures taken recently against trade unions of electric power workers&rsquo; in Iraq, in what has become the latest attempt by the Baghdad government to destroy independent trade unionism. 
 
The ICEM views the recent crack-downs on electric power workers as an extension of failure by Iraq&rsquo;s government to enact ILO-compliant labour legislation and its excuse to impose old legislation from the Saddam era, which banned trade unions in the public sector and heavily restricts all trade union activity and work.

Rapid Iraqi Follow-up to ICEM, ITF ‘Well-to-Wheel’ Work Praised

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In the US, recruiting new union members was to become easier with passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a solid piece of labour reform legislation meant to balance the current one-sided advantages that employers have in blocking workers&rsquo; from joining a union. But despite mass support generated by US unions and their members in 2008 to elect Barack Obama and Party Democrat majorities in both houses of Congress, reciprocation by prioritizing EFCA for passage never happened. 
 
Last week, on 1 August, the new President of the United Auto Workers (UAW), Bob King, turned that page by telling the annual Management Seminars of the Center for Automotive Research that American workers deserve to have their constitutional First Amendment rights of free association and free speech protected. He called on senior managers to help make that happen in good faith by signing a union election protocol. 
<img alt="" src="" width="135" height="190" />
Bob King, President of the United Auto Workers (UAW)
King said the UAW will not passively &ldquo;sit and wait&rdquo; for passage of EFCA, but instead will present to executives of auto and auto-related industries &ndash; now operating without unionization &ndash; a &ldquo;Principles and Fair Union Election&rdquo; protocol that guarantees workers will have their basic rights upheld in free and unencumbered union certification elections. The UAW will make those principles public following an upcoming executive board meeting of the union. 
 
But they are certain to include equal access to workers seeking to form a union by both the union and management, and the principles would ban derogatory, insulting, and false statements by either party. Perhaps more significantly within the US landscape of union, the UAW principles ban any threats, coercion, or pressure by either management or the union in the run-up to or after elections. 
 
King told the US auto industry&rsquo;s leading management seminar that for those companies that sign on and abide by the principles, &ldquo;we will respect the decision of their workers whether they vote to join the union or not. 
 
&ldquo;However, if companies do not agree to these principles, and instead engage in threatening behaviour towards workers who want to organise a union, or fire workers who try to organise, or close down facilities to thwart union activity, then the UAW will not tolerate the violation of workers&rsquo; First Amendment rights.&rdquo; 
<img alt="" src="" width="250" height="110" />
King added, &ldquo;So, any company that does not agree to the UAW Principles is essentially declaring war on freedom of speech and assembly, and it is our duty and mission to enforce that right.&rdquo; 
 
King, who was newly-elected to head the 400,000-member union in June, told the industry that &ldquo;the 21st century UAW&rdquo; will be less adversarial and has already proven to the three major US automakers to be a partner in flexibility, innovation, quality, teamwork, productivity, continuous cost-savings, and mutual respect. 
 
&ldquo;We respect not only the employers with whom we have relationships, but we also have enormous respect for the transnational companies who have build factories in the US,&rdquo; said King. &ldquo;We welcome you as partners and colleagues in the industry. We appreciate the fact that you are providing good jobs here. We admire many of your good policies and practices, including the focus on continuous improvement, quality, and productivity. The transplants are an important and essential part of preserving, maintaining, and growing our manufacturing base in this country.&rdquo; 
 
King, the first UAW President to speak before the US auto industry&rsquo;s managers&rsquo; forum since 1994, told executives that the choice was up to non-union employers whether or not to sign the UAW&rsquo;s Principals. But, he suggested, &ldquo;the best business practice, the best way to deliver shareholder value, is to partner with the UAW on quality, productivity, attendance, employee morale, and the overall goal of providing the best product at the best price to the customer.&rdquo;

US Auto Workers Seek Bilateral Accords with Employers over Unionisation

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