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AUSTRALIA: The IMF-affiliated Communications, Electrical, Electronic, Energy, Information, Postal, Plumbing and Allied Services Union (CEPU) is currently engaged in a dispute with Nestlé Australia over the issue of collective bargaining and forced weekend work. Since June 19, says the union, the transnational food company has locked out all food and maintenance workers -- members of CEPU and other unions -- at its Echuca site, located in southeastern Australia on the border between the states of Victoria and New South Wales. 
The basis for the lockout at this plant, which produces dairy swirl ice cream and yoghurt for the Australian market, originated with the company's decision to introduce a 7-day operation. Thus, the present workweek, which is Monday to Friday, with non-voluntary weekend work arranged on a compulsory regime, has made a significant change in the lifestyle of not only the workers but also their families. 
CEPU reports that other issues central to the dispute are pay rates for those working the new schedule, as well as the expiry date of the collective agreement. There are currently six Nestlé sites in Victoria, of which three have a common expiry date of June 2003. The members at the Echuca plant also want their agreement to expire on that date so as to negotiate on a true collective basis with the other three, but the company, wanting to keep Echuca isolated, is opposed. The union says that part of their drive to have common expiry dates is to reverse the enterprise-by-enterprise approach which allows companies like Nestlé to lock out workers individually and thus increase company bargaining power. 
The IMF is calling on its affiliates, in particular those with Nestlé units, to contact Peter Tighe, national secretary of CEPU, to see how you can help support the workers in Echuca in their struggle with Nestlé. Tighe can be reached by phone on: (61/2) 9597-4499, fax: (61/2) 9597-6354 or e-mail: peter@nat.cepu.asn.au

CEPU and other unions' members have been locked out for six weeks over issues of collective bargaining and forced weekend work.

IMF Australian affiliate in dispute with Nestlé

AUSTRALIA: The Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union has sent an open letter to request solidarity with their 210 members employed at Maintrain, in Sydney. The workers, who are responsible for the maintenance of the New South Wales State Rail trains, are in the third week of a strike in which Manusafe -- a trust fund established by the AMWU and other industry unions to protect workers' entitlements -- is a central issue. 
According to the AMWU, Maintrain workers, along with hundreds of thousands of others, are concerned at the recent spate of company collapses in Australia that have seen many millions of dollars of workers' entitlements disappear overnight. The Manusafe scheme requires the employer to pay these entitlements as they accrue into a jointly managed trust fund, and the AMWU argues that the entitlements should be "protected from incompetent or unscrupulous employers, and from the workings of the boom-bust cycle." 
The workers at Maintrain say they are determined to win their claim. A rally was staged in front of headquarters of the employers' organisation -- the Australian Industry Group -- which has been vigorously campaigning to prevent employers from agreeing to join Manusafe, and a steady escalation in disputes around the Manusafe scheme is expected in the coming weeks. 
Go to the associated AMWU website link to see how you can help.

Members of the AMWU are on strike to protect workers' entitlements.

AMWU Manusafe campaign

Appeal for Maintrain workers

SWITZERLAND/GLOBAL: After reporting two weeks ago a total freeze on hiring, ABB, Europe's biggest electrical engineering group, announced today, July 24, 2001, that "to counter difficult market conditions" it planned to cut 12,000 jobs or over 8 per cent of its workforce. 
The Swiss-Swedish transnational company, formerly known as Asea Brown Boveri, says it will implement the job cuts over a period of 18 months, with approximately 8,000 jobs eliminated through outright dismissals, and 4,000 through natural attrition. 
With half-year profits at $626 million, representing a drop of 21 per cent on the same period last year, the company claims that these results "reflect uncertainty in the investment climate as the U.S. slowdown spreads into Europe and Asia." 
The IMF will be following the situation at ABB very closely and will provide an update as soon as possible.

Electrical engineering group has announced plans to reduce its 163,000 workforce by 8 per cent.

ABB will slash jobs

USA: The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers reports that their organising drive to represent 17,195 white-collar professional and office employees at Boeing concluded on July 19 with the tally of ballots by the National Labor Relations Board. Employees voted 85 percent to decline union representation on this occasion (13,142 versus 2,329). 
"No industry was ever successfully unionised the first time out -- not auto, not steel and certainly not aerospace," said the union's international president, Tom Buffenbarger, following news of the vote count for 16,500 office and clerical employees at Boeing. "Today's vote was one battle in the war, not the war itself. The movement to gain union representation among Boeing employees will continue." 
The organising campaign reached out to people with almost no prior exposure to unions. The union's chief representative for District 751 in Seattle commented that as long as Boeing continued outsourcing and downsizing, the issues of job security, fair compensation and respectful treatment would only grow sharper. 
The union said it would now focus on preparing the 2002 negotiations representing 27,000 IAM members at Boeing and intends to improve pensions, medical benefits and job security protections for its members. The current collective contract expires on September 1, 2002. 
Source: IAMAW

The attempt to gain union representation among professional and office employees at Boeing will continue.

IAM sets organising record

White-collar employees decline union bid

DENMARK: The IMF was deeply shocked and saddened to learn of the death on July 20, 2001, in Denmark of Poul Erik Olsen, former head of the IMF Education Department from 1990-1997. He was 69 years old. 
Poul Erik dedicated his entire working life to the trade union and wider labour movement. His heart was in the fields of education and international solidarity, and over the years he made hundreds of friends in countries the world over, and through his hard work helped greatly to improve their working and living conditions. His energy and his enthusiasm were boundless, a real inspiration to all who knew him. 
The IMF general secretary, Marcello Malentacchi, said that "Poul Erik was one of the best teachers I've ever known, always developing new methods to make it easier for students to understand and actively participate in training programmes. Education for him was the best way to achieve and practice democracy, the supreme goal to achieve to make life worth living." 
The IMF wishes to express its condolences to the family of Poul Erik and to the CO Industri trade union in Denmark.

Former IMF education officer passes away.

Poul Erik Olsen 1932-2001

USA: In what is a huge victory for the workers at Avondale Shipyard, the U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has issued an order to the company to rehire 22 workers who were illegally fired between 1994-1997 because they had tried to organise the shipyard. 
The NLRB's judge also ordered the New Orleans shipyard to compensate for lost pay, benefits and seniority all workers who were illegally suspended or disciplined and to repay not only $5.4 million in related legal fees it billed to the U.S. Navy but also the NLRB's legal costs and those of the New Orleans Metal Trades Council, which lodged the first unfair labour practice complaint against Avondale in 1994. 
In 1999, the anti-union company was sold to Litton Industries, which was in turn taken over in April 2001 by the present owner, defence contractor Northrop Grumman. The company is considering to appeal the NLRB decision. 
The struggle for trade union rights at Avondale lasted for eight years. After finally winning union recognition at the shipyard in August 1999, the AFL-CIO affiliated New Orleans Metal Trades Council and management signed the first 45-month collective agreement covering 1,500 union members in December 2000.

Judge orders shipyard company to reinstate 22 workers who were illegally dismissed.

Avondale gets first contract

Great victory for Avondale workers

GERMANY: The German metalworkers' union IG Metall has welcomed the announcement by German auto multinational BMW that it will open a new plant near Leipzig, in eastern Germany. With daily production capacity at the new plant expected to reach 650 cars, 5,500 jobs could be created directly at the new site and another 4,500 jobs at suppliers. 
Construction of the new facility, at a cost of 1 billion euros ($859 million), is scheduled to begin this winter, and production of the new model of the BMW 3-Series will start in 2005. The present 3-Series model is being manufactured in Regensburg, which will switch to the newly invented 1-Series after the opening of the plant in Leipzig. 
With approximately 17 per cent unemployment in the eastern part of the country, which is over double that of western Germany, news of BMW's decision was especially well received in Leipzig. 
As some 250 European cities were competing to house the new plant, IG Metall sees the decision as a confirmation that cars can be built competitively in a so-called high-wage country.

A total of 10,000 new jobs could be created in eastern Germany.

BMW to open new plant

GENEVA: In his support of the Italian unions' general strike, Marcello Malentacchi, the general secretary of the IMF, writes in his latest opinion column that when a government - no matter which way it leans - attempts to get rid of basic rights introduced into labour legislation, there is going to be a fight. 

The government of Silvio Berlusconi wants to scrap Article 18 of the hard-won 30-year-old labour law (Workers' Statute) protecting workers who have been dismissed from their jobs without just cause. Although the center-right government claims it wants to bring its legislation in line with the rest of Europe, Malentacchi suggests they take "a closer look at Article 30 of the European Union's Charter of Rights".

"The Italian unions' are fighting for all of us," says the IMF general secretary. Go to the associated link to read the full text of his opinion.

Italian unions are struggling for all workers

GHANA: The IMF-affiliated Industrial &amp; Commercial Workers' Union (ICU) has come out victorious following severe political harassment and intimidation by the former government of Ghana in 1999-2000. Readers will recall that in October of 1999, in attempts by that government and by employers to destabilise the union and block its democratically-elected leadership, an injunction was slapped on the ICU, forcing it to postpone its 7th Quadrennial Delegates Conference.


However, due to the serious scheming and wrongful court cases brought against the union's leadership, when the next national general elections were held, ICU members massively voted against that government, helping remove it from power. When the new government was in place, three judges over a period of two years were able - without any interference - to investigate the court cases brought against the ICU, and in separate rulings have now dismissed all the plaintiffs' actions as "frivolous, vexatious and without any merit."


Thus, after almost four years, the ICU will finally be able to hold that 7th Quadrennial Delegates Conference.


On behalf of his union, the ICU's general secretary and IMF Executive Committee member, Napoleon Kpoh, has conveyed the union's gratefulness to the IMF and other global union federations for the massive support they gave to the ICU in helping to defeat its adversaries. Kpoh has expressed his personal appreciation and gratitude to all IMF affiliates around the world who sent solidarity messages to the union and protest messages to the government and employers. "International solidarity works," he stated.

The ICU in Ghana has won its long fight against the former government, which tried to destabilise the union and its leadership.

Harassment of Ghana union

Anti-union tactics continue in Ghana

Union leader arrested in Ghana                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Injunction slapped on union                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

&quot;International solidarity works&quot;

NORWAY: The IMF-affiliated Fellesforbundet reached an agreement early today, April 9, with the national employers' organisation, TBL, for this year's collective bargaining in the metal industry, and thus averts strike action.

According to the union, the pact offers a good and balanced result, with a substantial real wage increase, which was a key issue in the bargaining. The agreement, valid from April 1, 2002, to March 31, 2004, includes a general wage hike of NOK 2.75 (US$ 0.3158) per hour, or approximately NOK 5,360 (US$ 616) per year, with terms varying among sectors. The union estimates that the total value of the agreement will be in the area of a 4 to 5 per cent wage increase. Later this year, Fellesforbundet members in all workplaces in the metal sector will bargain for further wage increases locally.

Although employers attempted to change normal working time restrictions, these have been kept intact.

It was agreed that collective pension schemes, another key issue in the bargaining, will be discussed thoroughly at each workplace during 2002 and that results of the discussions will be taken up in a collective bargaining round in 2003. A protocol to the agreement offers a good basis for the development of a collective pension scheme according to the goals set out in Fellesforbundet's demands.

Members will vote on the agreement on April 26, with results to be announced on April 30.

Union is pleased with results and ready for the improvement in workers' purchasing power.

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