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The union that won a long battle to represent Firestone Rubber Plantation workers in Liberia has now won a Labor Ministry-supervised vote to represent workers at ArcelorMittal&rsquo;s mining development in Liberia. 
 
On 11 April, ICEM-affiliated Forestry, Logging, and Industrial Workers&rsquo; Union of Liberia (FLIWUL), greatly assisted by the United Steelworkers (USW) of the US, easily beat a yellow union in a representation election that took place in Nimba County on the Liberian-Guinea-C&ocirc;te d&rsquo;Ivoire border and at Buchanan, a port city on the Atlantic Coast. 
 
ArcelorMittal, the world&rsquo;s largest steel-maker, is undertaking a US$1.5 billion re-development of iron ore mining operations near Yekeba in Nimba County and a 250-kilometre railroad line to Buchanan. 
 
The union vote, however, encountered flagrant interference by a company official and a Liberian legislator, despite both an ICEM letter (found <a href="/wp-content/migration/icem/6%20letter%20to%20Bernard%20Fontana%20-%203%20Feb09.pdf">here</a>) and a USW letter warning ArcelorMittal not to interfere in the election. But an ArcelorMittal boss and a national lawmaker showed up in Buchanan several hours after voting began and demanded a halt to balloting. 

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FLIWUL activists in Harbel
On the eve of the vote, the yellow union used a radio broadcast to discourage workers from voting. Election observers also reported that whoever was behind this group had pressed members of the Liberian Parliament to intervene with the Labor Ministry to cancel the vote. 
 
The ArcelorMittal official was Arthur Massaquio, who earlier on 11 April was the company&rsquo;s designated election observer, but left the polling area soon after balloting began. When he returned several hours later, he was with Representative Gabriel Smith. The lawmaker began questioning workers on why they felt the urgency to have a union vote, before ordering workers back to work because he was canceling the election. 
 
Despite this, and the fact that several workers did leave the Buchanan polling area without voting, FLIWUL won the fair, government-supervised election. FLIWUL got 198 votes, the yellow union 19, and the &ldquo;no union&rdquo; option on the ballot received one. In Buchanan, the FLIWUL got 59 votes and the company union 15. The ICEM had an observer present for the vote through a designated representative from the Ghana Mineworkers&rsquo; Union. 
 
FLIWUL Secretary-General David Sackoh told the ICEM following the vote that an investigation into the Buchanan interruption is underway, but that he is confident the vote will stand. 
 
ArcelorMittal is developing Nimba County&rsquo;s one billion cubic-metre iron ore reserves in a 25-year concession that will see the Liberian government receive 30% of the net profits, plus 4.5% in royalty fees. Some 2,000 Liberian workers are expected to be employed in the mining enterprise and the rail link and port hub. This northern Liberia mining area was originally operated by the Liberian American Swedish Chemicals Company (LAMCO), but production ceased in 1989 with the outbreak of civil war.

Despite Interference, FLIWUL Wins Union Rights for ArcelorMittal Workers in Liberia

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As labour in Australia approaches 28 April next week, the International Commemoration Day for Dead and Injured Workers, one mining company stands beneath the rest with a dismal safety record: BHP Billiton. 
 
In Western Australia&rsquo;s rich Pilbara mining section in the country&rsquo;s northwest, BHP has had five workers die over the past nine months, four less than have died in BHP employ in the region in the last nine years. Three of those deaths in recent months have been contract workers &ndash; employed by subsidiaries of BHP&rsquo;s primary contractor in the region, Leighton Holdings &ndash; while two were direct BHP workers. 
 
It is estimated that 75% of BHP&rsquo;s total workforce of 10,000 workers in the Pilbara are employed by contractors. On safety, one union official claimed BHP Billiton is less disciplined toward its contract employers than to its own workers. 
<img height="130" src="" width="130" alt="" />&nbsp;&nbsp; <img height="134" src="" width="130" alt="" />
Whether or not that changes might depend on an external safety audit being conducted after the most recent workplace tragedy, the 19 March death of a contract worker employed by Leighton&rsquo;s John Holland subsidiary. He was killed after falling off a piece of machinery at BHP&rsquo;s Mount Whaleback iron ore mine in Newman. 
 
But since that death, there have two near tragedies, the latest on 8 April when an iron ore truck struck a worker at BHP&rsquo;s Nelson Point operations in Port Hedland. The safety audit, mandated by Australia&rsquo;s Mines Safety and Inspection Act of 1994, means that stop-work orders were placed on 12 company operations late in March, interrupting production. 
 
BHP&rsquo;s recent industrial safety record has brought condemnation from the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) and the Australian Manufacturing Workers&rsquo; Union (AMWU). 
 
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s fine to put stop work notices on,&rdquo; stated CFMEU&rsquo;s Joe McDonald, quoted in the Kalgoorlie Miner, a regional newspaper. &ldquo;But they need to be extremely well enforced because BHP will still find ways around these notices.&rdquo; McDonald said he favours company prosecution when industrial deaths happen. 
 
The AMWU has discounted BHP&rsquo;s &ldquo;safety is a priority&rdquo; rhetoric, and has pushed hard for state regulators to conduct full and independent investigations. 
 
The AMWU publicly stated that such an inquiry is absolutely necessary following the second death in a matter of two weeks. On 24 February, a railroad track maintenance worker was killed on the job. The 56-year-old machine worker was killed when he was hit by a BHP train on the company&rsquo;s Tabba rail line near Port Hedland. 
 
Last year, two deaths occurred within nine days of one another at BHP Billiton&rsquo;s 85%-owned Yandi iron ore mine in the Pilbara. Both workers were employed by HWE Mining, another subsidiary of Leighton Holdings and a company that is BHP&rsquo;s exclusive mining contractor at Yandi. 
 
One of the workers, a 19-year-old, was crushed to death on 4 September 2008 when the small truck he was driving was crushed by a large haul vehicle. The other HWE employee died on 26 August in an industrial accident while he was changing a tyre. 
 
And less than a month earlier, on 29 July, a 52-year-old BHP worker was killed when a scissor lift toppled onto him while he was working in a locomotive repair shop at BHP&rsquo;s Port Hedland ore crushing and shipping facility. (That same day, at BHP Billiton&rsquo;s Klipspruit coal mine in Northern Province, South Africa, a miner was killed when a drill rig fell on him.) 
 
Less than a month before Workers&rsquo; Memorial Day, Australian trade union activists were not silent on BHP Billiton and its contractors&rsquo; death toll. At the Safety Institute of Australia&rsquo;s &ldquo;Safety in Action&rdquo; Conference in Melbourne on 31 March, CFMEU and AMWU members gathered in loud protest on safety issues. The reason: John Holland Chairman Janet Holmes was delivering the keynote address.

BHP’s Mining Deaths in Western Australia Face Serious Scrutiny

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In a unified response to safety shortfalls that killed a contract worker at Drummond Coal&rsquo;s La Loma mine, 8,000 members of Sintramienerg&eacute;tica and other contract staff stage a four-day strike late in March that shut production of Colombia&rsquo;s second largest coal mine. 
 
Dagoberto Clavijo Barranco, a one-month worker at La Loma who was put there through a labour agency, was killed on 23 March when the coal-hauling vehicle he was operating fell into an open-cast mine. 
 
Drummond released all miners from work duties following the tragedy, but when the strike spread over the next few days because workers&rsquo; demanded improved safety, the company, in a statement, called the strike illegal. 

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A Sintramienerg&eacute;tica leader said Drummond agreed to meet with the union to discuss safety but was &ldquo;flippant&rdquo; in stating that no amount of negotiations will improve safety conditions. The company, on 27 March, issued a further public statement after full production at La Loma resumed. This time Drummond said it regretted the accident and would continue its &ldquo;best efforts together with the competent authorities to clear up this unfortunate incident.&rdquo; 
 
Drummond has had nine mining deaths at La Loma in C&eacute;sar state over the past decade. Another three have occurred at its port facilities near Barranquilla. 
 
In the days following the end of the safety strike, Drummond terminated 600 workers because of a strike by the transport union, Sintraime. Workers of coal-transport contractors Carbograneles and Fenoco (partially owned by Drummond) began strikes on 25 March, and these strikes were still underway late last week. Transport workers are striking for full union recognition on rail lines and at port facilities, as well as over overtime procedures. 
 
The mining union Sintramienerg&eacute;tica is insisting that Drummond recall the 600, claiming it has no responsibility in the transport strike. 
 
Drummond directly or indirectly employs 9,000 workers at La Loma, and the American company will soon start up its El Descanso mine in C&eacute;sar state, a US$1.8 billion investment that will increase the company&rsquo;s coal production to 27 million tones annually.

Contract Worker Death Causes Safety Strike at Drummond in Colombia

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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. 
<img height="75" alt="" src="" width="150" />
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. 
<img height="113" alt="" src="" width="85" />
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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Union and community leaders in the UK&rsquo;s northeast have mounted a campaign to save over 100 jobs at a chemicals plant. UK-based Elementis Plc., the EU&rsquo;s only producer of chromium chemicals used in superalloy production, timber treatments, and metal finishing, is currently in a 90-day consultation period with ICEM affiliate Unite the Union and workers at a plant in Eaglescliffe, near Teesside. 
 
In February, the specialty chemicals company &ndash; the world&rsquo;s largest producer of chromium chemicals &ndash; announced the plant was under &ldquo;a strategic review&rdquo; that could lead to a shutdown by July 2009. 
<img height="138" src="" width="140" alt="" />
Workers and community leaders are petitioning MPs and engaging in other activities to keep the profitable plant operating. Elementis, which also produces surfactants and specialty chemicals for paints, coatings, inks, and cosmetics, saw its chromium chemicals business post an operating profit of &pound;27.7 million in 2008, compared to a &pound;14.2 million profit in 2007. Sales in the division rose to &pound;168.6 million in 2008 from &pound;115.9 million in 2007. 
 
Unite Regional Secretary Bob Bolam stressed that production from the plant was crucial for the EU. &ldquo;If this plant were to close, the EU would be reliant on Kazakhstan and China. We intend to put together a case for the (Elementis) board to keep this site.&rdquo; 
 
The company&rsquo;s other chromium chemicals plants are in the US &ndash; Corpus Christi, Texas, and Castle Hayne, North Carolina. Raw materials used by Elementis come from South Africa and other parts of Africa, and are processed at the Eaglescliffe plant before being shipped to US facilities and other locations. The company&rsquo;s chromium chemicals business produces dichromate, chrome sulphate, chromic acid, chromic oxide, chromide hydrate, and sodium sulphate. 
 
Elementis senior executives have stated that no final decision on closure has been taken. The ICEM supports workers in the Teesside and Wilton area in their buoyant efforts to preserve jobs in this sector.

UK Workers, Community, Unite the Union Fight to Protect Jobs at Elementis Chemicals

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