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Thousands of Indian electricity workers have been arrested in a dispute over power privatisation in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Those now in jail include union leaders A.K. Singh and Shailendra Dube. 
 
The Indian and Uttar Pradesh governments must ensure the detainees' release, the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM) insists. The Uttar Pradesh government and the Electricity Board should also &quot;cancel any decisions taken without consultation&quot; and &quot;return to the bargaining table with sufficient time for a proper discussion with the trade unions on the proposed far-reaching reforms,&quot; ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs urges in faxes sent today to Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Ram Prakash Gupta. 
 
Some 90,000 employees of the Uttar Pradesh State Electricity Board struck for the eleventh day in succession today, essentially in protest over non-consultation on the future of the electricity industry in the state. Power workers in other northern Indian states have been holding stoppages in support of their Uttar Pradesh colleagues. The government plan, backed by the World Bank, is to corporatise the Uttar Pradesh electricity industry into separate generation, transmission and distribution businesses. The ultimate aim is privatisation. 
 
In addition to the arrests, the government has fired many of the strikers. Army engineers have been brought in to man the power stations and new civilian power workers are now being recruited to replace those sacked or arrested. The state has been suffering cuts in its electricity and water supply. 
 
The jailing of union leaders scuppered the latest round of talks between the Uttar Pradesh government and the strikers yesterday. The power workers demanded that their leaders be released to take part in the negotiations, but the authorities refused.

Release Indian Power Workers, Unions Demand

Imerys, the ceramics and construction materials multinational, has just given itself a new name and a new image. But it already risks seeing them tarnished by an international dispute over its anti-union stance in the USA. 
 
In Brussels today, the American Imerys workers' union joined with Belgian unions and a global trade union federation in launching a world campaign to win full trade union rights throughout Imerys' operations. 
 
Belgian financiers the Frere family are major investors in Imerys, and the unions insisted that the Frere group must intervene to ensure that Imerys' American plants immediately cease anti-union practices that would not be tolerated in Europe. 
 
Known until recently as Imetal, the company claims to be the world leader in refractory raw materials, paper pigments, white pigments and high-purity graphite. 
 
The US Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers union (PACE) is fighting anti-union campaigns by Imerys at its plants in Georgia and Alabama. The restructuring that led to the formation of Imerys last year included the merger of unionised and non-unionised production plants in the USA. PACE now wants the chance to represent workers throughout the newly merged Imerys operation there, but the company has hired professional &quot;union-busters&quot; to discourage union organising and is blocking all attempts to plebiscite its workers on whether they wish to be represented by the union. 
 
At the global level, PACE is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). 
 
ICEM Belgian affiliate the Centrale G&eacute;n&eacute;rale-FGTB/Algemene Centrale-ABVV has also declared its full support for the American trade unionists. 
 
At the Centrale G&eacute;n&eacute;rale headquarters in Brussels today, the following statement was issued by Michel Nollet, President, Belgian General Labour Federation (FGTB/ABVV); Paul Lootens, General Secretary of the Centrale G&eacute;n&eacute;rale; Fred Higgs, ICEM General Secretary; and Joe Drexler, Special Projects Director of PACE: 
 
The FGTB, Centrale G&eacute;n&eacute;rale, ICEM and PACE condemn the continued refusal of the American management of Imerys to permit a free and fair determination of its US employees' wishes concerning trade union representation. 
 
We note that PACE has charged Imerys with seven serious violations of US labour law. The US National Labor Relations Board is currently investigating the accusations, which could lead to prosecutions. In particular, PACE charges that the employer has threatened and harassed pro-union employees because of their activities, and that the company has financed and otherwise supported an anti-union campaign group known as the &quot;A-team.&quot; 
 
We also note that Imerys has hired professional &quot;union-busters&quot; to advise it on methods of pressurising its employees to reject trade union representation. Methods employed by the company so far include meetings which employees are obliged to attend and at which anti-union videos are screened. Among other things, these videos equate trade unionism with the mafia. Employees are not permitted to ask questions at these meetings. 
 
23 percent of the shares in Imerys are in the hands of the Frere group's financial holding company. It is wholly unacceptable that Belgian shareholders should support a company involved in anti-union practices. 
 
We call upon Imerys to agree, without further delay, to a &quot;card-check&quot; procedure in order to determine whether the majority of its US workforce wishes to be represented by PACE. If a majority does wish to be so represented, we call upon Imerys to recognise PACE for collective bargaining purposes immediately. We insist that Imerys management should maintain an attitude of neutrality throughout this procedure and during any subsequent union elections, and should not seek in any way to pressurise or intimidate its employees concerning this matter. 
 
We further call upon the Frere family and their financial holding company to ensure that Imerys, in which they are major investors, fully respects human rights, including trade union rights, throughout its worldwide operations. 
 
Imerys is headquartered in France. Trade unions there have pledged full support for the campaign, as have unions in Britain, where Imerys has major manufacturing operations.

Imerys US Dispute Goes Global

Police in Australia are attacking picket lines as minerals and metals giant BHP continues its bid to deunionise parts of its operation there. 
 
Pickets at BHP's Newman site were assaulted by police using batons last night, the mining and allied workers' union CFMEU reports. 
 
And at BHP's Port Hedland site today, 80 police officers broke a picket line. Several people were arrested, including the secretary of the CFMEU's Western Australian Mining &amp; Energy branch, Gary Wood. He has been released on bail, on condition that he does not return to the picket line, and will face court on Friday. 
 
In a hit-and-run incident on another picket line, an officer of the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union was knocked down by a BHP car. John Mossington, the AMWU officer, has been hospitalised. Police are investigating. 
 
The CFMEU and AMWU are two of the unions campaigning against a recent radical policy shift in BHP's Australian iron ore operations. Management there has abandoned its traditional cooperative approach to industrial relations in favour of a hard-line policy that denies its workers the right to bargain collectively. 
 
Last November, BHP issued its 1,000 iron ore workers in the Pilbara, Western Australia, with individual staff contracts, saying it was not prepared to negotiate a new collective agreement. The company had previously operated under a collective agreement negotiated with unions. Legislation brought in by Australia's right-wing federal government has made it much easier for employers to evade collective bargaining. 
 
At the global level, the CFMEU and AMWU are affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). 
 
&quot;We condemn the opportunistic attempts by various multinationals to use current Australian legislation for purposes of union-busting,&quot; said ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs in Brussels today. &quot;The ICEM is very concerned that BHP has joined the ranks of the union-busters. The company must get back to collective bargaining and to constructive relations with the Australian trade unions.&quot;

BHP&#039;s Union-Busting:  Australian Pickets Attacked

Germany needs a long-term, reliable consensus on energy policy, which must &quot;take just as much account of economic and technical needs as of social responsibility and environmental challenges.&quot; That is the view of the country's mine, chemical and energy workers, as set out at a press conference yesterday by Hubertus Schmoldt, President of their union the IG BCE. 
<img height="191" alt="Hubertus Schmoldt: &quot;Many jobs are at stake.&quot;" src="" width="147" />
Hubertus Schmoldt: &quot;Many jobs are at stake.&quot;

All concerned must avoid putting the energy consensus at risk, Schmoldt warned. German and foreign-based firms must be given a reliable basis for investment decisions. 
 
Germany is engaged in a major debate on its future energy options - not least due to the rise of the environmentalist Green party, which is now the Social Democrats' junior partner in the federal coalition government. 
 
In particular, the greening of German energy policy has placed a question mark over the future of nuclear power. 
 
An energy consensus could succeed only &quot;if the phasing out of nuclear energy is implemented as a longer-term change,&quot; Schmoldt insisted. Decisions on nuclear must also be placed in a broader context, he said. &quot;IG BCE supports a comprehensive energy policy whose central component is the well-tried principle of an energy mix. Native energy sources, particularly hard coal and lignite, have a full part to play in this, both now and beyond the year 2005.&quot; 
 
Plans for environmentalist energy taxes are one complicating factor in the current German discussion. Originally, exemptions had been proposed for energy-intensive industries. But the waiver plan got the thumbs-down from the EU, and German manufacturing industry could now face a uniform tax rate of 20 per cent on its energy bills. 
 
IG BCE still thinks that complete exemption for industry would be the &quot;best solution,&quot; Schmoldt said. However, the union could view an energy tax positively provided that the rate for manufacturing industry were 15 percent or less, the tax burden remained constant in absolute terms and commitments to reduce energy use were rewarded with tax incentives. 
 
&quot;Energy taxes must not increase industry's overall tax bill,&quot; Schmoldt said. &quot;Moreover, there must be a binding commitment that the already announced second and third phases of the ecological taxation reforms will be introduced only within the context of a common solution at the European level. It would be damaging for Germany to go it alone, and we would resolutely resist this. Many jobs are at stake, as are the credibility and calculability of policy-making.&quot; 
 
At the global level, IG BCE is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), of which Hubertus Schmoldt is Vice-President.

Real Energy Consensus Needed, IGBCE Says

Brazilian labour confederation CUT today launched a national campaign to ban all forms of asbestos from the country. 
 
The first goal of the campaign is to make union members fully aware of the dangers of asbestos, and CUT has prepared a full range of information material. 
 
Brazil is the world's fifth-largest producer and consumer of asbestos, and did not begin regulating its use until the mid-1980s. In recent years, asbestos use per capita in Brazil has been 14 times the US rate. 
 
The Brazilian government should offer early retirement packages to the country's asbestos miners, the CUT says. It also wants the government to invest in new industries in the mining areas. 
 
The unions believe there is a good chance that Brazil will ban asbestos in the near future. The major asbestos companies Eternit and Brasilit (a Saint-Gobain company) announced on 30 November that they would conduct research into the use of alternative materials. 
 
The CUT hopes that its national campaign will speed up progress towards a ban. 
 
&quot;There is no such thing as safe asbestos,&quot; emphasises the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). &quot;Attempts to distinguish between 'more' and 'less' hazardous types of asbestos are based on discredited science, and even single exposures to very low doses of fibres can result in harm.&quot;

Brazil Unions Seek Asbestos Ban

Several hundred union members rallied in Melbourne, Australia, today outside the headquarters of BHP, the minerals, metals and oil multinational. 
 
They were protesting over a radical policy shift in BHP's Australian iron ore operations. Management there has abandoned its traditional cooperative approach to industrial relations in favour of a hard-line policy that denies its workers the right to bargain collectively. 
 
BHP issued its 1,000 iron ore workers in the Pilbara, Western Australia, with individual staff contracts, saying it was not prepared to negotiate a new collective agreement. The company had previously operated under a collective agreement negotiated with unions. 
 
The individual staff contracts were delivered to workers' homes on November 11. BHP decreed that workers must either sign the contracts or stay on their expired agreement. Sticking with the expired agreement would mean forgoing wage and superannuation rises and lump-sum sick leave payouts. Under the individual contracts, BHP would be able to impose workplace changes and alter pay scales without having to negotiate with unions. BHP offered workers a bonus of three months' back pay if they signed by December 3. 
 
The Secretary-elect of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Greg Combet, said the BHP iron ore division had moved sharply away from its successful cooperative approach to industrial relations, and was aping the hard-nosed American-style tactics that characterised its competitor, Rio Tinto. 
&quot;Not only is BHP now displaying great disregard for the right of employees to bargain collectively,&quot; Combet pointed out, &quot;it is adopting discriminatory practices against one section of its workforce. BHP is offering these Pilbara workers 14 percent superannuation only if they sign an individual contract, and yet BHP already pays its steel workers the same amount under a collective agreement negotiated with the unions. 
 
&quot;If BHP Steel can work out a collective agreement,&quot; Combet asked, &quot;why can't BHP Iron Ore do the same? Unions and their members in the Pilbara are more than willing to talk about efficiencies and flexibility to boost BHP's domestic and international competitiveness in iron ore.&quot; 
 
BHP's individual staff contract offer came just weeks after conservative lawyers and journalists published articles in the Australian financial press urging the company to drop &quot;its union culture&quot;. Some industrial relations experts are tipping that the move by BHP is a forerunner of similar forays into other areas, such as the coal and steel divisions.

BHP&#039;s Anti-Bargaining Stance Sparks Australian Protests

&nbsp;The government in South Korea has at last legally recognised the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU). The labour ministry decision on 23 November came after no less than four previous rejections of KCTU bids to obtain full legal status. 
Announcing the legal recognition at a press conference, KCTU President Dan Byung-ho said the Confederation would base its future action on &quot;the principles of independence, democracy, struggle and moral strength kept alive by so many pioneers who gave their lives in the course of our struggle&quot;. 
 
The 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM) has congratulated the KCTU and all Korean workers on their achievement. 
 
&quot;The Korean government has finally recognised the long-standing truth that the KCTU is widely representative of the Korean working class and is no longer a force that can be marginalised from negotiations over social and industrial issues,&quot; commented ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs. &quot;The courage and perseverance of Korean workers over the past years have been an inspiration to the labour movement worldwide.&quot; 
 
ICEM member unions include affiliates both of the KCTU and of the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU), which was already legally recognised. 
 
In a statement, the KCTU paid tribute to the many thousands of Korean trade unionists imprisoned and dismissed from their jobs during the struggle for recognition. The new ruling &quot;is also a victory for the international trade union movement and the vindication of the standard-setting and supervisory vigilance of the International Labour Organisation,&quot; the KCTU said. 
 
But it warned that full freedom of association is still not guaranteed in the Republic of Korea. &quot;Some one million government employees are still denied the right and freedom to form or join trade unions,&quot; the KCTU pointed out. Also, &quot;many millions of workers remain outside the trade unions&quot;. And more than 50 percent of Korean workers are employed in &quot;non-standard&quot; jobs which often put them beyond the protection of current labour laws. &quot;70 percent of employed women workers are found in this category,&quot; the KCTU said. It has resolved to &quot;reach out to these workers&quot;. 
 

The KCTU will also campaign next year for the Korean statutory working week to be cut to 40 hours. 
 
And it plans to &quot;transform the current union structure, from enterprise unionism to industrial unionism&quot;. This will be &quot;a vital requirement in the KCTU's effort to reach out to a wider range of workers and to undertake its campaigns more effectively&quot;. But &quot;it may - unless the government and employers acknowledge the inevitability of the change - require continued difficult struggle on the part of the KCTU&quot;.

Korea Legalises Union Confederation

South Africa has signed up to a key international mining safety standard. 
 
The country's Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana announced the good news in a fax received today by the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). 
 
ILO Convention 176 on safety and health in mines has now been ratified by the South African parliament, Mdladlana told the ICEM. Parliament also approved the accompanying Recommendation 183. 
 
On 4 November, the ICEM asked South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki to promote South African ratification of Convention 176. President Mbeki, who was the guest speaker at the ICEM World Congress in Durban, promised to raise the matter at the next meeting of the South African cabinet. 
 
Approved by the world's government, trade union and employer representatives within the ILO, Convention 176 sets out international standards for ensuring health and safety in mines. The ICEM played a major role in its drafting and adoption. 
 
The Convention came into force in 1995 and had already been ratified by 12 countries. Ratification by South Africa, one of the world's biggest mining nations, will send an important signal to mining countries worldwide. 
 
ILO Conventions are ratifiable by states and binding upon them. The related ILO Recommendations set out further detail on implementation of the Conventions. 
 
&quot;We wish to thank you for raising this issue with us,&quot; Labour Minister Mdladlana wrote to the ICEM, &quot;and to assure you that we indeed take the matter of health and safety of all workers, including those in mines, very seriously.&quot;

South Africa Signs World Mining Safety Norms

The NUM has settled strikes at two of the world&rsquo;s largest platinum producers, Anglo Platinum and Impala Platinum. The pay disputes were settled for increases between 7.75% and 9.5%, depending on job grades, and cycle shift workers who work on public holidays won added improvements.

NUM in South Africa Settles Two Platinum Strikes

South African affiliate NUM sees no harmony, only dishevel in the hostile takeover of Goldfields by smaller gold-mining company Harmony. In a statement, NUM said that considering the high gold price, companies should be investing in development and job growth rather than consolidation and shrinkage. Both South African companies have retrenched numerous workers this year alone. NUM is calling for dialogue between the two companies instead of hostile &ldquo;approaches that send jitters into the market and economy,&rdquo; in the words of Gen. Sec. Gwede Mantashe. NUM is also opposed to a Goldfields preferred deal with Canada&rsquo;s Imagold and said the mining industry in South Africa suffers an &ldquo;anti-patriotic spirit&rdquo; in terms of abandoning national investment.

South Africa’s NUM Chastises Harmony’s Takeover Bid

Archive

Release Indian Power Workers, Unions Demand

Imerys US Dispute Goes Global

BHP's Union-Busting: Australian Pickets Attacked

Real Energy Consensus Needed, IGBCE Says

Brazil Unions Seek Asbestos Ban

BHP's Anti-Bargaining Stance Sparks Australian Protests

Korea Legalises Union Confederation

South Africa Signs World Mining Safety Norms

NUM in South Africa Settles Two Platinum Strikes

South Africa’s NUM Chastises Harmony’s Takeover Bid

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