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13 January, 200816 December 2007
“We, the representatives of coalmine workers from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Columbia, France, Germany, Mongolia, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Ukraine, United Kingdom and India, having met in Kolkata India, 14th – 16th December 2007 make the following declaration:
1. We note from the proud history of militant and long drawn struggle by coalminers’ unions throughout the world, that when coalminers stand strong and determined significant gains have been made in the areas of safety and health, in conditions of employment and, in many cases, within the political structures of Countries. We, the attendees of this Conference, pledge to do all in our power, to strengthen and continue that proud tradition.
2. While we recognize that our members work in one of the most hazardous industries on earth, we refuse to accept that the appalling toll of death, injury and disease that prevails in the coal mining industry can be permitted to continue.
3. As a first step, we demand that all countries not only take the necessary steps to ratify ILO Convention C176, but that they also take urgent action to ensure that the commitments continued in the Convention are put into practice.
4. Acknowledging that ratification of the Convention alone will not make mines safer we call on the ILO and the United Nations, to further strengthen the regime in place to ensure that ratifying Countries are in fact complying with the commitments contained in the Convention, and to seriously consider a programme of audits and inspections.
5. This Conference rejects the siren song of the privatization of State assets where it is nothing more than an excuse to replace the secure employment of workers engaged in those State enterprises, with the insecurity of employment by companies whose only interest is that of maximizing profit and investor returns.
To allow the exploitation of a State’s non-renewable resources for the sole purpose of profit by coal companies and major corporations, and to leave the employment of workers and the welfare of their families to the vagaries of the so-called “free market” is inexcusable, unwarranted and unacceptable. Conference particularly offers common cause to the Indian coal mining unions in their struggle to stop the privatization of the Indian coal industry.
6. This Conference notes the disproportionate blame being laid at the feet of the Coal Industry and the burning of coal as a contributor to the current climate change crisis confronting the planet. It is convenient for many to single out coal for strident criticism, while neglecting other significant sources of global greenhouse gas emissions. Any skepticism concerning the validity of the genesis of climate change must be tempered by the reality of the threat that exists to the continuation of large sections of the international coal mining industry, as the industry is targeted by its critics.
7. The coal industry must respond to this challenge, and conference calls on both Governments and Companies – in particular those that operate in the rich developed nations (Companies whose principal purpose for exploiting coal reserves is the generation of profit) – to properly fund research into and establish practical applications of clean coal technology.
8. This funding must be significant, not merely token, and can easily be afforded by Companies which are making record profits as a consequence of the current unprecedented resources boom being fuelled by the rapid expansion of the economies of developing nations.
9. This Conference notes the growing trend in almost every Country represented here, of coal industry employers, both State owned and private to engage contract and casual labour in preference to permanent employees, and we express our strident condemnation of this practice. “Outsourcing” “Contracting” and “Casualisation” not only pose a direct threat to the secure employment of permanent employees, but exposes the outsourced and causal workers to reduced wages and conditions lower safety standards, diminished employment security and serious difficulties in accessing basic trade union rights to organize and collectively bargain.
10. We the delegates, declare this, the first International Coalminers’ Conference, to have been an outstanding success. We express our sincere appreciation to our Indian Trade Union colleagues for their hospitality and professionalism in hosting and staging this event.
11. We have been afforded a remarkable opportunity to share the experiences, the knowledge, the comradeship and the solidarity of coalminers from around the World. We call on our National Unions and our International Organisations to support an ongoing role for this Conference.
Irrespective of our politics, our race, creed, colour, or our international affiliations, we are all coalminers and we wish to be afforded the chance to meet and discuss coalminer’s issues and to seek solutions to coalminer’s problems and concerns. Conference respectfully requests that national and international unions represented here, give serious and favourable consideration to the continued operation of the original preparatory committee to oversee progress on the matters raised in this Declaration, and to be responsible for convening a second International Coalminers’ Conference at an appropriate time in the future.”