4 May, 2009
A two-month dispute between Michelin in Thailand and rubber workers backed by ICEM affiliate Petroleum and Chemical Workers’ Federation (PCFT) at a factory in Laem Chabang, Chonburi Province, ended favourably last week. The resolve came via tripartite dialogue and after strong intervention by the ICEM, FCE-CFDT of France, and Michelin’s European Works Council.
The dispute ended in the early morning hours of 28 April when state mediators, PCFT representatives, and Michelin’s Laem Chabang managers reached a six-point accord that hopefully ends retaliatory punishment of 383 of the plant’s 1,500 workers and ends a lockout that began on 25 March.
Workers agreed to end mass protests at Michelin’s plant gates effective on 28 April, and the company agreed to reinstate all workers who had been victimised by local management for refusing to withdraw their names from a petition circulated in early March. That petition called on management to engage in consultation with workers and PCFT representatives before implementing a 13% wage cut.
Michelin Laem Chabang PCFT union leaders, from left, Thanakorn Somsin, Rangsan Monchaisong, and Samai Koonswat
Instead, management imposed a 35% wage cut on workers who refused to retract the petition and some nine days later imposed a lockout on them.
Provincial mediators from Chonburi’s Labour Protection and Welfare Office got both sides together, but on 20 April, local managers would not budge from the harsh, retaliatory 35% cut. The union at that mediation session proposed acceptance of the 13% cut for all until October 2009, but called on Michelin to pay a 2008 two-month bonus that the company had already announced.
The ICEM again intervened on 21 April, calling the attitude of local managers “arrogant and punitive, (warranting) immediate intervention from Michelin corporate headquarters in France.”
Photo from Bangkok Post
Last week’s negotiated settlement will see Michelin pay the two-month bonus, with all workers seeing a 13% cut. For those workers not choosing to return to work, they will receive assistance money as set forth under severance provisions of the Labour Protection Act. Michelin also agreed to drop legal and criminal complaints against workers who protested at plant gates.
However, on the eve of the settlement, police arrested 18 of the locked-out workers, plus another worker from a nearby factory for a 20 April protest at the factory. As of today, it is not clear if those charges have been dropped.
Laem Chabang rubber workers received strong support from staff employed at Bridgestone and Goodyear factories in Thailand, as well as from workers at other Michelin plants in the country.
“This is a hopeful sign, that workers, managers, together with government mediators can resolve differences through proper social dialogue,” said ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda. “The ICEM views this dispute as a result of the paralysing global financial crisis and our wish now is that this tyre plant recovers so that renewed orders and sales will benefit workers.”