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5 October, 2008
Meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan, last month, leaders of five energy unions – comprising the ICEM’s Caspian Sea Energy Union Network – drafted and issued the nine-point “Declaration on Social Standards for Workers of MNCs Operating in the Caspian Region.”
ICEM-affiliated energy unions from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkey, and Uzbekistan took part. The meetings also had the active involvement of Germany’s Friedrich Ebert Siftung, with Azerbaijan Country Director Rashad Huseynli participating.
The declaration was the natural outgrowth of efforts by the host union, the Oil and Gas Workers’ Union of Azerbaijan (OGWUA), to bring trade union rights and better social benefits to workers of contracting firms in the Caspian’s oil and gas development areas.
Delegates to the ICEM's Caspian Sea Energy Union Network
The two-day conference was led by ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda and ICEM Energy Sector Chairman Lars Myhre, the Norwegian Industri Energi trade union leader who played a key role with OGWUA President Jahangir Aliyev in organising the first of the Caspian Sea contract workers through a strike against McDermott International in 2005.
The declaration pledges to defend the civil, social, and economic rights of energy workers in the region. It states, using “multilateral and bilateral discussions, our resolve (is) to defend through our consolidated activities” the nine civil, social, and economic rights inherent in all work.
Signing of the Declaration, at left ICEM Gen. Sec. Manfred Warda; right, seated: ROGWU's Lev Mironov
Those nine include: a “guaranteed right of workers to organise as the key component of human rights in the sphere of work”; decent remuneration and promotion of job opportunities for people in the countries where the MNCs operate; gender, race, and youth equality, with “non-acceptance of all manifestations of discrimination at work.”
Also, to resist the employment practices of temporary and seasonal work; to promote uniform qualification requirements by MNCs; promote best practice health, safety, and ergonomic policies; adhere to national labour law observances; full compliance with ILO core labour standards, and the OECD Guidelines for MNCs; and to seek Global Framework Agreements with MNCs “as a tool to guarantee uniform social and economic standards, and civil rights for workers of the Caspian Region.”
Besides the ICEM and OGWUA’s Alyiyev signing the Declaration, it was also signed by Tlekkabyl Kabdulov, President, the Oil and Gas Workers’ Union of Kazakhstan; Lev Mironov, President, the Russian Oil and Gas Workers’ Union; and Mustafa Oztaskin, General Secretary of Turkey’s Petrol-Iş.