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4 June, 2007
A 14-month-long freedom of association fight on behalf of workers of Lafarge subcontractors in Korea ended on 28 May when the company and ICEM affiliate Korean Chemical and Textile Workers’ Federation (KCTF) signed an accord granting the workers employment rights and union rights.
The agreement ends a bitter dispute that started when workers of Woojin Industry, a Lafarge subcontractor at its Okgye, South Province, cement plant, joined the KCFT in March 2006. Thirteen of the workers were sacked, and Lafarge cancelled its contract with Woojin, moving the jobs and the company’s equipment to two other subcontractors.
Under terms of last week’s agreement, covering six workers who still sought their rightful return to work, Lafarge Halla management in Korea will make “best efforts” for the former Woojin workers to be employed by three subcontractors now on site. The agreement also pledges to ensure that none of the subcontractors, Sehwa Sanup, Daewon Sanup, and Soogwang Maintenance, will discriminate against the workers because of their union membership.
Additionally, all legal complaints, petitions, and requests for remedies – from both sides – were to be withdrawn.
The ICEM, together with the Building and Woodworkers’ International (BWI), the two global union federations signatory to a Global Framework Agreement with Lafarge, had ardently pressed the issue of freedom of association for the contract workers before senior managers of the company in Paris on several occasions.
ICEM Gen. Sec. Manfred Warda
“We commend our affiliate, the Korean Chemical and Textile Workers’ Federation, for its diligence in seeing that justice was delivered for these contract workers,” said ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda. “This serves as a strong example that trade unions have an important role to play in protecting labour standards that contract workers and agency workers are entitled to.”