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11 August, 2005ICEM News release No. 26/1998
Led by Australian mining and allied workers' union the CFMEU, the protest marked a further escalation in the campaign by unions and others worldwide to instil some corporate ethics into Rio Tinto, the world's biggest mining company.
The Melbourne demonstration was outside Rio Tinto's headquarters for Australia, where the company has one of its most extensive mining operations. Australia is also the scene of a major drive by Rio Tinto to push trade unions out of its mines and end collective bargaining.
"Rio Tinto: Corporate Greed, Global Grief"
said a huge banner unfurled by demonstrators in the central business district of Melbourne, Australia, today.
The multinational's anti-union stance in many parts of the world has made it a priority target for a global trade union campaign coordinated by the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM).
The ICEM and its affiliated unions worldwide, including the CFMEU, are allying themselves with a wide range of campaigning organisations on environmental issues and human rights, notably worker rights and indigenous people's rights. Rio Tinto is currently under heavy fire on all these counts.
One feature of the campaign will be parliamentary questions about Rio Tinto in a number of countries where it operates. Last week, 29 British parliamentarians signed up to a highly critical motion about Rio Tinto in the House of Commons (see ICEM UPDATE 24/1998). The company's global corporate headquarters is in London.
"Rio Tinto makes much of the fact that it is a global operator," CFMEU National Secretary John Sutton told the Melbourne demonstrators. "Now it's finally being made to answer internationally for its actions, such as its aggressive anti-union campaign in Australia and overseas."
Sutton said it is important for Rio Tinto's overseas operations to be exposed to parliamentary and public scrutiny in Australia, in order to counter the company's public relations machine. The company claimed an excellent worker health and safety record, he pointed out, but that was not the real story. He cited the compensation case brought against Rio Tinto in the UK courts by a former employee, who claims he contracted cancer because of inadequate safety provisions at Rio Tinto's Rossing uranium mine in Namibia.
"Few people know that Rio Tinto mined uranium in Namibia during the 1970s and 1980s in direct violation of UN resolutions," Sutton added. "Those are the sorts of issues the questions and reports to governments will bring out. We believe that once people have a clearer understanding of the problems Rio Tinto has caused around the world there will be pressure on the company to change.
"It's time Rio Tinto adopted progressive and ethical policies," Sutton insisted. "Rio Tinto must start working with, and not against, its employees, communities and the environment."
PROUD TO BE ANTI-UNION
In its new annual report, now being distributed to shareholders, Rio Tinto writes: "At our operations throughout the world, we respect the right of employees to choose for themselves whether or not they wish to be represented collectively."
But the pictures below tell a very different story. Broadcast on Australian television, they show a ceremony at the company's Hunter Valley No. 1 mine in Australia on 25 June last year. The overwhelming majority of the workers there were on strike over the company's refusal to conclude a collective agreement. So the company mined small amounts of coal by using white-collar staff plus just seven workers who had signed individual employment contracts.
At the ceremony, trophies were handed out celebrating the "First Coal Mined at Hunter Valley No. 1 Mine by Non-Union Labour."
Footage of this bizarre little rite is included in a new documentary on Rio Tinto, Naked Into The Jungle.