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7 February, 2007
ICEM affiliate in the United Kingdom, Transport & General Workers Union (TGWU), began a ballot today for industrial action against Imerys among its members in the UK’s South West. The balloting, over the French-based building materials company’s intransigence in redundancy bargaining, will run until 23 February.
TGWU has scheduled meetings with workers and management on 27 February to release the results, and to discuss possible action.
The ballot will have two questions:
Are you prepared to take industrial action short of a strike? and
Are you prepared to take part in strike action?
In July 2006, Imerys announced it would make 900 workers redundant in its former English China Clay mining and processing operations, in the Cornwall and Devon regions of the UK’s South West. Although TGWU and other unions representing Imerys’ workers negotiated job reductions down to just over 600, the company refused to negotiate an adequate redundancy packages.
The ICEM believes that Imerys has demonstrated contempt for the social consultation process in the UK, and complete unfairness to industrial workers in the South West. The ICEM notes that the redundancy package put forward by the company is barely above the minimum British requirement, an amount commonly recognised as low. The 20-million-member ICEM believes that Imerys, one of the world’s biggest and most profitable materials sector companies, must improve its social obligations to its workers in the South West.
