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3 December, 2007
Less than a month after the US-based Ross International company agreed to joint talks with ICEM Colombian affiliate Sintravidricol at three factories, the company reversed course and said it would not recognise the union at two of those plants, or at two others in Colombia. The company manufactures metal moulding for the glass industry, and is a specific supplier to glassmaker Peldar, the Owens-Illinois subsidiary in South America.
This labour relations shift is another attempt by owner Larry Ross to avert unionisation by both direct workers and contract workers at four of five of his Colombian factories. Sintravidricol has a collective agreement at Moldes Medellin, Ross’s plant in Sabaneta, and it was in late October that the company agreed to hold joint, three-plant talks with Sintravidricol at Moldes Medellin, as well as at two other Ross businesses: Andes Tooling and Andes Cast Metals.
For over a year, the ICEM and its US affiliate, the United Steelworkers (USW), have campaigned, together with Sintravidricol, to pressure Ross, which established four other Colombian factories staffed with contract workers to weaken the union at Moldes Medellin.
But in spite of the October guarantee by the company, Ross is not willing to recognise Sintravidricol at the other four plants. Colombian management recently informed the union that Larry Ross is not willing to sign any agreement that recognises trade union rights for workers in the other plants.
Sintravidricol began a strike at the three factories on 27 November. In a letter to the company, the ICEM again reiterated its demand to Ross International that Sintravidricol workers are engaged in a basic “struggle for trade union freedom.”
Among items Sintravidricol was hoping to resolve at the joint bargaining table are redress to low salaries, and a check on the widespread use of contract and agency labour.
In the US as well, the USW has again picked up the campaign against the privately-held, Pennsylvania-based company. The union has nominated Larry Ross as “Grinch of the Year” within the US-based labour and community organisation, “Jobs with Justice.” The union has submitted Ross’s name as an example of a company “engaging in a global race to the bottom, in search of low wages and the ability to violate workers' rights.”
The USW is allied with “Jobs with Justice,” an activist grouping that holds an annual election to get the grinch which has done most to harm working families. To cast your vote for Larry Ross, please go here: http://www.jwj.org/grinchnominate.html.