20 April, 2010ILWU members supported by other unions and NGOs protest against the lockout of Californian workers at Rio Tinto AGM in London.
USA/UK: Some 70 protestors from the UK, Netherlands, and Belgium demonstrated with locked-out members of the U.S. International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in London at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Rio Tinto. The global mining company maliciously locked 560 members of ILWU Local 30 off their jobs on January 31, 2010 in Boron, California, before reaching an impasse in collective bargaining.
The manifestation at the AGM was organized by the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF), with support from the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Union (ICEM) and the International Metalworkers' Federation (IMF). Several NGOs, including the London Mining Network, joined the labour rally.
Inside the meeting, Rio Tinto CEO Tom Albanese fielded questions regarding the company's conduct for nearly two hours. Local 30 bargaining committee member Dave Irish queried why Rio Tinto was willing to take deep revenue drops through lost production brought on by the lockout, while at the same time imposing economic hardships on 560 working families.
Albanese's answer captured the general philosophy of corporations everywhere: prioritizing profits before people. He said Rio Tinto's rollbacks on working terms and conditions at Boron were necessary in order to bring ILWU Local 30's collective agreement more in line with other company enterprises in North America.
Despite massive profits driven mainly by iron ore, copper, and coal - and even by the relatively small Rio Tinto Minerals, which controls a 45 per cent market share of the global borates business - the London/Melbourne-based mining house subscribes to "the race to the bottom" philosophy of suppressing human and social benefits.
A day after the London AGM of April 15, the American union also did protest actions against Rio Tinto at British consulate offices in the U.S. cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, and in Vancouver, Canada.
Rio Tinto Minerals and ILWU Local 30 did return to bargaining on April 14-15, the first set of talks since the lockout began. It was a fact noted by Albanese from the dais of the AGM, but clearly missing was any willingness by Rio Tinto to budge from its concessionary proposals. In California, the two sides adjourned late on April 15 without making any meaningful progress.
On April 19 the Rio Tinto European Works Council held a press conference in Paris in solidarity with the locked out U.S. miners. A copy of the press pack in French only is available on the IMF website here.
This week, on April 22, Rio Tinto is scheduled to replicate its AGM in Melbourne and the ILWU will be there. Shareholders will hear Secretary-Treasurer Willie Adams and locked-out Local 30 activist Terri Judd tell of the anguish faced by Mojave Desert, California, families. They will have the support of the Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union (CFMEU) and the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA).
See a short video of the demo in London here.
The protest was also reported in Australian mainstream media here.