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A rank-and-file vote to merge two major British trade unions was approved on 8 March, and the UK will have its biggest union, totalling two million workers, on 1 May. In a mail ballot referendum, union members of Amicus and Transport & General Workers Union (TGWU) in the UK and Ireland voted to merge their unions. 
 
Eighty-six percent of all TGWU members that voted backed the merger, while 70% of Amicus members that voted also gave approval to create the new, yet-to-be named union. The union will now comprise 30% of the UK’s Trade Union Congress, and will be the country’s dominant trade union in a wide swath of services and industries, ranging from transport and manufacturing – including print, paper, rubber, chemicals and oil – to food and farming, as well as banking, public services, and the voluntary sector. 
<img height="62" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/UKAmicus.jpg" width="120"/>           <img height="63" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/UKTGWU.gif" width="113"/>
Both unions utilised a full and transparent process which took two years to complete. In the initial stages, the trade union GMB was included in three-way discussions, but that union dropped out due to regional structure differences. 
 
"The new union will be a progressive, organising, fighting-back industrial giant,” said TGWU Gen. Sec. Tony Woodley, that is “focused above all on winning for our members in the workplace, and taking trade unionism to the millions who need it." 
 
"The new union will be the greatest campaigning force on behalf of ordinary people that has ever existed,” stated Amicus Gen. Sec. Derek Simpson. “It is a precursor to the creation of a single global trade union movement capable of challenging the might of multinationals who seek to play workforces and governments off against each other to reduce jobs and hard won pay and conditions." 
<img height="232" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0703Amicustgwumerger1.jpg" width="350"/>
Tony Woodley and Derek Simpson shaking hands
Woodley and Simpson will serve as Joint General Secretaries of the new union. A sole general secretary will be elected in a membership ballot in 2010. Both expressed a strong commitment to organising, stating that within three years, 10% of the combined union’s budget will be aimed at recruitment. 
 
A short list of possible names for the new union has been developed, and those names will be put before the membership in a democratic vote in the near future. 
 
TGWU was formed in 1922 when 14 unions, representing factory workers, dockers, stevedores, lightermen, transport staff, and clerks, merged into one union. Amicus was a more recent merger of trade unions. In 2002, the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union (AEEU) and Manufacturing, Science, Finance (MSF) merged to create it. In 2004, The Graphical, Paper and Media Union (GPMU) merged into Amicus and the same year, the financial services union UNIFI did the same.

Britain’s Biggest Union Formed with Amicus, TGWU Merger

<img height="40" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100"/>
At a merger Congress in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, last week, ICEM affiliate National Union of Workers in Electricity and Gas (SYNASEG), and the National Union of Workers in the Water Sector (SYNATRASE) formally came together to form FESENE, the Trade Union Federation of Energy and Water Workers. 
 
SYNASEG Gen. Sec. François Yao will hold the same position inside FESENE. He said the birth of the union is based on two principles, the right to association and the common fact that there is strength in unity. “Wherever there is an economic power, there needs to be a trade union counterpart,” said Yao at a press conference introducing the new union. 
 
The merger of the two unions occurs at a time when SYNASEG remains in dispute with CIE, the country’s electricity operator and a subsidiary of the Bouygues Group. The ICEM affiliate suspended a strike, scheduled to start last week, after national ministers for Public Works and Energy and Mines agreed to mediate social dialogue. 
<img height="143" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/FrancoisYao.jpg" width="100" alt=""/>
General Secretary François Yao
CIE has engaged in systematic attacks on SYNASEG since 2005. Then, the union backed the government’s reform of the national electric sector, which called for re-nationalising and not renewing Bouygues’ 15-year contract. But the government changed its policy and did award another 15-year contract to the French company. CIE retaliated over the following year by refusing to engage in social dialogue, and obstructing basic trade union rights. 
 
The current dispute centers on salary increases and the company’s handling of a Mutual Investment Fund, established for training, placement, and other worker needs. SYNASEG members contribute to the fund, but CIE uses the money for purposes other than what it is intended for. 
 
Yao said the union will assess this week’s mediation efforts by the two national ministers on 15 March, and take whatever action is necessary following that date.

ICEM’s Ivory Coast Affiliate, SYNASEG, Announces Merger with Water Workers’ Union

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Power Workers’ Union of Canada (PWU) has called the government’s plan to close all coal-fired electric generation plants by 2014 “unrealistic and risky.” The ICEM affiliate reiterated this stand in a statement welcoming the federal government’s ecoTrust plan, an investment vehicle to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 
 
PWU states that energy needs are growing rapidly across Canada. Advocating electric supply in the province of Ontario from many sources, the union is urging the province to use its share of ecoTrust monies to clean up carbon emissions by investing in better and cleaner technologies. 
<img height="30" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/CanadaPWU.jpg" width="250" alt=""/>
“Ontario needs affordable electricity for its growing needs and the existing coal-fuelled plants are a necessary part of the mix,” said PWU President Don MacKinnon. “The technology to dramatically reduce air pollution from these plants is readily available, and the PWU believes it should be installed.” 
 
The PWU also believes the best way to lessen the risk over electric supply – besides clean-coal methods – is new and refurbished nuclear plant capacity. “This is an affordable way to immediately reduce pollution, while the province makes investments in conservation and demand management, viable new energy sources, and new transmissions lines,” said the PWU statement. 
 
PWU, an affiliate of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), is the largest electric workers’ union in Ontario, representing employees in generation, transmission, distribution, regulations, and research and development.

PWU in Canada Calls for Cleaner Coal-Fuel Technologies

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The ICEM’s Goodyear Global Union Network convened in Akron, Ohio, on 19-20 March, and 50 trade union leaders from 12 countries attended. The Network expanded its steering committee, and pledged greater communication and exchange of data between workers at all of Goodyear’s global operations. 
 
The Goodyear Network is coordinated by the United Steelworkers (USW), based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
<img height="146" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0703GoodyearAkron1.jpg" width="360"/>
Trade Unionists at Goodyear
The union Network meetings, held in the US city of Goodyear’s global headquarters, produced a statement, which included a call for management to begin discussions on a global agreement, starting with talks on occupational health, safety, and environmental issues.” 
 
The statement also said: “Given Goodyear’s increasing size and global scope, it is important that unions participating in the Goodyear Global Union Network recommit their efforts to secure and promote the rights for all workers worldwide at Goodyear. As part of those efforts, we pledge to increase the effective functioning of the Network steering committee and to expand and improve Network communications.” 
 
Reports on the recent 86-day strike in North America were heard, and labour situations in which Goodyear has displayed disagreeable human conduct were also reported. Updates were presented on bargaining scheduled to begin in South Africa and Turkey.
<img height="112" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0703GoodYear2.jpg" width="160"/>
 Anan Pol-ung and ICEM Project Coordinator Aranya Pakapath of Thailand
Trade unionists also heard longstanding problems that exist in Goodyear’s Bangkok tyre factory. They heard of Thai management’s continuing waste of resources to fight the legitimate rights of contract workers inside Thai courts, and unionists met and heard from Anan Pol-ung, former president of the factory-level union in Bangkok, who was fired last year. 
 
The Network voiced strong support for him, and called on the company to properly restore him to his job at Goodyear in Thailand. Anan first drew the ire of Goodyear’s Thai management over two years ago when he made a stand with over 20 contract workers, many of whom had been working in the warehouse and rubber stock department of Goodyear’s Bangkok factory for up to 10 years under single-year individual contracts. 
 
Goodyear sacked the contract workers when they sought freedom of association rights. They were seeking to join with full-time employees at the 500-worker factory in organising with ICEM affiliate Petroleum and Chemical Workers’ Federation of Thailand. 
 
The expanded Goodyear Network elected Tom Conway, USW Vice President, as chairman. Other trade union leaders elected to join the steering committee include Carlos Antonio de Silva of Brazil and Werner Staniewski of Germany. Besides representatives from unions in Brazil, Germany, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, and US attending, delegates also came from Canada, Chile, France, Peru, Poland, and UK.

Goodyear Global Rubber Unions Meet in Akron, US

<img height="40" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100" alt=""/>
The French joint trade union front against the privatisation of Gaz de France (GDF), consisting of CGT, FO, CFE-CGC, and CFTC, called for a second national manifestation day tomorrow, 3 October, in Paris and in other French cities. This new call for demonstrations follows the union’s first day of action on 12 September. 
 
Tomorrow is the day when the National Assembly in France is set to vote on proposed legislation that, if adopted, would clear the way for the government-planned merger between GDF and the Franco-Belgian utility, Suez Group. 
 
Another demonstration day is scheduled to occur 14 October. According to a report published by the unions, who quote banking sources – specifically banking giant ING – some 20,000 jobs could be lost over the next three years if the merger deal goes through. The unions have also written to President Jacques Chirac, asking him to stop the privatisation of GDF. 
<img height="67" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/FranceFlag.gif" width="100" alt=""/>
Opposition to the merger deal, which was brokered by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin to fend off a hostile bid of Suez by Italian energy company Enel, appears to be growing, with not only opposition parties and trade unions fighting it, but also with some members of the ruling UMP Party resisting. 
 
In spite of this growing resistance, the first legal step to the merger process was taken last week when deputies in the National Assembly voted in favour of one key article of the proposed law, a measure to reduce France's stake in GDF from over 70% to 34%. However, as far as the unions are concerned, this “file has not been closed yet.” The proposed merger has yet to be voted on in its entirety, nor is it yet a done deal. 
 
The CGT, the union with the largest membership inside GDF, as well as Electricité de France (EDF), said in a statement: considering “the growing opposition by French citizens to the privatisation of GDF, it is no longer tolerable in this country for fundamental dossiers, such as the privatisation of the energy sector, to be dealt with only in the interest of one political party.” The union found it surprising that “with 80% of the French being against the privatisation, the Prime Minister announces this as a victory.” 
 
On 20 September, GDF and Suez announced a proposal of five measures, including asset transfers, in reply to the EU Commission’s anti-trust demands. FCE-CFDT seriously questions these proposed remedies forwarded by the two companies, saying wide ramifications would occur that have not been properly thought through. 
 
Problematic issues include, for example, the fact that competing companies would get easy access to a public resource without guarantees on pricing. The FCE-CFDT reiterated its demand to examine the alternative solution of developing partnerships between Suez and GDF, which would keep GDF in the public sector.

French Unions Continue Resistance to GDF-Suez Merger

<img height="40" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100"/>
A spate of disasters in Chinese mines occurred over the past month, including two on 29 and 30 September that claimed the lives of 17 miners. In all, at least 52 deaths occurred over the past 31 days, as reported by either the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety or the official news agency Xinhua. 
 
Four miners were overcome by carbon dioxide and suffocated on 29 September at the Changsheng coal mine in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region of northwest China. A day later, 13 miners were killed after a gas explosion at the Tianlong coal mine in the town of Hada, Heilongjiang province. Eight miners were rescued in that tragedy. 
 
On 22 September, two catastrophes occurred in Yunnan and Hebei provinces. At the Songzhu coal mine in Hauping County, Yunnan, a gas combustion explosion claimed the lives of two miners, while 27 others were injured. At an iron ore mine owned by Laiyuon Iron and Steel, a landslide also killed two miners, while injuring two others. The mine is a former state-owned enterprise that was operating without a work safety permit. 
 
Two separate accidents also happened on 13 September, claiming the lives of eight miners. At the privately-owned Xiren coal mine in Jilin province, work safety officials determined that miners inadvertently opened an adjacent mine tunnel, causing mass flooding. Seven died, while another 12 either escaped or were rescued. A gas leak at the Danangou coal mine, Datong city, Shanxi province, claimed one miner, while 45 were rescued. Both of these coal operations were licensed and qualified to operate. 
<img height="95" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMminingsector4.jpg" width="100"/>
In the central Chinese province of Hubei on 3 September, a mine shaft was flooded and six miners perished. That occurred at the Zhenxing coal mine in Daye city. A day earlier, eight miners died and four were seriously injured following a methane gas explosion at an illegal coal mine in southwest province.
On 31 August, nine workers died due to a gas blast inside the Lianyi coal mine in Lianyi city, Hunan province. They were killed after the mine owner hired them to repair tunnels. The owner had failed to measure the gas density inside shafts, and the workers’ electrical tools ignited, causing the explosion. 
 
Official statistics of the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS) state that for the first eight months of 2006, through August, mine accidents have claimed 2,900 lives. SAWS claims that this is a 25% decline over the same period in 2005. All told, China has witnessed 1,824 colliery accidents during the first eight months of 2006. 
 
Separately, the Coal Mine Safety bureau said it will close a total of 4,861 small coal operations this year and in 2007. Coal production by small mines, considered less than 30,000 tonnes annually, accounts for one-third of the country’s total production. The agency says that such mines bring two-thirds of the total deaths from Chinese mining operations.

Deaths in China’s Mines Rise in September

<img height="40" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100"/>
The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF) filed, at the request of the All-India Council of Unilever Unions, a complaint last week with the OECD National Contact Points in both the UK and The Netherlands. Unilever, the third largest global food company, is an Anglo-Dutch conglomerate. 
<img height="100" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/IUF.jpg" width="100"/>
The OECD complaint is on the appalling behaviour by Hindustan Lever, an Indian Unilever subsidiary, who, as described in a prior ICEM InBrief article, last year sold its Mumbai factory in order to have it closed down by another enterprise. In doing that, the company not only wanted to avoid paying taxes, the effort was also meant to escape duties to its own workforce. 
<img height="361" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0610HindustanLever.jpg" width="350" alt=""/>
The ICEM, together with the IUF, seeks the major global corporation to set things right, and calls on Unilever to respect both the relevant international standards, as well as the national law in India. The two GUFs believe that Hindustan Lever must immediately start fair and honest negotiations with the Hindustan Lever Employees’ Union (HLEU), the trade union representing its workforce. 
 
More on the dispute can be found on the IUF’s web-site <a href="http://www.iufdocuments.org/cgi-bin/dbman/db.cgi?db=default&uid=default&ID=3745&view_records=1&ww=1&en=1 ">here</a>.

OECD Complaint Filed on Unilever India

<img height="40" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100"/>
Global multinational, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., has suddenly become protectionist in its US rubber business, or so it would seem from reading the company’s strike weeklies, which are aimed at softening 15,000 American workers into giving back more of their hard-earned incomes. 
 
The strike by ICEM affiliate, United Steelworkers (USW), of 16 Goodyear plants in the US and Canada passed the three-week mark on 26 October. The company has expressed its scorn at striking union members, who are trying to protect their livelihoods, by very publicly pronouncing that 300 auxiliary workers will get the sack due to the strike. These workers are USW members that were only recently organised at a steel-thread plant.
The same scorn is heard in the truth-defying words of North American Goodyear President Jon Rich, in his weekly missives. 
 
His message is clear: loyal “associates” of Goodyear are invited to abandon the strike, abandon the USW as the last front on job protections, and join the corporatist mindset in which security, retirement, and hope will not be part of any equation. “As the strike continues,” Rich wrote last week, “it’s tempting to start shifting the focus from ‘what are we trying to achieve?’ to ‘when will this be over?’” 
<img height="100" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMrubber.JPG" width="100"/>
It’s abundantly clear what Goodyear is trying to achieve: the flexibility to slash jobs, cut incomes, and play the hand that it so quickly played at the steel-wire plant just days into the strike. 
 
When will it be over? It is becoming evident by the strikers’ resolve and their anger at being asked once again to concede to the company’s agenda, that it will be over once Goodyear retreats from its concessions and begins treating the last stakeholder in a resounding three-year success story with the dignity and respect it deserves. 
 
“Hasn’t everyone but our members benefited from the turnaround since 2003?” asks a USW spokesman. “Despite the innovations we brought to the table and the sacrifices we made, the company is demanding more closures and more concessions.” 
USW made contract concessions and agreed, in 2003 negotiations, to one US plant closing in exchange for job security and job-retention policies at the other North American plants. This occurred with Goodyear teetering on bankruptcy. Now, with a 17% global market tyre share and nearly one-half of the company’s 2005 revenues, totalling US$19.72 billion, derived from North American operations, Goodyear seeks to unravel those 2003 job-security guarantees, as well as proposing that salaries be cut and retirement benefits slashed. 
Rich said in last week’s report that Goodyear is “trying to save American manufacturing.” In an earlier one, in describing that negotiations are not about “labor versus management” but rather “Goodyear versus the competition,” he supplies deplorable protectionist rhetoric, aimed at driving a wedge between US workers and Goodyear workers worldwide. 
 
“Let’s not lose sight of the bigger flag – the stars and stripes – as we are fighting to preserve American jobs and American manufacturing,” said Rich in a 13 October letter to striking workers. 
<img height="53" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/USAFlag.gif" width="100"/>
Current bargaining proposals to close two US tyre plants that provide liveable incomes for nearly 15% of the 15,000, and ripping the living standards out from under the rest is not preservation, but rather, destruction of quality American jobs. “How can you talk about saving American manufacturing when you look to close plants and downsize domestic production?” adds the USW spokesman. 
 
Goodyear and Rich lay a heavy burden on US workers in these anti-worker messages. In order to gain the requested givebacks, the company continually uses terms such as “global competition” and “competitive disadvantages” to describe the global marketplace. But truth be told, Goodyear has been a global leader in driving down labour costs and attempting to achieve bottom-piercing labour precedents by attacking all workers’ gained rights. 
 
In Turkey earlier this year, it was Goodyear which forced a lockout of its workers in a failed effort to get work-rule concessions from all Turkish rubber workers, including those at two of its competitors. Union members, behind ICEM affiliated union Lastik-Iş, resisted the cuts, and retained their work rights by getting workers to stand shoulder to shoulder at all three tyre-makers. 
 
In Thailand, Goodyear continues to resist placing long-term contract workers in full-time positions, something that the ICEM affiliate pushes as a matter of fairness and dignity for the contract workers. In Malaysia, Goodyear has broken quota levels by employing low-wage foreign nationals in order to drive down Malaysian labour rates. 
 
Goodyear’s protectionist cry to American workers rings hollow when the company is busy steering the competition on this downward spiral. 
 
The strike by USW members in the 12 US plants and four in Canada is strong. Strikers see past the company’s fear-based rhetoric, and know in their hearts that since they figured strongly in Goodyear’s great turnaround, they deserve to be rewarded, not punished. 
 
That sentiment also stands with the people who live in the middle-class towns and communities surrounding the Goodyear plants. They know of the hardships and despair that come to all in the race to the bottom. 
 
Support also came from members of the United Automobile Workers (UAW), who turned out in mass on 25 October to boost USW picket lines at a Goodyear plant in Tonawanda, New York. The same occurred a day later when 100 union members from across Canada gathered at a Goodyear picket line in Owen Sound, Ontario. 
 
Goodyear can wax on all it wants about “serving our customers,” hinting endlessly that this strike must be broken, and then openly wondering when it will happen. But with steadfast resolve only mounting, and with Goodyear losing production revenues at a rate of US$38 million per day (as estimated by one rubber analyst), an end to this strike appears to be Goodyear’s call.

Facts Contradict Goodyear’s Anti-Worker Strike Messages in North America

<img height="40" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100"/>
Nigerian oil workers’ unions again are spearheading the call for security, as well as meeting the challenges inherent in oil and gas production in a developing country. Two weeks ago, the unions PENGASSAN and NUPENG conducted a three-day workshop in Ibadan, Oyo State, to train union members to the multi-faceted changes taking hold in Nigeria’s oil and gas fields. 
 
Those changes include outsourcing, reliance on fixed-term employment, privatisation of government assets, and de-unionisation. The government’s inability to deal effectively with the Niger Delta’s natural resources is also cause for great concern. 
<img height="116" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/NigeriaNupeng.gif" width="112"/>     <img height="105" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/NigeriaPengassan.JPG" width="100"/>
The workshops produced a long list of necessary reforms that would help remove corruption from government agencies and bring economic opportunities to the indigenous peoples of the Niger River Delta. 
 
“The kidnapping and killing of workers in the Niger Delta Region continues to pose serious threats to the security of our members and other workers in the region,” said PENGASSAN President Peter Esele. “The vandalizing of oil pipelines by economic saboteurs has continued to keep our refineries without crude, leaving the entire nation to depend on imported petroleum products.” 
 
The workshops also painted a critical picture of the Nigerian government, from the Oil and Gas Committee Report that has brought on privatisation and casualisation to its handling of the kidnappings and killings so common in the Delta this year.
The conference was held during a three-week period in which seven foreign nationals, all employed in the oil industry, had been kidnapped by an unknown youth militia group. The seven were abducted on 3 October from an ExxonMobil residential compound in Eseakpan, southern Akwa Iborn State, which is used to house contract workers. The seven were released more than a fortnight later following negotiations between the industry and group. 
<img height="101" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMOil.JPG" width="100"/>
Esele pledged to the trade unionists in attendance that the unions would act as a legitimate “pressure group,” and that “no stone will be left unturned in our efforts” to bring economic dignity and opportunities to Nigerian citizens. 
 
In a separate trade union gathering occurring in Akwa Iborn State at the same time, the quarterly meeting of PENGASSAN’s Producers’ Forum called on the Nigerian national assembly to amend the statutes governing the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). The body says the commission has failed to address the development needs of citizens in the region. 
 
The Producers’ Forum suggests that the 3% funding of the NDDC that comes from oil prospecting companies should be directly used by the communities in which these firms operate. The forum proposed that monitoring of such projects be undertaken by the National Petroleum Investment Agency. These recommendations, as part of a seven-point action plan, were passed on to PENGASSAN’s national secretariat.

Nigerian Oil Workers’ Unions Offer Common Sense Reforms

<img height="40" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100" alt=""/>
 
Some 200 workers at a paper mill and converter owned by Smurfit Kappa Packaging in Argentina are on strike over the company’s failure to pay a scheduled wage increase. The strike is at the company’s mill and converting operations in Bernal and Espora. 
 
The workers, represented by a union affiliated to ICEM affiliate Federación de Obreros y Empleados de la Industria del Papel, Cartón y Químicos, struck because a 12% pay increase that was won in a long struggle after numerous social dialogue sessions with Smurfit has never been paid. 
<img height="99" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMpaper.jpg" width="100" alt=""/>
The company now is hiding behind the national work agreement in Argentina for the paper sector, and refuses to honour past commitments. Blas Juan Alari, Secretary General for Federación del Papel, told the ICEM that the early promises made to workers are an acquired right, and that workers are refusing to bend to the pressure by the company.

Argentine Paperworkers Strike Smurfit Kappa over Non-Payment of Salary Agreement

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