English

Español

Français

Русский

Aerospace

Automotive

Base metals

Chemical, pharmaceutical and bio-science

Energy 

Glass, cement, ceramic and associated industries

ICT, electrical and electronics

Mechanical Engineering

Mining and DGOJP

Pulp and paper

Rubber

Shipbuilding and shipbreaking

Textile, garment, shoes, leather and textile services

Sectors

Action Plan 2021-2025

Action on textile and garment industry

Clean up shipbreaking

Ratify ILO C176

United for a just future - time to pay up!

Disinvest from Myanmar

Campaigns

Global Framework Agreements

Union building

White-collar workers

Health & safety

Industry 4.0

Women

Youth

LGBTQI+

Gender, equality, diversity and inclusion (GEDI)

Just Transition

Organizing with industriALL 

What we do

Affiliates

Statutes

Elected officials

Executive Committee

Geneva head office

South East Asia 

Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus

Latin America and the Caribbean 

Middle East and North Africa

South Asia

Sub-Saharan Africa

Regional offices

About us

Global worker No1 2022

Global worker No2 2022

Publications

Resources

Logos of IndustriALL Global Union

Press

92,000 South African workers have united within a union spanning a wide range of major industries. 
 
CEPPWAWU (Chemical, Pulp and Paper, Printing, Wood and Allied Workers' Union) was created at the end of last week by the merger of the chemical and allied workers' CWIU and the paper and allied workers' PPAPWU. As well as the sectors listed in its name, the new union covers glass, rubber, plastics and pharmaceuticals. 
 
Elected as CEPPWAWU's General Secretary was Muzi Buthelezi, with Bengeza Mthombeni as Deputy General Secretary and Pasco Dyani as President. 
 
"Our membership will benefit from this merger through better service, improved finances and human resources, and more bargaining power," Buthelezi told ICEM UPDATE. 
 
The new union will be harmonising its collective bargaining this month and expects to have its local and regional structures in place by May. 
 
It urged its members to contribute today's (3 March) wages to the Job Creation Fund set up by South Africa's national labour confederations to tackle the unemployment crisis. 
 
At the global level, CEPPWAWU will be affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). The new union has taken a resolutely internationalist stance from the start, and specifically notes that "unions internationally from the chemical and paper industries have aligned themselves to form single organisations." 
 
"This strong new union will be a further boost for the ICEM's important organising drive in Africa," commented ICEM General Secretary Vic Thorpe. "South Africa is crucial to out efforts to unite the world's workers - a fact that we will recognise when the ICEM holds its World Congress in Durban this November."

South Africa's New Super-Union

Australian affiliate Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers’ Union (LHMU) won a verdict on agency fees in South Australia. The Industrial Relations Commission ruled non-union members must pay a fee for worklife gains through the enterprise bargaining process. LHMU Branch Sec. Mark Butler called it a “landmark decision” and vowed that all LHMU collective agreements in South Australia will include the new language.

Australian Affiliate LHMU Wins Agency Fees Case

The Uribe government and the Colombian oil firm Ecopetrol has escalated a 19-day strike by Union Sindical Obrera (USO) by sacking another 40 workers. The government has ruled the strike illegal on the “essential service” theory of oil refining. The ICEM argues that ILO jurisprudence regarding that definition proves differently. The government has now sacked 60.

Colombian Government Declares War on Oil Union

Asia-Pacific labour and management representatives from BASF met in Singapore on 10 February. The network takes shape following the successful ICEM regional dialogue with BASF managers in Latin America/Caribbean. BASF’s Eggert Voscherau called the AP network “important and necessary” and one that “has to be continued.” Recently, ICEM, German affiliate IGBCE and BASF teamed up so that BASF workers in Malaysia could have trade union recognition rights in Malaysia.

ICEM’s Regional BASF Network Meets in Singapore

The initial conference of ICEM’s ExxonMobil Workers’ Global Network has been set for 3-4 November 2004 in the US city of Houston, Texas. US affiliate PACE is the lead union of the network. Unions representing ExxonMobil workforces are encouraged to attend. A call letter went out last month and trade union leaders can contact Gino Govender at ICEM or Keith Romig at PACE for further information.

First Global Meeting of ExxonMobil Network to Meet in US

After a one-week strike, some 300 members of ICEM affiliate Korean Chemical & Textile Workers’ Federation reached a labour agreement with BASF Korea in Yeosu. The 23 July agreement calls for a base monthly salary hike of 5% and a reduction in weekly work hours from 42 to 40 without any corresponding loss of pay. 
The amiable settlement is contrasted with the harsh response of government and joint venture partners LG Group and ChevronTexaco at the nearby LG Caltex refinery.

Week-Long Strike Brings BASF Settlement in Korea

Two iron ore strikes in eastern Canada have crippled mining production in Labrador, province of Newfoundland. On 19 July, 1,250 members of ICEM affiliate United Steelworkers of America (USWA) struck the Iron Ore Co. of Canada, 58.7% held by Rio Tinto, over company proposals to strip health care and pensions, freeze wages and install a psychological profiling programme of workers on which to base discipline. The strike affects 1,000 workers at a mine and pellet processing plant in Labrador City and 250 port workers in Sept-Iles, Quebec. Some 350 USWA members are on strike at Wabush Mine in Labrador City and an accompanying processing plant and port in Pointe Noire, Quebec. That strike began 5 July and is against a consortium of firms led by US-based Cleveland Cliffs and is over efficiency issues including contracting out bargaining unit work. The two strikes affect 60% of Canada’s iron ore exports.

Canadian Mine Strikes Shut Rio Tinto, Wabush Mine Operations

Bridgestone/Firestone Argentina continues to stall progress toward a resolve to the 11-month dispute with affiliate SUTNA at a tyre factory near Buenos Aires. Facing further industrial action on 19 August, BS/FS agreed to a request by the Labour Minister for Buenos Aires province to continue negotiations. Only nine of 58 workers who were sacked in an illegal rationalization plan have returned to their jobs, and SUTNA continues to press for the remainder as well as meaningful negotiations toward a new collective agreement. In the absence of a better proposal from the company, SUTNA has a mandate from union members to resume the industrial actions it suspended in early July when BS/FS agreed to reinstate workers.

Dispute Between Bridgestone, Argentine Union Continues

<img height="40" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100" alt=""/>
Goodyear’s neutrality is not evident in Malaysia, however, where the US firm is busy suspending union officers, violating labour rights, exploiting foreign workers and relying on rampant outsourcing. 
ICEM affiliate National Union of Employees in Companies Manufacturing Rubber Products (NUECMRP) is locked in a dispute with Goodyear Malaysia Bhd. in Selangor with the company. The union is faced with restructuring while Goodyear continues to exceed quotas on foreign workers, namely from Nepal, Burmaand Vietnam. 
The NUECMRP branch at Selangor, numbering about 500 workers, has staged a series of informational pickets to support the suspended officers, as well as nine other workers who have been dismissed or suspended.

Goodyear Violating Union Rights in Malaysia

A row is brewing between two Geneva-based international agencies over who is to codify worldwide occupational health and safety management norms. 
 
Workers' right to a global say on workplace health and safety could be under threat if the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) next month votes itself competent to tackle this complex issue. 
 
Any ISO efforts on this would cut across work already well under way within the UN's International Labour Organisation (ILO). And the ISO, unlike the ILO, excludes organised labour. 
 
The ILO sets ratifiable and binding international standards on a wide range of labour-related matters. Worker, employer and government representatives from all over the world meet on equal terms within this "tripartite" UN agency. All three groups draw up and adopt the ILO's standards, and all three monitor national governments' compliance with them once they are in force. 
 
Occupational health and safety is a major focus of these ILO norms, and organised labour has been one of the main driving forces behind the adoption and application of the standards. 
 
No such labour representation exists within the ISO, where strong corporate influence is brought to bear. The ISO is known mainly for two "families" of standards - ISO 9000 on quality management and ISO 14000 on environmental management. Through worldwide standardisation, ISO helps to speed the globalisation process by reducing "technical barriers to trade". 
 
Any ISO move into the health and safety field would also be market-driven. In fact, the voting proposal now before the ISO's national member organisations argues that it "will enable a faster response to market needs than could be met through the development of a standard in partnership with the ILO ..." 
 
The proposal comes from influential ISO member the British Standards Institute. BSI wants to set up an ISO technical committee on occupational health and safety management systems, with the aim of "developing a non-certifiable ISO standard based on [existing UK standard] BS 8800:1996". The ISO's national member organisations have until 10 March to vote on the British motion. 
 
BSI, meanwhile, got the industrialists on board by issuing a joint communique on 21 January with the multinational companies' Industry Cooperation on Standards and Conformity Assessment (ICSCA). "ILO, due to its scope and membership, is not an appropriate organisation to publish an international standard on occupational health and safety management systems," BSI and ICSCA jointly opined. "Instead, ILO is encouraged to participate actively in work in this area, through its liaison with ISO ..." 
 
If it gets the green light from its members, this will be the ISO's second attempt to wrest the health and safety brief from the ILO. 
 
At the beginning of 1997, the ISO decided to discontinue its previous efforts to to draw up occupational health and safety management system standards. This followed an ISO seminar which found that the ILO, precisely because of its tripartite structure, was the more appropriate forum. 
 
Subsequently, the ILO drafted non-mandatory guidelines on occupational health and safety management systems, drawing on a detailed review of standards and codes of practice worldwide. These guidelines are due to be tested this year. 
 
"The ILO is the proper forum for these efforts," declared Fred Higgs in Brussels today. Higgs is the General Secretary of the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), which has helped shape a number of major ILO health and safety initiatives. 
 
"We call upon ICEM member unions, and all others who believe that workers are entitled to a say on occupational health and safety management, to press their national ISO member organisations for a 'no' vote on this motion," Higgs said. 
 
"Global health and safety management standards in the workplace are not the sole prerogative of the big corporations," Higgs insisted. "Organised labour must have a full say on this vital standard-setting activity. When workplace health and safety are at stake, workers are experts."

World Health And Safety Norms: ILO or ISO

Archive