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<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
Several hundred garment workers conducted a hunger strike in front of the National Press Club in Dhaka on 29 September, demanding payment of outstanding wages and allowances of workers at five garment factories. Protestors also sought legal compensation for dismissed workers from four garment factories. The pressure exerted achieved payment of the moneys owed by some, but not all of the employers. 
 
The strike was organised by the National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF), a highly active member trade union of the International Textile, Garment & Leather Workers’ Federation (ITGLWF). The hunger strike action was followed by the submission of a memorandum to the Ministry of Labour by a five-member delegation led by NGWF General Secretary Ms Safia Parveen. The memorandum called for immediate government intervention. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1110.bangladesh garment workers.JPG" width="214" height="160"/>
Each of the five garment factory employers had failed to pay wages since July, with overtime and other payments also outstanding. This affected 900 workers at S Nahar Garments of Kawran Bazar in Dhaka city, 200 workers at Bristi Garments of Tikatuli, 200 workers work in Jas Fashion of the Dab Star group in Arambagh, 1000 workers of Reo Fashion of the Dab Star Group also in Arambagh, and 350 workers at Millennium Garments of Tikatuli. Following the protest, Bristi, Jas, Reo, and Millenium groups made the payments, with Nahar promising to pay by today. 
 
Protestors also called on the government to intervene in the struggle for compensation to illegally dismissed workers of four garment factories, 97 at Benson Apparels of Tejgaon, 30 at Riz Fashion of Matuail, 25 at Aditi Apparels of Mirpur, and 45 at Bristi Garments. All saw their jobs disappear in cost cutting efforts over the last two years. Bristi has since paid, while Aditi promised to make payments by today. 
 
Focus now concentrates on Benson and Riz fashion. 
 
Speakers called for more action from the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) to whom the NGWF submitted a grievance on 15 July. See prior <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4557-Bangladesh-Garment-Workers-Take-Hunger-Strike-Actions-over-Delinquent-Employers" type="internal">ICEM report</a>.  
 
NGWF President Amirul Haque Amin presided over the hunger strike. Speakers included, Coordinator of the Bangladesh Garment Workers Unity Council Salauddin Swapan, General Secretary of the Bangladesh Garment Trade Union Centre Ruhul Amin, NGWF leaders Ms Safia Parveen, Mohammad Faruk Khan, Mrs Sultana Aktar, Mohammad Kabir, workers’ representatives of the affective factories spoke on the occasion, and Harun Chowdhury of the Bangladeshi Communist Party.

Bangladeshi Garment Workers’ Hunger Strike Achieves Owed Wages

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A branch union of the ICEM-affiliated National Miners’ and Metalworkers’ Union (FNTMMSP) of Peru is continuing its struggle for a decent new collective agreement at the Sociedad Minera Cerro Verde copper and molybdenum mine in southern Arequipa region. For the first time in the 40 year history of the mine, national government declared industrial action to be legal, as all 1,220 FNTMMSP members downed tools on 29 September for indefinite strike action. 
 
The legal status for the strike means the ministry of labour will arbitrate negotiations, with both sides meeting this afternoon, Monday, for talks. Striking miners are being replaced with 600 scabs and management staff in company efforts to continue production, breaching Peruvian labour law. If company negotiators continue to push regressive proposals, the union will demand the government and Congress send labour inspectors to determine operations are in line with regulations. This would paralyse all production. The branch union general secretary Leoncio Amudio Peña alerted labour authorities to the pending request for inspections on 8 October. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1110.cerro verde.jpg" width="241" height="161"/>
Cerro Verde is offering workers a rise of less than US$1 per day, whereas the union seeks US$3. Local management also wants to replace future salary increases with a production bonus. As well as improved wages, strikers are demanding improved working conditions and better health and safety conditions. Branch general secretary Peña reports that the company only offers solutions to 4 out of 40 union demands. Union and management positions are also far apart on the length of the agreement, with the union wanting a one-year duration and the company originally seeking 5 years, now 3. The previous agreement which expired 31 August was 3-year, but that was extended as a one off in exchange for company concessions. 
 
The strike was preceded by a 48-hour work stoppage in early September and an indefinite strike mid-September that was suspended due to a technicality making it illegal. 
 
Cerro Verde produced 312,336 tonnes of copper in 2010, 2% of the world’s copper creating a net profit of US$1.05 billion. The open-pit mine is owned by US-based Freeport-McMoRan (53.7%), SMM Cerro Verde Nederlands (21%), a unit of the Japanese Sumitomo Corp., and Peru-based Compania de Minas Buenaventura (19.3%). Mining profits are soaring on global markets due to increased metals prices, with massively increased profit margins not shared with workers.

Peruvian Cerro Verde Miners Launch Legal Indefinite Strike

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We have been informed by the Federation of Workers Councils Unions of Iraq (FWCUI) of two particularly difficult disputes in the country. 
 
Firstly we understand that in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region 174 workers in the Taq Taq Oil Operation Company, jointly owned by Genel Enerji and Addax Petroleum International have submitted a complaint against the company expressing their concern over working conditions and a complete lack of equality for Kurdish workers. 
 
Workers are concerned at the complete absence of hazard protection in the workplace where the constant danger of hydrogen sulphide gas is said to threaten the workers lives. There is also said to be significant discrimination in treatment between the Kurdish and expatriate workers in terms of safety equipment and clothing provided as well as in both food and rest facilities. Indeed we are informed that in scenes reminiscent of the apartheid era in South Africa expatriate workers have access to training and sports halls in their free time that local workers are refused access to and their living accommodation and restrooms are far inferior to those enjoyed by the expatriates. Expatriate worker wages are also considerably higher than those paid to Kurdish workers, many of whom are university and institute graduates. 
<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Iraq. FWCUI.png" width="160" height="109" alt=""/>
The union is calling upon the company and the Kurdistan Regional Government to guarantee equal treatment at work. 
 
FWCUI has also informed us of severe difficulties at the facilities of the Northern Fertilizer Company, around 220km north of Baghdad. This company employs approximately 2400 workers and has recently been privatized. The company produces chemical fertilizers. Since privatisation, according to FWCUI and their Salah ad-Din branch structures, workers have faced massive deterioration of their working conditions. They are forced to work additional hours, numerous worker benefits have been unilaterally cancelled and the employer denies their rights to join a trade union. 
 
Despite these attacks workers there have organized a committee, affiliated to FWCUI, and are now finding it impossible to hold union elections inside the company, they will be holding their elections in FWCUI's office. 
 
We salute the bravery of Iraqi workers, continuing to organise despite being faced with widespread employer attacks against a background of viciously anti-trade union legislation from the Saddam-era. We will keep you informed of these particular disputes as we receive further information.

Oil Workers in Iraq Bravely Fight to Organise

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The strike by 32,000 Finnish metalworkers that began on 21 October could end tomorrow following a new proposal presented by National Conciliator Esa Lonka last night, 23 October. ICEM affiliate Ammattiliitto Pro, the trade union of salaried workers in Finland, and Metalliliitto, the country’s Metalworkers’ Union, will consider the proposal later today in separate meetings. 
 
The two unions began a first wave of strike actions last Friday against 45 metal and engineering companies that was to run until 7 November, with a second wave of strikes against another 35 firms to begin on that day. 
 
Lonka’s new proposal addresses the unions concerns on a wage package over the next two years, while Finland’s government is expected to legislate the other key issue in the dispute – a three-day annual training and education leave in which employers sought to use its own discretionary control. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Finland%20PRO.jpg" width="130" height="93"/>
Metalliliitto’s 38-member Union Council will consider the proposal at 16h today in Helsinki, while Ammattiliitto Pro’s Executive Committee will meet at 17h to take up the government conciliator’s proposal. If both bodies accept, the 32,000 workers – 25,000 metalworkers and 7,000 represented by Ammattiliitto Pro – will be back to work tomorrow, 25 October. 
 
The major discord was over a 4.3% wage increase for two years, an amount Finnish social partners agreed to on 13 October. Metal and technical employers, under the auspices of the Federation of Finnish Technology Industries, or Teknologiateollisuus, sought to structure that pay rise whereby many metalworkers and white-collar workers would not get the full amount. The new proposal given by Lonka last night, 23 October, proposes that it be granted across the board to all 200,000 workers in the country’s metal and engineering sector. 
 
Last week’s industrial actions also included an overtime ban across all employers in those industrial sectors. An <a href="/en/23-Nordic-Countries/4723-Strikes-Begin-in-Finnish-Metal-Technology-Sector" type="internal">ICEM report</a> on the start of the strike from last week can be found here.

Conciliator’s New Proposal Expected to End Short Finnish Metalworkers Strike

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief100.jpg" width="100" height="39"/>
The ICEM has come to the aid and support of DERİ-İş, the trade union of Leather Workers of Turkey, and an affiliate of the International Textile, Leather, Garment Workers’ Federation (ITGLWF), both of which have been waging a courageous struggle for trade union rights at two factories of Kampana-Savranoğlu, a maker of leather for the shoe industry. 
 
Workers at factories in İzmir and Istanbul met fierce opposition from the family-owned company when they tried to organize with DERİ-İş. They faced extremely low pay, forced overtime that was off the books, and harmful air quality that left many workers sick. Last March, when workers refused to give up their right to unionisation after coercion by management, the company sacked 16 trade union leaders. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1110.turkey leather.2.jpg" width="261" height="160"/>
ICEM at 15 October Protest Action Against Kampana-Savranoğlu
This occurred at the 103-worker İzmir factory and immediately all other workers went on a work slowdown. This continued for several months until managers responded in early October by closing the factory and transferring the work – and workers – to the Istanbul factory called Kampana. Management’s had predicted that none of the workers would transfer, thus the company would not have to pay the lawful severance payments and it would be rid of DERİ-İş. 
 
But the ploy backfired when 38 of the strongest union sympathizers took the transfer and joined the workforce at the 49-worker Kampana factory, making the Istanbul factory overcrowded. 
 
The company made no provisions for housing, so after moving to Turkey’s largest city and starting work on 1 October, the 38 İzmir workers began sleeping inside the factory. Management summoned police but after the occupation continued, they sacked the workers on 13 October. 
 
Two days later, DERİ-İş, local NGOs and supporters – including a representative from the ICEM – held a protest action at the house of the Kampana-Savranoğlu owner near Taksim Square. 
 
DERİ-İş is supporting 14 workers and their families and continues a campaign that now numbers 224 consecutive days. The union is waging another long-running fight against DESA, which produces leather for luxury goods with the most prestigious being Prada, the handbag retailer. That campaign has been running for four years. 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1110.turkey leather.jpg" width="287" height="160"/>
Through intervention by ITGLWF, DERİ-İş and DESA signed a good-faith protocol agreement in August 2009, but management immediately broke it by targeting and then sacking union members. This included 12 workers from a workplace in Sefakoy, Istanbul, and another two employees last January in Düzce. 
 
A third dispute the Turkish Leather Workers’ Union is fighting is against the company Trexta, which has factories in Cerkezköy, Istanbul, and Sivas, totaling 1,000 mostly women workers. The company produces leather cases and accessories for the mobile phone industry, and supplies to Nokia, Vertu, and Blackberry. 
 
Since July 2011, the company has dismissed 11 members of a union committee. DERİ-İş sought help from ICEM, ITGLWF, and the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF) to intervene on Trexta’s customers, particularly Nokia over the Finnish company’s rigid supply-line requirements. IMF wrote and urged Nokia to take the necessary steps to ensure reinstatement and to secure workers’ freedom of association. 
 
The ICEM did likewise, demanding that Nokia take action to protect workers’ rights. 
 
“These three cases in the Turkish leather industry shows that a new Global Union Federation must be an activist organization to protect the rights of workers when they are routinely abused,” stated ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda. “We must be vigilant that violations in any one part of the supply chain will be felt along the entire chain of production.”

ICEM Lends Support to Persecuted Leather Workers in Turkey

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Queensland mineworkers employed by the BHP Billiton-Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA) soundly rejected a direct company enterprise agreement proposal by 92% on 12 October. The 4,000 miners, represented by three Australian unions that are negotiating as the Single Bargaining Unit (SBU), then launched the longest work stoppage since strikes began in June. 
 
They staged a 30-hour walkout from midnight on 18 October to 06h00 on 20 October. 
 
The strike cut production at the world’s largest supplier of seaborne metallurgical coal. The strike and contract rejection also sent another sharp message to BHP Billiton and Mitsubishi that miners at BMA’s seven collieries in central Queensland will not accept compromises on work-life balance, or to their job security. 
<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/Australia.CFMEU.2.jpg" width="121" height="110" alt=""/>
“The result shows that our members currently have little trust in the company as a whole, and they have seen through the waffle and spin,” said Stephen Smyth, District Vice President of the Construction, Forestry, Mine and Energy Union (CFMEU), the largest of the three unions. 
 
After some 32 bargaining days dating back ten months, BMA used a part of the Fair Work Australia law to take its unwanted contract proposal directly to miners. The mail ballot, conducted between 29 September and 12 October, was rejected by a vote of 2,432 to 201. “(BMA) can’t ignore the message that the workers themselves have delivered,” said Smyth. “You can’t get a clearer picture than this.” 
 
SBU and BMA resumed bargaining over this past weekend for three days in Rockhampton, Queensland. The other two unions comprising the SBU are the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU) and the Electrical Trades Union of the Communications, Electrical, Plumbing Union (CEPU). All three unions are ICEM affiliates. 
<img src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1106.cfmeu%20bargaining%20good%20one.jpg" width="80" height="80" alt=""/>
Even though BMA says it will put a 5% pay rise on the table, the SBU first wants agreement that there will not be a lowering of working conditions or diminished quality-of-life standards. SBU is resisting unwanted extensions on work rosters, which will negatively affect family life, and they oppose BMA in its will to gain contracting out flexibility. BMA wants to move from a five-day weekly roster to a seven-day one, and also seeks greater rule over operators’ jobs. 
 
Past ICEM reports on this crucial Australian labour struggle can be found <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4679-Coal-Boss-Conceit:-BMA-Tries-to-Bully-Aussie-Labour-Law-Back-to-Howard-Era " type="internal">here</a> and <a href="/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4463-Aussie-Coal-Miners-Vote-92-to-Strike-BHP-Billiton-Mitsubishi-Alliance " type="internal">here</a>. 
 
The Bowen Basin mines of BMA have aided BHP Billiton in giving the world’s largest extractive resource company fiscal 2011 net profits of US$23.65 billion, 86% higher than in 2010 and a record for an Australian-based company. BMA’s seven mines produce 58 million tonnes of coking coal annually.

Australian Miners Reject BMA’s Contract Proposal by 92%

On 18-20 June 2012, a new Global Union Federation will see daylight at a Founding Congress in Copenhagen, Denmark. 
 
But what shall the new International be called? Now you have the chance to make a proposal. 
 
The organization will unite 50 million workers in more than 140 countries in mining, energy, metal, chemicals, paper, rubber, materials, textiles, garments, shoe, and leather industries. 
 
It aims to connect workers, fight for labour rights and build global solidarity across entire supply chains. It will be a strong counterweight to multinational companies and promote social justice, democracy and a sustainable future in the whole world. 
 
Such a powerful organization needs a fresh and identifiable name. Your contribution is welcome. Please send your proposal by e-mail to <a href="mailto:imf.icem.itglwf@gmail.com">imf.icem.itglwf@gmail.com</a> at the latest on 31 October 2011. 
 
A joint Executive Committee meeting of the IMF, ICEM, and ITGLWF will decide upon the name at the end of February 2012.

What Name for New Global Trade Union International?

Oil industry multinationals employ over 12,500 workers in the Meta Region of Colombia, mostly by outsourcing work to contractors. These precariously employed workers are subject to poverty wages, exhausting working hours including working 49 days consecutively, and other sub-standard working conditions, all in clear violation of Colombian law and international minimum standards. 
 
Colombian Senator Robledo has described the workstations of the Puerto Gaitán oil fields as more like concentration camps, with overcrowded tents, water shortages, malnutrition, unhygienic sanitation, and degrading treatment. Oil contractor Pacific Rubiales conducts a public disinformation campaign in which it describes trade union USO as “armed criminals, forcing work stoppages”. 
 
The fight back against this untenable situation began on 19 July with mass demonstrations and work stoppages in the Puerto Gaitán and Campo Rubiales installations. Protestors were met with violent police brutality. Key support and action has been supplied by ICEM affiliate Unión Sindical Obrera (USO), which traditionally has organised employees of Ecopetrol, Colombia’s listed state-owned oil company. Along with Ecopetrol, the contractors employing the Meta region oil workers are providing services for Canadian-based Pacific Rubiales, and CEPCOLSA, a subsidiary of Spanish-based CEPSA. 
 
The explosion of mass protests moved the Colombian government, notoriously compliant in the repression of trade unions, to hold a tri-partite forum on 3 August, chaired by Vice-President Angelino Garzón. The forum created nine working groups to assess the various issues over 15 days and reach conclusions leading to a settlement of the conflict. Unfortunately and predictably not one recommendation of the 15-day working groups has been enacted. Instead unions have been hit with fierce persecution. Contractors MR, Intricon, and Medellín Electricians ended the employment of 70 workers who had been involved in the 19 July mobilisation. Another contractor Duflo SA instructed employees to cancel their union membership, under threat of dismissal. 
 
The failure to implement any of the roundtable recommendations was met with protest from the local Puerto Gaitán community, who blocked all major roads leading into the municipality on 19 August. The local community’s discontent was then compounded when the oil companies began hiring new staff, without employing anybody locally. 
 
The Ministry of Social Protection claims to have made 162 visits to the region, but has never met with USO or with the outsourced workers, and has only met with high level company officials on a handful of occasions. In a clear indication of the government’s allegiance, from September the administration of President Santos will deploy a military battalion to be stationed in the community, which will in fact have its military vehicles fuelled by the local multinationals. 
 
Pacific Rubiales posted annual profits of US$218 million in 2010. 
 
During this labour conflict, 4,000 workers joined USO en masse in the Meta region. In the past year, over 16,000 contract workers have joined USO throughout Colombia.

Colombian Oil Workers Fight Back Against Mass Persecution

<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBriefAlert.jpg" width="120" height="59"/>
State police in Georgia brutally broke a strike by metalworkers last week in Kutaisi, in western Georgia. In the evening of day three (15 September) of a walkout by some 200 workers at Eurasian Steels that was sparked by ICEM affiliate Metallurgical, Mining and Chemical Industry Workers’ Trade Union and the Georgian Trade Unions Confederation (GTUC), dozens of police cars escorted Imereti Region Governor Lasha Makatsaria across picket lines and into the steel rolling mill. Police then left those cars and rushed the strikers, taking many away. 
 
As some strikers fled, police rounded them up. Around 40 strikers, including four hunger strikers at the factory’s plant gates, were taken to police headquarters. They were held for several hours, lectured on strike activity, and then made to sign a document stating they would engage in no further action. Some of the 40 were summarily fired by the police who issued dismissal papers from Euroasian Steels. 
 
Twenty-one trade union activists have now been sacked at Euroasian Steels, or Hercules Steel, as it is called, including six on 11 August. Last week’s mass strike was on their behalf, and on many inept management practices that have plague the newly built plant over the past two years. A two-hour warning strike occurred on 2 September that was joined in support by the Georgia Automobile Transport and Highway Workers’ Union, the Independent Trade Union of Agricultural Workers, a food processing union, and two professional unions – the Representatives of Educators and Scientists and the Union of Artists. 
 
Management of the steel mill, led by a prominent Georgian, has refused to address the union or the workers’ serious concerns. 
 
The ICEM reacted with contempt to last week’s police actions. “We witnessed Georgia’s internal police use force to break a strike and now attempt to manage the labour conduct inside this enterprise,” said ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda. “It is ludicrous, against all rationality, and there has to be sinister reasons behind it. We demand to know why our affiliated trade union’s concerns on behalf of workers have not been heard.”
 
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1005.georgia.2.JPG" width="280" height="210"/>
ICEM will continue the stand with Metallurgical, Mining, Chemical Ubnion of Georgia and with the GTUC. (In 2010, ICEM's Warda and GTUC President Iraki Petriashvile, left)  
 

After the round-up and release of strike activists in the early morning hours of 16 September, police then began raiding the homes of many Euroasian workers – including several strikers from the day before – and forcibly brought them to work. A report said a worker not involved in the strike and who was scheduled to work a late shift on 16 September, was forcibly taken from his home and bought in earlier than usual to work. 
 
Police are controlling shift attendance by workers and internal reports are regularly made to police authorities. When workers inquire as to why the police involvement, they are told it is necessary to prevent another strike. 
 
On Friday, workers returning to the steel mill were met with a mandate to either sign a statement denouncing Metallurgical, Mining and Chemical Industry Workers’ Trade Union, or face dismissal within three days. The ICEM has learned many are resisting and believes this is due to a core group of 180 union activists who are gaining in strength and remain steadfast in their determination not to be deterred from a union voice at Hercules.
The ICEM has vowed to support them through an international outcry in coordination with other labour groups. 
 
Meanwhile, there has been a constant police presence outside the factory over the weekend, 16-18 September. At 13h on Saturday, 17 September, internal security police rounded and arrested three union leaders: Emilo Gumberidze, Irakli Iobidze, and Malkhaz Gogiava. 

The three have been key in coordinating support for the 21 dismissed union members among civil society groups, and the ICEM calls the Georgian government out on violating common freedom of association principals. 

Euroasian Steels is an Indian-Georgian enterprise, 87.5% owned by Dubai-based Euroasian Ventures Ltd., which itself is owned by India’s 12th largest steelmaker, Manaksia Ltd., a company specializing in caps, crowns, and metal containers as well as a metal trader. The Kutaisi mill began in spring 2009 to produce rebar and steel billet for a Central Asian market. Built on the former site of a concrete structures plant in Kutaisi, it employs 400 workers, including 130 Indian nationals. 
 
They are treated like indentured servants. Management is in possession of their passports, their salaries are sent back to India, they are given meagre stipends to live on in Kutaisi, and they are instructed not to make contact with Georgian workers. The Indians work dirty and dangerous jobs on four of the operation’s eight furnaces and they work apart from Georgian workers. 
 
Some months ago, the Indian workers staged a strike of their own, which resulted in the beating of the Indian plant director, Raji Kumar Sureika. 
 
At Euroasian Steels in the Imereti region, sweatshop conditions persist. There is no Human Resources department, no wage structures, and no adherence to internationally recognised work standards. Work-weeks can last up to 80 hours, there is no overtime pay, workers are routinely refused to use paid vacations, and there is an inordinate amount of industrial injuries.
<img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/1005.georgia.5.JPG" width="205" height="154"/>
As in 2010 in Georgia, ICEM will Vehemently Protest Trade Union Repression in Georgia   
 

In July 2010, workers protested because of wage arrears. Seven of the leaders of that protest were arrested and were jailed for 20 days. 
 
The Georgian who controls Euroasian Steels and whose holding company owns a 12.5% stake is Paata Chkhenkeli. He is general director of the operation and in 2005, he formed a joint venture with the Manaksia Group called Georgia Metalix Ltd. in order to export scrap steel from Georgia. A short time later, he bought a controlling stake of the Georgia-based scrap-metal salvage firm Meoshavliti, and the deal was soon realised between Chkhenkeli, Manaksia, and the Georgian government to construct the Kutaisi mill. 
 
Paata Chkhenkeli, 52, has close connections to senior level figures in the Georgian government. From 2000 to 2003, fresh from a 11-year tenure as director of Iberia Construction Co. in Russia and Georgia, he served as state advisor to Georgia’s Minister of Economy. 
 
The ICEM this week will lodge protests with the Georgian government over last week’s ruthless actions. While union activity inside Euroasian is certain to be stymied temporarily because of last week’s police put-down, the flames of discontent are still very much alive. ICEM will remain connected to shop-floor activists in Kutaisi and their union representatives of the Metallurgical, Mining, Chemical Workers’ Union and GTUC.

ICEM Scorns Blatant Police Repression in Putting Down Georgian Metal Strike

The International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions (ICEM) today registered strong condemnation with the Government of the Republic of Georgia over the police crushing of a legitimate workers’ strike and formation of a trade union at Euroasian Steels in Kutaisi, Georgia. Police began using forceful tactics last Thursday evening, 15 September, to break a peaceful strike at the 400-worker steel mill, and on 16 September and over the weekend, arrested, detained, and threatened scores of union workers seeking union representation at Euroasian Steels. 
 
In a letter today to Georgian President Mikheil Saakasvhili and Prime Minister Nika Gilauri, the ICEM calls for restoration of human and trade union rights to members of the ICEM affiliate, Metallurgical, Mining and Chemical Industry Workers’ Trade Union of Georgia, and immediate release without charge of three leading union activists, who were picked up and arrested Saturday, 17 September, on bogus charges obviously related to trade union activity. They ICEM also demands job reinstatements for some 20 other workers. 
 
Emilo Gumberidze, Irakli Iobidze, and Milkhaz Gogiava will appear today in court in the provincial capital of Kutaisi and they could face jail sentences. Last Thursday, Georgian police, unprovoked, broke up a strike by 200 metalworkers in front of the Euroasian steel rolling mill in Kutaisi. They detained up to 40 strike participants and the next day police officers raided the homes of many workers, ordered them into police cars, and then incredulously took them to the factory for work shifts. (An <a href="/en/4-Chemicals-Pharmaceuticals/4667-ICEM-Scorns-Blatant-Police-Repression-in-Putting-Down-Georgian-Metal-Strike" type="internal">ICEM report</a> on this is here.) 
 
In today’s formal complaint to Georgia’s Government over the police actions, ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda wrote, “This is an embarrassment to Georgia, a serious stain on Georgian trade and commerce, and it is the opinion of the ICEM that these overt acts of repression bring Georgia back to another time era.” 
 
The ICEM charges Georgian police and the country’s Internal Affairs Ministry with blatant violation of guaranteed social and human rights common in several international charters. The ICEM pledged to stand with the union and the Georgian Trade Unions Confederation (GTUC) in their fight for workers’ rights at Euroasian Steels. 
 
The ICEM is demanding that internal Georgian security forces stop acting as a front for Euroasian Steels, a two-and-a-half-year-old steelmaking enterprise in Kutaisi that has failed to establish even a rudimentary system of employee relations. The enterprise is 87.5% owned by Dubai-based Euroasian Ventures Ltd., itself owned by Indian steel company Manaksia Ltd., and 12.5% by a holding concern controlled by Georgian national Paata Chkhenkeli, who himself is connected to Georgia’s political and economic elite. 
 
The ICEM is a Geneva, Switzerland-based Global Union Federation, representing 20 million workers that belong to 467 trade union affiliates in 132 countries. 
 
For further information, contact ICEM Information Officer Dick Blin, <a href="mailto:dick.blin@icem.org">dick.blin@icem.org</a>, +41 22 203 1842.

ICEM Condemns Georgia Police in Suppressing Union Rights at Euroasian Steels

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