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<img height="40" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100"/>
Contract workers, employed by some 400 companies providing services to world leader copper producer Codelco in Chile, are striking for bonuses to gain a fair share of rising copper prices that have reached record highs on international markets. 
The 28,000 contract employees, working from food service to transport, struck all four divisions of state-owned Codelco’s across Chile two weeks ago and are seeking bonuses totalling US$970. On 4 January, police used tear gas to disperse strikers from roads leading to the El Teniente mine, the world’s largest underground copper mines and one of the four divisions. 
Contract workers earn less than half of what the 15,000 full-time, unionised workers of Codelco earn. Copper currently is selling at a record high of US$4,575 a tonne, and Chile through its Codelco earnings realized US$5.3 billion in profit through export of copper in 2005.

Contract Workers in Chilean Copper Mines Strike

<img height="40" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100"/>
US oil supermajor ConocoPhillips has defied both Australian and East Timorese oil and maritime workers by employing a flag of convenience ship to transport liquid natural gas from Australia to Japan. The company, which owns 64% of the Bayu-Undan gas field in the Timor Sea, was set to send it first shipment of LNG to Japanese utility customers last week from Darwin, in northern Australia. 
The company has hired no Timorese or Australian crew members to work on the vessel, said the Maritime Workers Union of East Timor. ConocoPhillips had earlier ignored East Timor government initiatives to build a gas processing facility on East Timor soil for the new field, choosing instead to build a 500-kilometre pipeline to Darwin. 
The Bayu-Undan field is in disputed East Timorese waters off the country’s southern coast. The Maritime Union of Australia has pledged to get East Timorese workers involved in Bayu-Undan’s new production, and both unions promise an international campaign against ConocoPhillips. This will become a topic of the newly-organised Joint ICEM-ITF Oil and Gas Trade Union Alliance.

ConocoPhillips Snubs Union Labour in Shipping

<img height="40" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100"/>
In the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, members of ICEM affiliate International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) voted 2 January to continue their five-month strike against US-based National Gypsum. Some 90 IUOE Local 721B members are striking the company at a quarry in Milford and at a loading dock in Burnside, over proposed changes to their pension plan, contracting out demands, and weakening of seniority rights. 
A proposal put forward by a provincial mediator, late in 2005, produced no significant changes from the company’s initial offer. The strike began 10 August 2005, some five months after a prior contract expired. The quarry produces rock used in building materials for the US housing market. National Gypsum has been attempting to operate the two workplaces with replacement workers.

Operating Engineers Remain on Strike in Canada

The 20-million-member ICEM calls on the government of Serbia-Montenegro to meet the legitimate pay demands by ICEM-affiliated EPS Trade Union at three enterprises of the state-run electric power generation and distribution services, i.e. the PE Electric Power Industry of Serbia, the PE Elektromreža Srbije (the Serbian Transmission System and Market Operator) and the PE Underground Pit Mine Extraction. 
<img width="100" height="100" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMelectricity.JPG" alt=""/>
Workers at these three enterprises are owed wage arrears for 2004 and 2005. The government has failed to respond to union demands, as well as to make an adequate wage offer for 2006. Workers at the three enterprises began a series of one-hour strikes on 10 January in protest of the non-payment of wages, and have conducted similar one-hour strikes every day since. 
 
“The inflation rate in Serbia in 2005 reached 17%,” said ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs. “It is unconscionable that the government is withholding payment of wages due for past years and refusing to make an acceptable offer this year.” 
 
Serbia-Montenegro’s government had requested that EPS Trade Union postpone any strike action until the end of February 2006. The ICEM says that such a request is irresponsible considering the non-payment of wages in 2004 and 2005. 
 
The ICEM fully supports the strikes, and has offered assistance to the 43,000-member EPS Trade Union in meeting their pay demands.

ICEM Calls on Serbia to Pay Backwages, Reach 2006 Pay Terms

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ICEM ASIA MNC Project

ICEM Nigerian affiliates NUPENG and PENGASSAN have threatened to pull all oil workers from the Niger Delta unless the government moves to improve security and rebel groups cease using violence to gain political ground. Since four expatriate workers were kidnapped on 11 January at the Shell-operated EA offshore field, a spate of attacks at other installations has killed 22 workers.
<img height="104" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/NigeriaNupeng.gif" width="100"/>            <img height="105" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/NigeriaPengassan.JPG" width="100"/>
In a joint statement, NUPENG and PENGASSAN said, “If the restiveness and consequent harassment and violence on workers in the oil and gas industry persist, we shall not hesitate to withdraw our members in the various oil and gas companies operating in the region.”
The unions called on the government to urgently resolve tensions in an amicable way and to use peaceful means to secure the release of abducted oilmen. They also called on kidnappers to release the Shell contract workers, and demanded militia groups to stop the “violence unleashed in the Niger Delta on our members, leading to the loss of 22 lives, the taking of oil workers as hostages and the shutting down of a flow station in Benisede in Bayelsa State.”

Nigerian Oil Affiliates Seek Halt to Niger Violence

<img height="40" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100"/>
Lastik-Īş, ICEM’s rubber and chemicals affiliate in Turkey, kept its collective agreement in the rubber sector intact. A week ago, under threat of a 22 May strike at four tyre plants by 3,500 workers, the rubber industry representing Pirelli Lastikleri, Goodyear and Brisa Bridgestone Sabanci, agreed to a two-year contract with the union that excludes all employer flexibility demands contained in a World Bank and IMF inspired labour code introduced in Turkey three years ago. 
<img height="151" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0605Turkey.jpg" width="200"/> 
 
Lastik-Īş leaders outside the Izmit Turkey 
Goodyear plant
Lastik-Īş retained 50 years of gained rights, including holiday periods, wage rates of new hires, health care protections, and limitations on use of temporary workers.
The union won a 5% wage increase back to 1 January, which equals the country’s inflation rate of the last six months of 2005, and also won wage adjustments every six months, based on the inflation rate level. Lastik-Īş negotiated increases based on the inflation rate for several social benefits, including education and child aid, sickness and disease benefits, and heating, food and other social gains.

Turkish Lastik-Īş  Preserves All Past Gains in New Tyre Agreement

US affiliate United Steel Workers (USW) intends to file a lawsuit in a federal courtroom in the state of South Carolina over Giant Cement’s improper reporting of hazardous wastes emitted from the company’s plant in Harleyville, South Carolina.
<img height="99" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMCement.JPG" width="100" alt=""/>
USW claims Giant failed to report the identity and quantity of hazardous wastes burned at the plant, as well as hazardous chemicals used and stored on the jobsite of late. The suit will allege violations of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986
 Giant, a subsidiary of Spain-based Cementos Portland Valderrivas, is operating the cement plant with replacement workers and some 50 of the 138 workers who struck the plant in August 2005. The strike ended on 24 September, but the company has refused to take back the majority of unionised workers.

US Steelworkers File Environment Suit Against Spanish Cement Firm

<img height="61" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBriefAlert.jpg" width="125"/>
The ICEM learned today that one of the two top leaders of the Nepalese trade union federation GEFONT was released from police custody in Kathmandu. 
<img height="129" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0601NepalMukunda.jpg" width="100"/>    <img height="127" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0601NepalBinod.jpg" width="111"/> 
Left: Chairman Mukunda Neupane (released) 
Right: Gefont's Secretary General Binod Shrestha 
(still under arrest) 
Chairman Mukanda Neupane was released Tuesday evening, 24 January, but GEFONT Secretary-General Binod Shrestha was still being detained. Both had been arrested early on 19 January. Also released were two trade union leaders of another trade union federation, NTUC, as well as a number of pro-democracy political leaders. 
 
Upon his release, Brother Neupane thanked the international community—particularly the global trade union family—for its strong support, and urged the people of Nepal to continue efforts to bring democracy to the Himalayan country. Neupane, however, also expressed dismay that other detainees, including Brother Shrestha, are still being held. 
 
Further information can be found at the GEFONT website: <a href="http://www.gefont.org">http://www.gefont.org</a>.

GEFONT Chairman Mukanda Neupane Released in Nepal

Mr. Jukka Härmälä 
CEO 
Stora Enso Oyj 
Kanavaranta 1 
FIN-00160 Helsinki 
FINLAND 
 
Sent Via Fax +358 2046 21471 
 
 
Dear Mr. Härmälä, 
 
The ICEM, a 20-million-member Global Union Federation with affiliates in 122 countries of the world, has been informed by our Canadian affiliate, the Communications, Energy and Paper Workers’ Union (CEP) of Canada, that the North American management of your company’s Port Hawkesbury mill in Nova Scotia locked out 600 workers with crippling effect on the whole of the local economy in that Canadian province. 
 
The lock-out came as workers predictably rejected North American management’s contract proposal, which would have given managers unprecedented rights to outsource unionised work. Such a proposal regarding the use of contract labour is in total contradiction to the norms now in place regarding contract labour in the paper industry’s pattern agreement for Eastern Canada. 
 
The ICEM strongly urges you to personally intervene to amicably resolve this dispute. We believe attitudes demonstrated by Stora Enso’s North American managers are contrary to your publicly-declared international principles of sustainability. 
 
We appeal to you to apply the principled custom of Nordic fairness and to direct your North American managers to immediately reopen dialogue with the CEP to resolve this dispute. 
 
The ICEM will closely monitor this dispute and we will bring it to the attention of our global affiliates who represent Stora Enso workers across the world. We look forward to an early and just settlement of this lockout. 
 
Sincerely, 
 
Fred Higgs 
General Secretary

ICEM letter to Stora Enso

Archive

Contract Workers in Chilean Copper Mines Strike

ConocoPhillips Snubs Union Labour in Shipping

Operating Engineers Remain on Strike in Canada

ICEM Calls on Serbia to Pay Backwages, Reach 2006 Pay Terms

ICEM ASIA MNC Project

Nigerian Oil Affiliates Seek Halt to Niger Violence

Turkish Lastik-Īş Preserves All Past Gains in New Tyre Agreement

US Steelworkers File Environment Suit Against Spanish Cement Firm

GEFONT Chairman Mukanda Neupane Released in Nepal

ICEM letter to Stora Enso

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