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<img height="40" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100"/>
An eight-week long mining and copper smelting dispute in Poland that included a 28 June threat to strike was resolved last week. Managers of state-owned KGHM Polska Miedz SA, a giant copper and silver conglomerate, agreed to a performance-based bonus plan tied to the company’s handsome profits for the first five months of 2006. 
 
Direct pressure on Polish ministry officials, as well on as the enterprise’s supervisory board, produced the bonus, which came close to the month’s salary that unions operating inside KGHM companies were seeking. The nine unions, all operating under the umbrella Trade Union of Copper Industry Employees (ZZPPM), together with a smaller grouping, ZZPP, won a bonus of 90% of the average monthly salary for the 17,000 KGHM workers. The bonus will be awarded this month. 
<img height="109" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMminingsector6.jpg" width="100" alt=""/>
The unions held a joint industrial action meeting and referendum from 28-30 June, which included a 95% strike vote, and on 30 June, thousands of KGHM workers took to the streets with an angry protest march on Poland’s Finance Ministry. ZZPPM and ZZPP demands also include a tightening of the political turn-over plaguing KGHM’s supervisory board, a fact playing a negative influence on the company’s performance. The unions are also seeking more funds for the company’s social fund. 
 
KGHM has benefited from high prices of copper on the international market, and saw a net earnings result of €370.5 million for the first five months of 2006. 
 
Coal miners in Poland, represented by ICEM affiliate Miners’ and Energy Workers Union of Solidarnosc, among other unions, also won a bonus award in late May. That payout was based on 2005 profits from a number of state-owned coal companies, including Jastrzebska Spolka Weglowa, Kompania Weglowa, and Katowicki Holding Weglowy. Part of the government’s deal in awarding the bonus is to establish uniform collective agreements in Poland’s hard coal sector.

Polish Copper Workers Win Bonuses Based on State Company’s Profits

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The Peruvian government has stipulated a wage and bonus, thus ending a strike by a union of FNTMMSP, ICEM’s mining and metals affiliate in Peru. The nine-day shut down of the country’s only iron ore operation forced the government to impose terms on Shougang Hierro Peru SA, which is wholly-owned by the Chinese government through its Shoulda Iron and Steel Group. 
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The government ordered a pay increase of more than half of what the union was seeking, and also imposed a one-time bonus. Shoungang’s 800 miners had earned about US$13-per-day, while the average mining wage in Peru is $33-per-day. The imposed settlement for this year amounts to an 8% salary increase, and a bonus payment that exceeds US$300. 
 
The Chinese state-run company argued during talks that free water and electricity provided to iron ore miners offset the difference in pay schemes with other mining companies operating in Peru. Under Peru’s labour law, the regional labour agency can intervene once a work stoppage has been declared legal. The strike lasted from 19-28 June.

Peru’s Government Imposes Wage Deal to Settle Iron Ore Strike

The campaign to totally ban all forms of asbestos took a leap ahead last month when the Workers’ Group of the ILO Conference passed a decisive statement that all asbestos types, including white chrysotile, are cancer-causing. 
 
The ICEM’s Mining/DGOJP Sector is currently initiating dialogue with mining affiliates on the correct path toward implementation of ILO Convention 162, the safety in the use of asbestos convention. This is in accord with the four-year work plan established at the ICEM’s Mining and DGOJP World Conferences in 2004. 
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Last month’s resolution at the annual ILO Conference states “that the elimination of the future use of asbestos and the identification and proper management of asbestos currently in place means to protect workers from asbestos exposure and to prevent future asbestos-related diseases and deaths.” It also supports elimination on any future use of the product, and calls for renewed efforts toward ratification by countries of ILO Conventions 162 and 139, the latter related to occupational cancer. 
 
The resolution was boosted some two weeks before its 14 June ILO passage when France became the 40th country to ban future asbestos use. South Africa, a leading mining nation, also is close to passing a complete ban on white asbestos mining, something Zimbabwe’s government is fiercely resisting due to sizeable exports of the product to South Africa. 
 
Major producing countries of white chrysotile asbestos include Canada, Russia, Brazil, China and Zimbabwe. The amphibole asbestos types, blue amosite asbestos and brown crocidolite asbestos, are proven to cause asbestos-related respiratory diseases and are banned under World Health Organisation guidelines.

ILO Workers’ Group Takes Strong Stand on Asbestos Ban

Mediated talks will resume today in New Zealand in an effort to end a lockout by regional electric provider Top Energy of 58 members of ICEM affiliate Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU).
The lockout began on 4 February and mediation to end it failed last week when the North Island utility continued to seek work-rule changes that would affect the lives of linemen. Top Energy has met the EPMU’s demand of a 5% wage increase, but concessionary proposals put in front of workers through mediation undermines that pay increase.
The EPMU is encouraging trade union activists to write letters seeking a fair contract offer to Top Energy’s Trustees’ chairman, Brian Thorburn. His e-mail address is <a href="mailto:b.thorburn@xtra.co.nz">b.thorburn@xtra.co.nz</a>.

Lockout by New Zealand Power Company Continues

The FNV labour federation in The Netherlands is engaged today, 9 March, in an emergency meeting with the nation’s tripartite Social Economic Council to address the misuse by Dutch employers of workers from Central and Eastern Europe.
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ICEM affiliate FNV Bondgenoten is conducting a protest outside the Council’s building as the meeting is in progress. The meeting will also focus on the negative effects of a new health insurance system introduced in the country. 
Workers from Poland and other Central and Eastern European countries have flocked to The Netherlands in search of work. They have often been met by unscrupulous employers who use these workers on a term-limited contract basis, or as self-employed workers, in an effort to undermine collective bargaining agreements. The resulting payment of lower wages has a direct effect on all Dutch citizens. 
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FNV Bondgenoten has been successful in its “Equal Pay for Equal Work” campaign, which has brought union membership to a significant number of Central and Eastern European workers, particularly Poles. “We are not against Polish workers coming to The Netherlands for employment, but we insist they be treated fairly, and so do they,” said FNV President Agnes Jongerius.

Dutch Protest Today Points at Exploitation of Central and Eastern European Workers

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A major demonstration set for tomorrow, 30 May, in Sofia, Bulgaria, by trade union organisations there has the full support of the ICEM. The Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria (CITUB), together with another labour federation, will protest over government and employer disinterest in social dialogue talks with trade unions over a national income policy. 
 
The protest will also center on workers’ rights over their legitimate right to strike in Bulgaria, as well as gaining that rights for civil servants. 
In March 2006, the average monthly income of a Bulgarian family stood at €241, while average household expenditures rose to over €226 per month, according to the National Statistical Institute. “Bulgaria is the only one among the countries that are acceding to the European Union that does not have an income policy bargained at the national level,” said CITUB President Zhelyazko Hristov. 
 
In a poll taken last month, over 60% of Bulgarian trade union members insisted on national protest actions for the end of May, while 40% said they would join a national strike over the income and other issues if one were called. For ICEM’s letter of support to affiliate National Labour Federation of Chemistry and Industry on the 30 May demonstration, <a href="/index.php?id=9&doc=1810" type="internal">click here</a>.

Bulgarians Protest Tomorrow over Low Wages, Labour Rights

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Oil workers in southern Iraq conducted a one-day strike 21 February as grievance to the Oil Ministry’s neglect for work conditions and the infrastructure of the company. The strike at the Oil Transport Company of Basra was brought by the General Union of Oil Employees (GUOE) in Basra. 
The strike took place due to the deliberate and targeted neglect of the transport company by the ministry and government; for improvements in workers’ living conditions; and as a demand to pay money promised to workers by the Oil Ministry but never paid.

Iraqi Oil Workers Strike Oil Ministry in Basra

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An 18-day lockout of 58 members of Engineering, Printing & Manufacturing Union in New Zealand ended on 21 February after workers ratified a mediated settlement with a North Island regional electrical provider, Top Energy. 
The two-year accord gives the linemen a 5% wage increase, backdated to 1 July 2005, and a 4% wage increase in July of this year. The agreement also retains for workers key work-rule conditions, items that the community-owned electric distributor tried to take from workers in initiating the lockout.

Lockout Ends at Top Energy in New Zealand

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ChevronTexaco Nigeria Ltd. and one of its contractors, US-based Elper Engineering, face strike actions if the companies do not live up to terms of a collective agreement put in place five years ago. ICEM affiliate NUPENG met again last week in Nigeria with the two companies to resolve the dispute over back wages and severance, but the employers rebuffed efforts to settle the issue. 
The union declared its intent to resolve the dispute through social dialogue, but warned that NUPENG members working inside the two companies would strike if ChevronTexaco and Elper continue to avoid the issue. The two firms have granted the contractual obligation to a few employees, but have denied it to most. Contract workers at ChevronTexaco’s massive Escravos operations in Ugborodo, Delta State, and its shallow-water platform Funiwa off Bayelsa State are affected.

Dispute Festering in Nigeria Between NUPENG, ChevronTexaco

Following a two-day strike on 22 and 23 February, a two-week cooling off process is now underway between ICEM Belgian affiliate ABVV-FGTB and ExxonMobil at a polymers plant near Antwerp. The entire workforce of 350 totally shut down operations at the Zwijndrecht plant in a contract dispute for a 2006-2007 renewal. 
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Workers were incensed at the wage offer presented to them. Also in dispute is management’s proposal to reduce staff by increasing automation. 
Determined worker unity under the guidance of ABVV-FGTB brought the company back to the table, where a conciliator did remove some obstacles to a new agreement on 27 February, the day the two-week cooling off period took effect. Labour and management will return to talks on 14 March.

Belgian ExxonMobil Strike Over; Talks will Resume 14 March

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