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US affiliate United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers (UE) used International Human Rights Day to remind us all that the United States has not ratified ILO Conventions 87 and 98 on freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining.
The union sent a delegation to the North Carolina state governor with a complaint on a state statute that supports the US position of non-ratification. The statute grants state employees with the right to unionise, but denies collective bargaining. The union is also taking the matter before the ILO’s Public Sector Workers’ conference committee. The US has also not ratified ILO Convention 151, granting public employees the right to organise and setting conditions of employment in the public sector.
UE Local 150 counts as members many public employees across North Carolina. UE members from six US states and supporters from three countries delivered the complaint to North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley on 9 December.

US Affiliate Seeks Bargaining Rights for North Carolina’s Public Workers

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A strike by over 300 paperworkers at Stora Enso's newsprint and publication papers mill in Gent, Belgium, ended 8 November. 
The strike ended after 56% of the workers voted to continue the 11-day strike and 43% voted to return to work. The workforce had imposed a rule that at least 60% of the 330 blue-collar workers at Stora Enso's Langerbrugge mill must vote for continuation of any job action. 
The strike's end means that an inferior wage offer presented by management on 7 November will go into effect. The wage package will cover two years. The strike was over management's posture at the negotiations table, which was bargaining by ultimatum rather than honest social dialogue to resolve the pay and other serious issues inside the mill. 
The paper mill's managing director never entered talks, but rather other managers issued terse and reactive ultamatums at workers' representatives, stating such dictates were coming from him. The strike involved members of ICEM affiliate ABVV-FGTB, the socialist union in Belgium, as well as two other unions with membership inside the paper mill.

Strike Ends at Stora Enso Paper Mill in Belgium

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US-based glassmaker Owens Illinois has discriminated against union members by sacking workers inside a Peldar glass plant in Peru. 
Early in October the company made redundant 11 workers from the factory but later that month recalled five of the workers. The six who were not recalled included representatives - two of whom were past general secretaries - of the Sindicato de Trabajadores de Owens Illinois Perú. 
The ICEM, in lodging a protest with the American company, cited the firm with a clear violation of trade union rights. The trade union discrimination matter has also been taken up by Peruvian national labour centre CGTP, and is before the country’s labour courts.

Owens Illinois Discriminating Against Union Officers in Peru

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ICEM’s Social Dialogue project in Colombia has seen its first direct positive result, and glassmaker Owens Illinois is the employer that made it happen. 
ICEM and Colombian affiliate Sintravidricol had lobbied the US company to bring multiple plants of its Peldar and Vildriera Fenicia subsidiaries under a common labour agreement. Through commitment to dialogue rather than confrontation, Sintravidricol and the company successfully negotiated separate but similar agreements at two of the plants. 
The ICEM applauds both the union and Owens Illinois managers in Colombia for charting a course of respectful collective bargaining. ICEM’s Social Dialogue project in Colombia, launched in October 2004, is in place due to strong support of Swedish unions.

Social Dialogue Project Makes Headway in Colombia

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ICEM President Senseni Zokwana, president of the National Union of Mineworkers, gave an inspirational appeal at the Congress of ICEM affiliate South African Chemical Workers’ Union (SACWU) to fight even harder against the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa. 
The Congress was held in Johannesburg from 3-5 November and included a skit by SACWU members on HIV/AIDS as well as speech by a motivational speaker delivering a strong message on fighting the disease.

SACWU Congress in South Africa Focuses on HIV/AIDS

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A deadly past several weeks has brought more deaths from China’s mines. 
On 11 November, 19 perished due to a gas explosion at Bayinsai Coal Tar Co. in Wuhai city, Inner Mongolia. That was preceded by two separate gas blasts on 6 November, claiming a total of 52 miners. At the one in Xingtai County, Hebei province, three gypsum mines collapsed killing 36 and seriously injuring another 30. The other happened at the Taiping Coal Mine, Shanxi province, where 16 died in a gas blast. 
On 8 November in Qitai County in the autonomous region of Xinjiang Uygur, 14 died in a workers dormitory where an employee of Beitahsan Coal Mine was handling explosives. Sixteen coal miners died on 27 October due to an explosion inside the Zhongxing Coal Mine near Aksu city in northwest Xinjiang region. 
Drilling through a water-eroded cave brought death by drowning to 28 miners on 4 October at Guang’an Energy Group’s Longtan Coal Mine in Sichuan province. A day earlier in Henan province, 34 miners died from a gas explosion at the Henan Hebei Coal Co., a joint venture between the state and Thai-based Banpu plc. And on the evening of 2 October, ten people died when they were overcome by gas after sneaking into a molybdenum mine in Liaoning province to work illegally. 
China’s State Administration of Coal Mine Safety will have closed 7,000 mines due to safety concerns by the end of the year, and another Chinese agency posted on its website that in order to qualify for financial incentives available for safe mining practices, managers must accompany workers into mines on each shift.

More Deaths Hit China’s Mines

The ICEM’s two-day World Conference for the Materials Sector, covering the cement, glass and ceramics industries, discussed several labour disputes plaguing these industries, and took definitive action to build global trade union unity around these disputes. 
 
“We call on all our affiliates to take note of the companies that have brought adverse labour relations to these workplaces,” said ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs, “and we also call on trade unions worldwide within these companies to bring these disputes to the attention of their own managements.” 
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From left to right: ICEM Materials officer Phee Jungsun, ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs, vice-chairperson of the Materials conference Michel Decayeux and the newly elected chairperson Jim Hickenbotham.
Three of the ongoing disputes are in the US and involve two French-based companies, in addition to a Spanish concern. The fourth dispute happened in Belgium earlier this year, and was instigated by a glass company from Japan. 
 
In the US, Imerys, a French building materials company, continues to victimize members of the United Steelworkers (USW) at a calcium carbonate operation in Sylacauga, Alabama. Despite a vote by the 500 workers at the mine and processing plant to retain the union in a US government-conducted election, local managers discriminate against union members and violate terms of the collective agreement. 
 
At another workplace in the American South, a strike at Giant Cement in Harleyville, South Carolina, in August and September by the USW was met by local managers permanently replacing the strikers. This action was done by the company - a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cementos Portland Valderrivas of Madrid, Spain - on the eve of strikers abandoning the strike on 23 September 2005. 
 
Delegates to the ICEM’s Materials Sector conference also discussed the reprehensible actions by American managers of French-based Saint Gobain at an abrasives factory in Worcester, Massachusetts. A majority of 770 workers voted for representation by the United Auto Workers (UAW) in August 2001 and despite nearly four years and some 140 collective bargaining sessions, Saint Gobain managers refused to enter into an agreement. In January of this year, in a decertification vote against the union, the US government found management had used illegal means to influence the vote. 
 
The fourth dispute also was a strike, and involved a unilateral decision by Japanese management of Asahi Glass to shift production and make redundant over a quarter of 840 workers at Glaverbel’s AGC Automotive glass plant in Fleurus, Belgium. The company initially refused social dialogue with ICEM affiliates CG-FGTB and SETCa-FGTB. 
 
The Materials Conference elected a new chairperson for the coming four-year period. Jim Hickenbotham, an officer for the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers (IBB) from the US, was elected by acclamation, while Michel Decayeux, general secretary of CGT-FO Fédéchimie in France was elected vice chairperson. 
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To read the Declaration that was adopted at the conference, click <a href="/?id=77&doc=1511" type="internal">here</a>.
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For more information on this conference, including background documents and presentations, click <a href="?id=148" type="internal">here</a>.
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Materials Conference Takes Global Approach in Countering Local Disputes

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ICEM Norwegian affiliate Fellesforbundet has taken in the Norwegian Graphical Workers’ Union in a merger that will give the union greater strength in the graphical, cardboard and packaging sectors of Norway. The merger became effective 1 January. 
Fellesforbundet’s executive board will increase by four seats with the addition of three members from the Graphical Division, plus former President Ander Skattkjaer, who will also direct Fellesforbundet’s Collective Bargaining Department.

Norwegian Fellesforbundet, Graphical Union Merge

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The ICEM is saddened to learn of the death in late December of South African labour leader Muzi Buthelezi, 53, a former Executive Committee member of the ICEM. He was general secretary of the Chemical Workers’ Industrial Union (CWIU) and the Chemical, Energy, Paper, Printing, Wood and Allied Workers’ Union (CEPPWAWU). 
Comrade Buthelezi headed the CWIU when it merged with PPWAWU in February 1999 and became the first general secretary of the 92,000-member CEPPWAWU. He stepped down in 2002 and became chairman of CEPPWAWU Investments, the union’s Provident Fund, where he became prominent in black economic empowerment projects. 
He was a leader inside COSATU and a convenor for South Africa’s National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC), a tripartite statutory body aimed at achieving positive social and labour legislation. He was also chairman of Imithi, a black empowerment consortium which took a stake in South Africa’s largest generic medicines manufacturer, Aspen Pharmacare, of which CEPPWAWU Investments owns a stake. He had been a director of Aspen.

ICEM Mourns Death of South Africa’s Muzi Buthelezi

ICEM Serbia-Montenegro affiliate, EPS Trade Union, began the second phase of strike actions at three enterprises of the state-run electric power generation and distribution services on 20 January.
Distribution workers are now striking two hours daily, while thermal plant production has been decreased by 10%. In addition, maintenance workers at hydro plants and transmission network workers have reduced services. The strike actions, which began 10 January, are over back wages owed to power workers and miners for 2004 and 2005 and for a fair wage increase in 2006. 

<img height="133" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/0512SerbiaEPSunionPrez.jpg" width="100"/> 
 
EPS Trade Union President 
Miroslav Veličković
The Serbian Mining and Energy Ministry reneged on an offer that had ended one-hour, daily strikes. Originally, the two sides agreed that workers would be paid 70% of accrued back-wages now, and the remainder later. Last week, the government amended that offer to pay workers only 9% on a monthly basis, and structure that as a loan.

Serbian Affiliate Commences Phase Two of Utility Strike Actions

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