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<img height="40" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100"/>
German affiliate IGBCE last week reiterated its call for industrial competitiveness through development of high-tech workplaces. The union was joined by the North Rhine/Westphalia’s Ministry of Innovation, Science, Research and Technology in an urgent call to the federal government to establish clear and legal conditions for safe genetic engineering. 
 
IGBCE and the agency stressed that Germany is the global leader in developing green genetic engineering technologies, and the government must take assertive action in order to retain that global reputation. 
<img height="207" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/hubertusschmoldt.jpg" width="152" alt=""/>
ICEM President and 
ICEM Vice-President Hubertus Schmoldt
In a joint statement, IGBCE President Hubertus Schmoldt and Professor Andreas Pinkwart from the Ministry said Germany, globally, cannot afford to fall into a “competitive disadvantage” because the government has failed to put a concise plan in place for technological development. They demanded that the federal government open research and technology possibilities in the life sciences so that both employment opportunities and growth could take hold. 
 
In Germany, IGBCE has been the main social partner demanding renewed emphasis on technology and development of bio-sciences. The union has also been at the forefront in achieving better and more flexible terms and conditions at high-tech worksites.

IGBCE Calls on German Government to Take a Stand on Genetic Engineering

25 August 2006 
 
Comrade Peter Esele 
President 
PENGASSAN 
NIGERIA 
 
 
Dear Comrade Peter, 
 
The ICEM has learned of the tragic and senseless death of one of PENGASSAN’s members, Nelson Ujeya, earlier this week in the vicinity of Brass Creek or Biobou Creek, Bayelsa State. We understand that Brother Ujeya had been kidnapped on 8 August 2006 in Letugbene while performing his employment duties for Shell Petroleum Development Corporation. 
 
We also have unconfirmed reports that he died in a violent gun fight between Nigeria’s Joint Military Task Force and militant youth groups on 20 August 2006 as he was about to be released after negotiations. 
 
The 20-million-member ICEM, the Global Union Federation for oil and gas workers, finds it reprehensible that such indiscriminate use of force by Nigerian government militia be used in such a situation. The ICEM stands firmly behind PENGASSAN in holding both the government of Bayelsa State initially responsible for the abduction of Brother Ujeya while in the presence of state officials, and the federal government for its new policy of “force by force” in dealing with kidnappings that occur in the Niger Delta. 
 
The ICEM calls on all energy companies operating in Nigeria to apply the same effort and resources in securing the release of kidnapped Nigerian workers as they do for their foreign national employees. 
 
Next week, on 30 August 2006, PENGASSAN and NUPENG will conduct a joint National Executive Council (NEC) in Benin City to discuss this and other security matters in the Niger Delta. The ICEM recognises that the combined voice of NUPENGASSAN in Nigeria has been one of reason and soundness in stemming the social instability occurring along the Niger Delta. We know that this combined voice has stood for education, skills training and other social development initiatives that will increase employment opportunities in the oil and gas sectors for Nigerians. We commend and fully endorse that stand. 
 
We would look forward to having a report from the NEC’s deliberations as soon after 30 August as possible in order to publicise your sensible positions on the global level. 
 
In conclusion, please convey sincere condolences from the ICEM and its family of global trade unions to the family of Wilson Ujeya. We are very distraught on the circumstances of his horrific death. Also, please express our deep concern to all trade union members of PENGASSAN and NUPENG, who are forced to work in such a difficult and terrifying environment. 
 
Fraternally, 
 
 
Fred Higgs 
General Secretary

ICEM letter to Pengassan

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Several French trade unions are resisting the government’s forced privatisation of Gaz de France through a merger with French-Belgian water and power concern, Suez Group. Three salaried administrators on the company’s board, representing the trade union CGT, were successful last week before an Appeals Court in Paris in ordering the utility’s management to hold an extraordinary board meeting to discuss anti-trust concerns raised on 18 August by the European Commission. 
 
That board meeting was held on 1 September, six days before French parliamentarians will take the matter up in the National Assembly. All four unions represented on Gaz de France’s board, including FO, CFE-CGC and ICEM affiliate FCE-CFDT, claim that the objections by the European Commission present serious warning signs and warrant full disclosure. 
<img height="67" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/FranceFlag.gif" width="100"/>
The government-brokered merger deal was set in motion last spring by French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin to block a hostile takeover of Suez by Italian energy company Enel. If a Gaz de France-Suez merger were to become a reality, it would break a pledge contained in a 2004 French law which states that at least 70% of Gaz de France would remain in the state’s hands. The proposed €72 billion merger would mean the government’s stake in the combined company would be diluted to 34%.
The CGT is threatening a strike sometime in September if the proposal in the National Assembly to validate the merger isn’t defeated. In addition, CGT, FO and CFTC have called for national mobilisations on 12 September against the privatisation. 
 
FCE-CFDT is hostile to privatising Gaz de France and believes the state must continue to be the major shareholder of the utility. But the union is not opposed to closer cooperation between Gaz de France and Suez.

French Unions Press Issue on Gaz de France Privatisation

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The mining world’s largest stop-work action so far in 2006 ended on 31 August when Chilean copper miners of the Escondida Workers’ Union No. 1 voted, 1,607 to 121, to accept a 40-month collective agreement. 
A settlement, which ended the 25-day strike, occurred the day before when the union and BHP Billiton, the lead company in Minera Escondida Ltda., agreed to salary and bonus terms with the regional Labour Ministry serving as mediator. The Escondida mine is located in Chile’s northern Region II. 
 
Miners won a satisfactory share of the huge profits made by the world’s biggest copper producer. The union’s 2,052 miners will receive a salary increase of 5% above Chile’s inflation rate, or 8%, and a one-off bonus of US$17,000 per miner. The union had amended its demands in last week’s bargaining to 8% above the inflation rate and a bonus of US$29,000. 
<img height="96" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMminingsector2.JPG" width="100"/>
The new agreement also includes universal health care coverage, education allowances, and interest-free loans, totalling about US$4,000 per miner. Workers began returning to their jobs late last week, with full production expected by the end of this week. 
 
Under Chilean labour law, workers can sign individual contracts and return to work after 16 strike days. BHP Billiton was hoping this would occur as it called for strike-breakers and a return to normal production. However, the company’s scab plan failed and it increased a final pay offer when it became apparent that only a handful of miners – estimated at 20 – abandoned the strike. 
 
BHP Billiton, a 57.5% stakeholder in Minera Escondida, said in a statement that it is “convinced that the final result of this large process will prove beneficial to both sides.” The company and other stakeholders have seen profits triple from Escondida during the first six months of 2006, from US$936.9 million in the first half of 2005 to US$2.92 billion. The strike at the operation producing 8% of the world’s copper supply stoked fears of a global shortage of the red metal. The current copper market is one of high demand, causing high pricing. 
 
The settlement will now loom large in negotiations between Chilean state-run copper company Corporacion Nacional del Cobre (Codelco) and its unions, covering 17,000 miners. Codelco’s workers are among the lowest paid miners in Chile, while Escondida workers are now the highest. Negotiations between Codelco and unions at three of its four divisions begin in October 2006, with contract expirations coming on 30 November and 31 December. 
 
Codelco stands as the world’s biggest copper company, with huge reserves at its Andina, Norte, El Salvador, and El Teniente mines. Some 25% of the world’s total supply of copper originates from Chile.

Chile’s Copper Strike at BHP Billiton’s Minera Escondida Ends

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Sappi paperworkers at a Belgian mill staged a 24-hour strike on 5-6 July in protest of the South African company’s restructuring plan. The paper mill’s 700 workers seek to persuade the company not to cut 123 jobs from the pulp and coated papers mill. 
 
Management at the Lanaken mill claims the restructuring is merely a costs-savings measure, while the unions see it as mass redundancies and forced dismissals. The unions will use social dialogue to argue that cost-cutting should not go beyond not replacing those who retire combined with a tightening on the number of fixed-term contract workers that Sappi utilises. 
<img height="102" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMpaper3.jpg" width="100"/>
Preliminary talks between the unions and management will occur on 18 July, with social dialogue on the restructuring plan to take place in September.

Sappi Paperworkers in Belgium Strike over Proposed Job Cuts

The UK’s Transport & General Workers’ Union (TGWU) has enlisted a core of allies, including the ICEM, to resist 800 job redundancies and closures to English China Clay (ECC) operations in the South West by Imerys. TGWU has mapped a comprehensive community and global campaign against the French-based building materials group, which purchased ECC in 1999, in efforts to block the sackings.
<img height="55" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/UKTGWU.gif" width="100"/>    <img height="51" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/UKAmicus.jpg" width="100"/>  <img height="100" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/UKGMB.gif" width="100"/>
  
The TGWU, together with two other UK trade unions representing Imerys workers in the South West, Amicus and the GMB, have already placed the dire economic consequences of the sackings squarely in front of both local and national government officials. They will now engage a full community awareness campaign aimed at pressuring Imerys to honour a pledge made two short two years ago. That pledge, made after some jobs were lost in the South West, promised that 800 other jobs would remain. 
 
The campaign will consist of mass meetings, rallies, and a petition that will be taken door-to-door across towns and villages of the region. The campaign is also aimed at the British government in hopes that initiatives can be put in place to retain the jobs. The ICEM will head up the campaign on the global level. 
 
The proposed restructuring plan of Imerys fell like a bombshell on the economic fragile South West, where the average Imerys worker earns an annual salary of ₤23,000, some ₤4,500 higher than the local incomes average. Imerys’ surprise announcement in early July said that by the start of 2008, nearly all ECC mines and processing facilities across Cornwall, Devon and Lee Moor would be shuttered, as it moves production of kaolin and high-grade coatings for the paper industry to Brazil. The company cited high energy costs as the reason. 
 
At an emergency debate session in the House of Commons on 11 July, MP Matthew Taylor from the South West said one in five households in the region would be directly affected by the proposed restructurings, “and the number is probably one in three when the knock-on effects are taken into consideration.” Taylor said besides the 800 direct jobs on the line, 800 other jobs likely would be lost due to reduced spending power in the South West.
<img height="119" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMCement.JPG" width="120"/>
  
The European Works Council (EWC) of Imerys responded with a terse 17 July message directed at the company. The statement condemned an Imerys decision to close a 100-member workplace in France, as well as the proposed mass layoffs in the UK. The EWC “objects against the recent decisions of the group of closing a site in France and a huge restructuring in the United Kingdom,” read the statement. 
 
“This strategy of de-localisation of the activities, here to Hungary and to Brazil, is guided only by the search for higher profits. The members of the EWC Committee require Imerys, which is in excellent economic and financial health, to assume the full social consequences of these decisions, both in France and in the United Kingdom. The EWC will also be extremely vigilant on the conditions of employment for the workers in Hungary and Brazil. 
 
“It is not enough that the director of Human Resources for the group, challenged on these subjects during the meeting of 6 July, claims to be open to social dialogue and negotiation. It is also his responsibility to make certain that this policy is applied by the local HR directors. As regarding social relations and also issues of health and safety, local management has carried out actions in total contradiction with principles posted by the Imerys group.” 
 
The overall financial health of Imerys, according to first quarter 2006 disclosures, has not been affected by high global energy prices. The company’s first quarter results show that sales had increased 10.8% over the same period in 2005, and net income was up 13.2% over that of the first quarter of last year.

Campaign Mounts to Block Shift of UK Jobs by Imerys

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Nigerian oil workers’ unions, steadfastly acting as NUPENGASSAN, met in a Joint National Executive Council (NEC) on 30 August and issued a mandate to both government and energy companies that violence must stop and that the unions’ longstanding demands must be seriously implemented. ICEM affiliates NUPENG and PENGASSAN plans a three-day warning strike, starting 13 September across all oil and gas installations of the region if immediate action is not undertaken. 
 
If the government fails to provide a peaceful and safe working environment for oil and gas workers in the region following the warning strike, the unions would call an indefinite strike. 
<img height="114" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/NigeriaNupeng.gif" width="110"/>        <img height="105" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/NigeriaPengassan.JPG" width="100"/>
Following the day-long meeting in Benin City, a communiqué was issued containing harsh words for both the Nigerian national government’s “poor response” to the rash of kidnappings along the Niger Delta as well as to state governments, which have displayed a “hypocritical and non-chalant attitude … in the deteriorating state of insecurity and criminality which now pervades the entire region.” 
 
The statement says that the recent federal policy by President Olusegun Obasanjo to meet force-with-force has only created “deepening insecurity” in the region. NUPENGASSAN’s complete NEC communiqué can be read <a href="/index.php?id=25&doc=1943&la=EN" type="internal">here</a>.
The two unions also condemned governmental handling in the release of a kidnapped PENGASSAN member last month. Comrade Nelson Ujeye was killed on 20 August when joint military and police troops ambushed a militant youth group on Niger Delta waters as he was about to be released. The communiqué called it “a grievous fratricidal sacrifice that arose from applying a negative approach.” The story of Comrade Nelson Ujeye’s abduction and subsequent death, including the ICEM’s statement on the incident, can be found in a recent InBrief Alert <a href="/?id=77&doc=1927&la=EN" type="internal">here</a>. 
 
The NEC also took note of the increasing number of cases of expatriate quota abuse inside the employment ranks of energy companies doing business in Nigeria. 
 
NUPENGASSAN, also at the meeting, reiterated its incriminations against the government’s privatisation authority in the sale of state-owned Eleme Petro Chemical Ltd. Due diligence was not done in investigating the buyer of the Port Harcourt olefins refinery, the three-year-old Thai company Indorama. The enterprise is vastly under-valued, according to the two unions. 
<img height="101" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/ICEMOil.JPG" width="100"/>
The NEC also condemned pipeline vandalism, as well as the fact that the government allowed the nation’s five refineries to become mere transport “conduits” of imported petroleum products, rather than emphasizing local refining of such products to meet Nigeria’s domestic needs. 
 
And finally, the unions’ grievances include strong objection to merging the Petroleum Training Institute, established by law to provide mid-level Nigerian staff to the oil and gas industries, into the University of Benin, and calls on the government to grant full autonomy to the Department of Petroleum Resources, so that it can effectively serve as the oil and gas regulator. 
 
The ICEM strongly supports the unions’ warning strike next week, as well as their other demands. The ICEM also calls on oil and gas companies operating in Nigeria to apply the same efforts and resources in securing a safe work and living environment for Nigerian oil workers, and their families, as they do for foreign national employees.

Violence-Plagued Niger Delta Must Heed Oil Workers’ Unions Call

The month-long strike by Norway’s NOPEF union that is beginning to cripple energy production across the country’s oil patch will get an airing today before a state mediator. It will be the government’s second attempt to resolve issues that prompted NOPEF to strike a selective list of oil service companies on 21 June. 
 
Efforts just prior to the start of the strike by the state mediator failed.
<img height="90" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/NorwayFlag.gif" width="120"/>
  
The strategic strike by 87 NOPEF trade unionists is aimed at normalising the national oil services’ work agreement with other national contracts inside Norway’s energy sector. Work schedules and working terms and conditions common to other staff inside the sector remains the central issue to the strike. 
 
The striking NOPEF members are employed by Halliburton, Baker Hughes, Schlumberger, Weatherford and Oceaneering. Other oil service companies such as Aker Kvaerner, Geoservices, and Acergy are also affected. Major oil companies that are losing time and money on well development projects, new drilling exploration, and maintenance include Statoil, ConocoPhillips, Norsk Hydro, Shell, ExxonMobil, and Chevron. 
 
Work has been interrupted at Statoil’s Snorre and Stratford platforms, and at the Norwegian state company’s northern Snøhvit and Kristin oil fields, while the strike has slowed work at Norsk Hydro’s Heidrun and Oseberg platforms, and at ConocoPhillip’s Ekofisk platform.

Mediation Today in NOPEF’s Oil Services Strike

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Industrianställda I Norden, or Nordic IN, is the new name of a merged labour union federation covering five Nordic countries—Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.
Two federations—Nordic Metal and NIF, representing workers in chemicals, paper and textile industries—merged 1 January in a move bringing 22 national unions into a single Nordic industrial federation.
Nordic IN intends to safeguard the Nordic social model, characterized by modern and efficient social security systems, equality, democratic influence, and bargaining structures at both the local and national levels. Former ICEM Officer Jyrki Raina is the general secretary of the new federation.

Five-Country Nordic Industrial Trade Union Federation Forms

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Contract maintenance workers at BP’s Kwinana refinery, who are members of ICEM affiliate Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU), won a five-week strike in mid-December 2005. The 86 workers, employed by United Group, won their full pay demands of nearly A$10 per hour over three years, which will give them parity with BP’s maintenance workers. 
The strikers along with other United Group contract workers at both the Alcoa refinery in Wagerup and the Ravensthorp nickel project were targeted by the Howard government’s watchdog Building and Construction Commission for conducting unprotected strike actions under the government’s new and regressive Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act.

Maintenance Contractors End BP Australian Strike

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