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Global worker No1 2022

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SWEDEN: IMF Swedish affiliates Unionen and Sveriges Ingenjörer  representing non-manual workers recently reached a central agreement with employers in the engineering sector.  The agreement, to be supplemented by local negotiations, is valid for 18 months and applies between April 1, 2010 and September 30, 2011.  It provides for a minimum of a 2.6 per cent wage increase - should local negotiations not result in higher wage gains - and is to be implemented in three steps: a 0.7 per cent wage increase on June 1, 2010, a 0.5 per cent increase over the next 12 months, and another 1.4 per cent increase on June 1, 2011.   The agreement further includes an additional 0.2 per cent increase taking into account skill development. The guaranteed wage increase amounts to a minimum SEK 294 (€30). The central agreement concluded in the mining, steel and metal sectors, also to be supplemented by local negotiations, provides for a minimum 3.2 per cent wage increase over a 22-month period, starting on April 1, 2010 with a guaranteed wage rise of SEK 359 (€36).  As in the engineering sector, an additional 0.2 per cent  per year is set aside for individual professional development.  Moreover &quot;parental wages&quot; are expanded by another month to total five months.  &quot;Parental wages&quot; are paid by employers and supplement parental allowances, so that these two compensations together represent about 90 per cent of the wage.  The negotiating parties also agreed on:<ul><li>Establishing a joint working group to analyse various ways and means of financing skill development, including possible changes in legislation;</li><li>Establishing a task group within the industry committee to advance equality issues;</li><li>Better information and training on rehabilitation and occupational health and safety;</li><li>Improving travelling time compensation.</li></ul>

In spite of the crisis, Swedish unions manage to secure wage gains for their members

New framework agreements in Sweden

MEXICO: Thousands of miners from section 271 of the miners' union in Michoacán, wearing red T-shirts and waving flags, assembled with their families around the monument to the memory of the two miners' leaders who died four years ago defending the freedom of association and trade union autonomy.Héctor Álvarez and Mario Alberto Castillo were killed on April 20, 2006, during the first bloody demonstration organised to defend the miners' union. IMF representatives participated in the ceremony at Lázaro Cárdenas. Jyrki Raina, IMF General Secretary, reiterated the international solidarity for Mexican miners and their leader Napoleón Gómez Urrutia.Speaking by telephone, Napoleón Gómez called for miners in the union to stay united and to increase the pressure to bring those responsible to justice. &quot;We respectfully demand that the National Human Rights Commission takes action so that those responsible are prosecuted and sentenced&quot;.Leaders representing the Canadian USW and the Honduran union FETRAMIMH  also attended. Jyrki Raina was interviewed by the local press, mainly about IMF denunciations to the ILO about violations of the freedom of association.

Jyrki Raina, IMF General Secretary, reiterates international solidarity for Mexican miners.

Tribute to the miners who died at Lázaro Cárdenas

GLOBAL: Unions play a crucial role in education and prevention of injury and ill health at the workplace. Unions take local and national action to press for government responsibility to create a framework for workers' health and foster public awareness of hazards. Unions the world over also take international action to make sure that your job does not kill you whether in the advanced, industrialized world or the developing world.  The March 31, 2010 death of 23 year old Jiyeon Park, she was the latest loss in a cluster of leukemia cases of workers who were employed at Samsung, has highlighted the urgent need to provide collective solutions to workplace exposure. The Korean Metal Workers' Union will hold a rally event this April 28 to grieve her death but also to combat the misperception that cancer is an individual problem and fight for recognition of occupational cancer.  This year, the IMF calls on its affiliates to take up the issue of occupational exposure, in particular, to increase awareness and mobilize to stop death and suffering from asbestos-related diseases.  As part of IMF and Building Workers' International cooperation in Asia to prevent asbestos related disease, IMF and BWI affiliates in Delhi will jointly mobilize workers for a day-long hunger strike to draw the central government's attention to the urgent need to ban the use of asbestos and ensure its safe disposal.  While many workers in the industrialized world have succeeded in bringing about a ban on asbestos, the production and distribution of asbestos has to the contrary been on the rise, in part owing to the massive export of asbestos to the developing world. In Australia unions will visit the Canadian embassy and call for an end to the production and distribution of asbestos.IMF calls on its affiliates to take action this April 28 and remember that when it comes to occupational disease, prevention is the only cure and union action makes all the difference, as &quot;Unions Make Work Safer&quot;.IMF affiliates taking action on April 28 are asked to inform IMF by sending an email to <a href="mailto:hchong@imfmetal.org">Hyewon Chong</a>.RESOURCES: <ul><li>Unions interested in pressing their government to develop a National Programme for the Elimination of Asbestos-Related Diseases (NPEAD) can download the ILO/WHO model NPEAD with sample National Asebestos Profile here.</li><li>Even the World Bank has issued a good practice guidance note forbidding the use of asbestos in WB funded projects; see guidance note <a href="../files/10042310395566/(WorldBank)AsbestosGuidanceNote_2009_5.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>.</li><li>Download the ITUC leaflet explaining Workers' Memorial Day <a href="http://www.ituc-csi.org/28-april-2010-unions-make-work.html" target="_blank">here</a>. </li><li>See how workers around the world are remembering 28 April at the <a href="http://www.hazards.org/wmd/" target="_blank">Hazards' 28th April website</a>. </li><li>Join the<a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=170025585213&amp;ref=ts" target="_blank"> Workers' Memorial Day Facebook page</a>.</li></ul>

Under the global theme adopted by the Global Unions for 2010, "Unions Make Work Safer," metalworkers across the world commemorate the 15th international commemoration day for dead and injured workers this April 28.

RESOLUTION 02: on Asbestos

International Workers&#039; Memorial Day 2010: Remember the Dead, Fight for the Living!

Text / Alex IvanouTrade union activist Yolanda Morín, 33, is the international secretary at the Confederación Sindical de Comisiones Obreras (CC.OO), one of IMF's affiliates in Spain, and currently a substitute member of the IMF Executive Committee. In this capacity Yolanda Morín will attend her first IMF Executive Committee meeting in Frankfurt on June 10 and 11, 2010.Yolanda joined the CC.OO national headquarters only two years ago. However she is not new to the trade union movement. Graduated as a teacher at the age of 21 in Madrid, Yolanda moved to Catalan-speaking Barcelona, where she started her career as a teacher. Soon she found that due to linguistic problems it was difficult to continue. Living in an industrial area Yolanda decided to change her work profile and embarked on a different job in small industrial metalworking enterprises. Notably it was here that she first faced the reality of precarious employment with poor working conditions and a bad system of protection of health and safety.In a bid to change this reality Yolanda joined a union and made contact with the union world. In the beginning, she worked in the morning at the factory and on free afternoons at the local union, where she volunteered to work with the training department. Soon after that Yolanda was offered a permanent job in the union as a technical assistant responsible for studies of the labour market and workers' inclusion programs. Yolanda's activism and interest in participating in collective bargaining led to her becoming a member of the Bosch works council and member of its negotiating team. Later, based on her experience, Yolanda was contacted by Comisiones Obreras and offered a job in Madrid first with responsibility for industrial relations observatories and now as the international secretary.In her daily work Yolanda is involved in union cooperation projects, she maintains contacts with European works councils and with colleagues in different companies, both in Europe and globally. In terms of her expectations from her current and future activities with the IMF, Yolanda believes one should be ambitious about what can be done in conjunction with the IMF, while at the same time finding a balance between the available human and financial resources.Yolanda believes that IMF, together with its affiliates, should fight to oblige companies to implement socially responsible practices, since she is assured they do have responsibilities vis-à-vis their workers and society; companies have significant influence on finances, economic systems and also on governments and their policies. Yolanda believes that, &quot;the aim should be to change the rules of the game, it is clear that the IMF cannot do that alone, nevertheless we should put pressure on governments and different institutions where unions are involved to seek to change the rules of the game. The present rules have given us the financial and economic crisis. And the brunt of this has been paid by workers and has translated into a loss of basic rights for workers in collective bargaining and negotiations. It has also resulted in an increase of industrial accidents due to the lack of respect by the companies of health and safety regulations.&quot; &quot;Companies do design and evaluate their strategies by communicating within and between themselves; therefore union cooperation is also key. Unions should be in a position to communicate, to set up and evaluate their own strategies,&quot; she argues, adding, &quot;therefore there is a clear need to set up global workers' and trade union networks.&quot;NB: The IMF Working Group on Trade Union Networks in TNCs, met in Geneva in May and will report to the IMF Executive Committee in June 2010.

Yolanda Morín strongly believes the IMF should develop trade union networks to protect workers' rights all over the world.

The rules of the game should be changed

The International Labour Organization potentially has a significant role to play in bringing companies, trade unions and governments together to bring about improvements to working conditions, starting with improving recognition of the right to freedom of association. In March 2009 the ILO Governing Body decided to develop activities that build capacity of trade unions and employers to participate in social dialogue in the electronics industry at country level. It also agreed to encourage the tripartite constituents at country level to develop agreed mechanisms to reduce the amount of temporary and contract employment in the industry. Importantly, given their key role in promoting labour standards down their supply chains and their capacity to contribute to creating conditions for long-term employment relationships, the ILO is encouraging participation by brand-name companies in these activities which are scheduled to commence in 2010.

Organizing electronics workers

Employment

Threats to workers' rights

Barriers to organizing

The way forward

The role of the ILO

Speaking at the IMF conference, Anne Lindsay of CAFOD (Catholic Agency for Overseas Development), which along with IMF is one of the founding members of the GoodElectronics network (www.goodelectronics.org), stressed the importance of trade unions and Non-Governmental Organizations working together to compel companies to improve conditions in their supply chains. Through GoodElectronics, unions and NGOs concerned with labour rights in the industry can strengthen their relationship and put a consistent message to the companies that they need to improve their approach to freedom of association and enter into direct dialogue with trade unions. The ensuing discussion identified several more principles for dealing with supply chain labour abuses. Responses must be speedy and specific to the particular circumstances. One potential danger to guard against is that multinationals do not sever the supply chain relationship, and thus put workers' jobs at risk, without making all possible efforts first to remedy the situation. Trade unions in the multinational's home country have a particular responsibility to hold the company to respecting labour standards in their own relationship.An important strategy is to improve dialogue with companies, including discussions towards International Framework Agreements (IFAs). The IMF has entered into a number of IFAs with multinational companies, though none in the electronics sector. Such agreements commit companies to respecting at least the key ILO Conventions on freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, discrimination, child labour and forced labour. Most importantly, in signing an IFA with the IMF, the multinational company undertakes to pressure its suppliers to uphold the same standards.Such an agreement in the electronics industry, besides avoiding the pitfalls inherent in unilateral codes, would provide a useful tool for enabling dialogue between companies and trade unions at the international level that could eventually lead to workers participating in monitoring labour conditions in their own factories.In concluding the conference, IMF General Secretary Jyrki Raina highlighted areas for future IMF work. This will include:<ul><li>Supporting organizing and union building in the Asia-Pacific, prioritizing Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines;</li><li>Organizing in industrialized countries;</li><li>Spreading good examples of organizing non-manual workers, women, young people and migrant workers;</li><li>Cooperation with NGOs to create public pressure on governments, companies and investors;</li><li>Working with NGOs, including continued participation in the GoodElectronics network;</li><li>Taking action against precarious work; and</li><li>Developing trade union networks in TNCs and supply chains.</li></ul>

There is entrenched resistance in the electronics industry to unionization. For some of the dominant U.S. brands, this dates back to their early days in Silicon Valley. Despite having an established presence in certain European-based companies such as Philips and Nokia, unions have never been able to gain sufficient toehold in the industry on which to build organizing efforts. Consequently, when electronics manufacturing went through its massive period of growth in the 1990s, unions were not in a position to be able to organize the hundreds of thousands of new electronics workers. Today, only a handful of contract manufacturing plants worldwide have any union presence. Reports abound of workers losing their jobs and being put on an employment 'black list' for attempting to organize or being told not to join a union or engage in any union activity. In Mexico, employment agencies routinely screen jobseekers for family ties to trade unionists and companies expressly prohibit workers from joining trade unions. Export Processing Zones or EPZs, where electronics manufacturing is increasingly located, are notorious for guaranteeing employers a union-free environment and enforcing it by preventing union organizers' access to workers and creating a climate of fear that deters workers from unionizing. Governments contribute by failing to enforce labour laws in the EPZs, either through lack of resources or from a misguided assumption that union-free EPZs will attract more foreign investment. Precarious temporary and agency contracts that proliferate in the sector are another obstacle to electronics workers forming unions: temporary workers have no guarantee of remaining in the workplace for an extended period (although many in fact do); agency workers have an indirect employment relationship with the company they work for; legislation or union statutes prevent contract workers from joining the same unions as the permanent workforce; unions find it hard to make contact with such workers who are likely to be on different pay and conditions from the permanent workforce; and, perhaps the biggest barrier of all, workers' fear of losing their current or future employment.A significant characteristic of electronics manufacturing, from an organizing perspective, is that it is increasingly being done by women and migrant workers. This presents a very large organizing challenge to metal unions that have historically catered to a predominantly male membership. The biggest obstacles to organizing migrant workers are that they may be afraid to join a union and may not be aware of their rights. Language and cultural barriers also need to be overcome. Non-manual workers, which in some parts of the sector make up a high proportion of the workforce, are likely to have their own specific demands of trade unions.Far from being discouraged by these challenges, unions attending the IMF's ICT, Electrical and Electronics conference determined that unions need to continue to develop specific strategies to organize different groups of workers, including women, young people, non-manual workers and precarious workers. Reasserting their commitment to organizing electronics workers, delegates declared that while unionization rates in the electronics industry remain so low, organizing must remain the top priority to improve wages and working conditions and restrict the ever increasing spread of precarious work.

Not surprisingly, the race to drive down labour costs has given rise to reports of widespread abuse of international labour standards, both in the CM companies themselves and further down the supply chain. Typical conditions include below subsistence wages, excessive working hours, forced overtime, temporary contracts, no job security, unsafe working conditions and degrading treatment. The practice of contracting out manufacturing and workforces enables major brand-name companies to distance themselves from the substandard working conditions experienced by the people manufacturing their products. But these companies are coming under increasing pressure to clean up the abuses in their supply chains. A series of high-profile consumer campaigns coupled with pressure from shareholders via responsible investment groups has increased awareness of the vulnerability of high profile brands to negative public perceptions of working conditions in their supply chains. Yet most companies respond only by encouraging, with differing levels of enthusiasm, their suppliers to abide by their own unilaterally developed codes of conduct. This company-driven CSR approach has proven inadequate both to raising standards and sustaining them. Workers have no involvement in monitoring or implementing labour standards as collective labour relations are virtually non-existent. Most significantly, there is no evidence of implementation of company codes successfully addressing breaches of freedom of association or promoting a climate that is less hostile to workers wanting to join a union. There are strong arguments in favour of taking an industry approach to improving labour rights including freedom of association. Supply chains are complex with a high degree of overlap - in many cases a range of brand name companies are supplied by the same factory.This makes it practically impossible for a single company to successfully implement its code of conduct in a factory supplying multiple companies. Accordingly, many of the major companies have joined the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC), which has improving social and environmental conditions across the supply chain as a goal. Unfortunately, the industry code agreed by EICC members does not meet the ILO standard on freedom of association, nor does it include any right to bargain collectively.

Threats to workers&#039; rights

The ILO estimates total employment in the manufacture of electrical and electronic products worldwide at over 18 million. The majority of workers are highly concentrated in some 20 countries which together account for nearly 87 per cent of the world total. Employment growth this century has been led by China which in 2004 had a share of some 35 per cent of global employment. Conversely, between 1997 and 2004 employment in the United States declined by some 550,000 (30 per cent of the workforce), in Japan by 400,000 (20 per cent) and in Germany by 100,000 (14 per cent). Women's share of employment in the sector has risen from 38.7 per cent in 1997 to over 40 per cent with the share in different countries and industry branches ranging from five per cent to 87 per cent.In Europe and North America, new ICT jobs are primarily being created in the service parts of the sector, while in Asia employment is growing not only in lower wage production jobs, but in research and development and other highly skilled jobs. There is still a lot of movement in the sector, with a high rate of mergers, acquisitions and attendant plant closures.Up to 75 per cent of global electronics production has now been outsourced from brand-name companies such as Hewlett Packard, Dell and Apple, to contract manufacturers (CMs). At this level there is significant market concentration, with five major CMs producing electronic products for all the major brands: Hon Hai (Foxconn), Flextronics, Sanmina SCI, Jabil Circuit and Celestica.Despite being for the most part unknown to the general public, the largest CMs are themselves major multinational companies that have seen extraordinary growth. Flextronics increased its sales by a factor of ten between 1997 and 2005, while the largest CM, Hon Hai, employs over 486,000 workers, the majority of them in China. Its turnover for 2009 topped $56 billion.Some of the rapid changes that are occurring in the sector can be seen in the table on page 21, which compares revenues and profits of the leading technology companies in 2009 with 2007.A major element of the CM strategy to attract business from brand-name companies is to locate in countries where wage costs are lower: Flextronics claims to save its clients 75 per cent on labour costs. Consequently, the search for low cost manufacturing locations has led the CMs and other manufacturers away from North America and Western Europe, where there have been numerous plant closures and job losses, towards countries in Eastern Europe and Asia. In 2006, China overtook the European Union in hi-tech exports for the first time.

The persecution of unions in Russia gives little cause for optimism. Interference by the authorities in the activities of workers' organizations is becoming more frequent and systematic. A particularly ominous trend has emerged of treating the unions as &quot;extremist&quot; groups, involving not only the procurator's office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but even the intelligence agencies. In this period of a financial crisis the state has been reducing rather than extending the protection of workers and union activists. While the employers have been increasingly aggressive in pushing for &quot;flexible&quot; employment relationships and deregulation of the labour market, the lower house of the Russian parliament, the Duma, and the Constitutional Court have repealed the provision of the Labour Code requiring the consent of the union for the dismissal of its leaders. That was one of the last legislative guarantees against discrimination which actually worked in court; with its elimination the unions have essentially lost their last defense against arbitrary action by the employers.But even so, worker activists have not given up the struggle. First and foremost, they are conducting an active battle in the courts, sometimes winning substantial victories. There have been quite a few decisions in favour of reinstating workers illegally dismissed. Another important area of activity is solidarity campaigns. Activists of the ITUA and other unions have organized mailings of protest letters through websites; they have been holding meetings and pickets, sometimes involving large numbers of participants, such as in Togliatti, where the ITUA union &quot;Unity&quot; managed to turn out 3,000 people. Finally, international support is of tremendous importance. Two years ago the IMF began a global campaign of solidarity with ITUA activists who been victims of physical violence. The latest complaint by the All-Russian Confederation of Labour to the ILO was also supported by the IMF. Despite everything, the protest movement in Russia is growing. According to official data, the number of mass actions rose to 4,900 in the first quarter of this year from 1,269 for the same period in 2009, that is an increase of 400 per cent. All totaled, almost 1.8 million people participated in them. The authorities themselves admit that the role of the unions in this action was by no means the least important. &quot;We never give up&quot; is a phrase with which Alexei Etmanov often concludes his speeches and commentaries. May it serve as a guide for the action of all trade unions in Russia.

"We never give up"Persecution of unions in Russia today

Complaint to the International Labour Organization

From the present to the future

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