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Affiliate CEP in Canada held its 6th National Convention in Quebec City and pledged to raise C$500,000 for HIV/AIDS relief in Africa. The money will be channelled through CEP’s Humanity Fund which union members support by payroll deductions of one cent per hour. CEP also made a firm pledge to keep open the Mirimichi, New Brunswick, kraft pulp mill currently being shut by Finnish UPM Kymenne. By acclamation, Brian Payne was re-elected president of the 150,000-member CEP and Andre Foucault as secretary-treasurer.

CEP’s Congress in Canada Moves on Providing HIV/AIDS Relief

Canadian offshore oil workers at Hibernia, members of Communications, Energy and Paperworkers (CEP) Union, are voting over the next few weeks on their first collective agreement. CEP organized the 450 workers in 2001, was certified by the Newfoundland provincial labour board in October 2001, but was met by union-blocking legal challenges since by Hibernia’s lead company, ExxonMobil. “We felt it was time for our members to have a say on what has been settled and tabled in bargaining,” said CEP National Energy Sector Coordinator Joe Gargiso. The successful organising of the offshore oil workers by the CEP was the first of its kind in North America.

Canadian Offshore Oil Workers Near Deal at Hibernia

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ICEM affiliate FNV Bondgenoten will find out today how serious Shell Nederland is to resolving a pension dispute. The company will present an alternative over a prior, inadequate proposal to the union and the Central Works Council. 
If the offer does not improve and further bargaining is not renewed by 21 June, Bondgenoten is prepared to commence strikes by late summer. Shell needs to maximize premium payments for workers under the Dutch pension system so they too, like nearly all Dutch workers, become eligible for early retirement.

FNV Bondegenoten, Shell Work to Resolve Pension Issues

United Steelworkers (USW) and Bridgestone-Firestone in the US reached tentative labour agreements on 8 June covering 6,000 workers at eight plants. The proposed agreements include the union’s master rubber contract for plants in Akron, Ohio, Des Moines, Iowa, LaVergne, Tennessee, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Noblesville, Indiana, and Russellville, Arkansas, and accords at plants in Bloomington, Illinois, and Warren County, Tennessee. Steelworker members at those locations will review and vote on the proposals over the next few weeks. 
The labour agreements will run until 23 July 2006. If ratified, the Bridgestone agreement will complete master rubber bargaining in America the USW, which represents 70,000 workers in the industry. Prior contracts were achieved with Goodyear, Michelin’s BF Goodrich tyre unit, and Yokohama Corp.

Steelworkers Reach Accord with Bridgestone in US

Multiple gold strikes by affiliate NUM in South Africa may have been tempered some by a court decree late last week declaring an end to one strike, Gold Fields involving 30,000 miners. But ongoing stoppages and potential strikes could still pull 100,000 NUM members out, shutting down the country’s gold mining industry. On 23 March, 21,000 NUM miners at Harmony Gold’s Free State mines struck after the company reneged on a labour agreement from last summer. Harmony unilaterally terminated that agreement and announced job cuts to 4,900 workers without NUM consultation, thus shredding an understanding between Harmony and NUM reached last July. 
The 30,000 Gold Fields miners could return to strike lines once NUM serves a legal notice. A key issue at Gold Fields is housing. The company still provides only common-sex hostels in mining areas, a throwback to apartheid days. Pay disparity between black workers and white workers also is an issue, as is the fact that white women receive maternity leave while black women do not. At the weekend, NUM worksite leaders from South Africa’s other third big gold mining house, AngloGold Ashanti, were meeting to consider their options.

Retrenchments Cause of Mining Strikes in South Africa

The government-imposed "sole administrator" has now left the headquarters of the Nigerian oilworkers' union NUPENG and the democratically elected union leadership has moved back in. This follows a NUPENG Congress and elections yesterday. 
 
The headquarters of the oilworkers' union PENGASSAN is also understood to be back in the union's control. The "sole administrator" there withdrew ahead of next week's PENGASSAN Congress and elections. 
 
The government administrators had been running the two unions ever since the late military dictator Sani Abacha ousted their real leaderships at gunpoint in 1994, as he moved to crush a nationwide oilworkers'strike. 
 
Re-elected as NUPENG General Secretary yesterday was Frank Kokori. The new NUPENG President is B.B. Awe. 
 
Kokori and PENGASSAN General Secretary Milton Dabibi were imprisoned without trial under the Abacha regime. Their release this June followed a sustained worldwide campaign led by the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), to which the two unions are affiliated. 
 
"The NUPENG headquarters has been left in a bad state," Kokori told ICEM UPDATE today. "My first task will be to get the basic infrastructure back in and put our administration back on its feet." 
 
The ICEM had continued to press for the ending of government intervention in the two unions. "Democratic control is essential to the revival of these two important Nigerian unions," commented ICEM General Secretary Vic Thorpe today. "We greatly welcome the freeing of PENGASSAN and NUPENG and look forward to working with them again for the good of workers in Nigeria and worldwide."

Nigeria: Oil Unions Back In Workers' Hands

French union and ICEM affiliate FCE-CFDT has all along suspected that the August 2004 takeover by Aventis of Sanofi-Synthelabo creating Sanofi- Aventis, the world’s third largest pharmaceutical maker, would have dire consequences on employment. The French union did not have to wait long for proof. In order to meet its goal for shedding €1.6 billion in operating costs by 2006, the merged firm’s first attack on workers will make redundant 431 pharmaceutical sales representatives and support staff, close Aventis’s Strasbourg headquarters idling 230 workers, and the spin-off of Research and Development of infectious diseases will cost even more jobs. FCE-CFDT says the company’s selective approach to early retirement is wrong, and the French company must negotiate with the union on age-related and across-the-board early-out packages.

Chemicals Merger Between Aventis and Sanofi Will Cost Jobs

The CEP of Canada is requesting the OECD undertake an investigation of labour practices against Finnish papermaker UPM Kymmene under the Parisbased organization’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. At UPM Kymmene’s lone Canadian mill in Miramichi, New Brunswick, the firm unilaterally announced closure of the pulp mill—chopping 400 jobs effective 31 January 2005—but also engaged in vicious anti-union behaviour. Management turned rabid after the CEP local union protested the closure on grounds the firm’s logging licenses for harvesting government lands mandates that it operate the mill. CEP charges UPM Kymmene with creating a “cold war” atmosphere of labour relations by suspending local union leaders for performing their statutory duties, monitoring and spying on workers’ activities with a hired security team, and refusing to negotiate with the union or to provide information pertinent to bargaining.

CEP of Canada Takes Paper Dispute to OECD

A court injunction 20 November ended a one-day strike by 100 oil workers, members of ICEM affiliate Engineering, Printing & Manufacturing Union (EPMU) of New Zealand. The EPMU members employed at five oil and gas rigs in Taranaki and Taupo struck over lack of progress in NZ’s Onshore Oil Exploration Drilling Rig Agreement, a multi-employer collective agreement. EPMU is seeking a 5% wage adjustment, better redundancy provisions, meal provisions, and changes to training time, which is currently done outside of regular work hours. NZ’s Employment Court will conduct a full hearing on the temporary injunction gotten by oil drilling employers on 24 November.

Oil Companies Get Injunction to End New Zealand Onshore Strike

That rebuilding effort, however, is proving as troublesome under the provisional Iraqi administration as it was under Saddam’s rule, according to the Workers’ Council of the National Company for Chemicals and Plastics Industries in Baghdad. A statement by the fledgling union says “the same fascistic policies of the former regime” are still in place including punishments, dismissals, threats and dismissals. The council is demanding raises in the minimum wage to match inflation, rescinding punishments and full pay for 25 workers, and distributing the yearly gains of the company to workers.

Iraqi Occupation Hindering Workplace Progress

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