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Police in the Philippines a week ago punched through strike lines of the unaffiliated Lepanto Employees Union at Lepanto Consolidated Mining Corp., the country’s largest copper and gold producer. The union struck 4 June over a pay dispute that has been unresolved since November 2004. On 8 June, the government issued a return to work order, but the vast majority of over 1,700 workers continued the union’s strike. The Department of Labour and Employment then issued dismissal letters to miners refusing to obey the strike’s termination edict. In 2003, a strike at the Mankayan, Benquet province, mine and smelting operations was also broken up by riot police. Two miners died in the process.

Police, Government Break Mine Strike in Philippines

<img height="40" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief 1.gif" width="100" alt=""/>
Power workers in Australia staged a 24-hour strike against Western Power last week over issues that included the job responsibilities of contract workers. 
The unionized workers, 600 power line crew and 100 maintenance men at power stations, are members of ICEM affiliate Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union (CEPU) in West Australia. Workers returned to their jobs at mid-week, but did not rule out further job action if the issues were not resolved.

Electric Workers in Australia Take Industrial Action

Several mining disputes were in progress as the second half of 2005 started. In Peru, 800 miners who are under the umbrella of ICEM affiliate Federacion Nacional de Trabajores Mineros, Metalurgious y Siderurgicos del Peru (FNTMMSP) struck that country’s only iron ore mine on 4 July. 
The strike was settled on 8 July and was against the iron ore mining subsidiary of Chinese state company Shouda Iron and Steel Group, or Shougang. Heightened production levels and speed-ups have left the miners with an accident rate 600% over that of 2002, and the Chinese company had refused to make a fair salary proposal or improvements in working conditions. Sindicato de Obreros Mineros, affiliated to FNTMMSP, was also seeking urgent investment in equipment and machinery in order to reduce the accident toll and seeks to get the Chinese company to make good on promises to start social development projects in the local mining village. 
The strike was settled through intervention by Peru’s Ministry of Labour, and the settlement contained a daily wage increase plus a bonus for each worker.

Peruvian Mining Strike with Chinese Firm Intensifies

Leaders and activists of the unaffiliated Lepanto Employees Union in the Philippines are still off work at Lepanto Consolidated Mining Co.’s gold operations in Benquet province. The trade unionists were sacked for continuing an allegedly illegal strike. The country’s Department of Labor and Employment stepped in last week to resolve the pay dispute that has lingered since last November for 1,700 miners, but made no provisions to reinstate the leaders. Workers struck legally on 4 June, but the labour agency issued a back-to-work order on 8 June. Many of the miners are remaining off jobsites in sympathy with the discharged leaders. The company says it will attempt to reach full production using supervisors and contract workers.

Mine Workers' Leaders in Philippines Still Off Jobs

<img height="55" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/InBrief1.gif" width="138"/>
In the chemicals sector, bargaining will resume 19 July in Canada in the five-week-old strike between CEP and Invista. Some 380 members of CEP Local 28-0 have been on strike in Maitland, Ontario, since 4 June over a concessionary company proposal. 
That proposal would cut benefits in the third year of a proposed three-year contract, force unwanted language on them in which they would be made redundant before contract workers are laid off. The proposal also includes longer working hours, which, judging by Invista’s experience, would result in layoffs. 
CEP has taken the fight to Ontario’s elected officials fearing Invista is braced to start production with replacement workers, an obvious health and safety menace to the Maitland community. 
The plant manufactures nylon intermediates, refrigerants, and engineered polymer products. Invista was formed in 2004 when DuPont spun off its textiles and interiors business to Koch Industries of the US for US$4.4 billion. Koch combined its KoSa fibres business with the DuPont business, and Invista now has 24,000 employees at operations in 50 countries, including 90 plants in the US and Canada.

CEP Members Strike Former DuPont Plant in Canada

ICEM UK affiliate Amicus is in a 90-day consultation period with papermaker ArjoWiggins in efforts to save 150 jobs at the Corpach Mill, near Fort William in Scotland. The company announced closure of the carbonless paper mill last month, but Amicus and two other unions representing workers at the mill are intent to find a buyer for the 39-year-old mill. In 2003, the British government gave the company a £5 million grant for construction of a new biomass boiler system for energy generation, but ArjoWiggins did not go ahead with the project.

Amicus Seeks to Keep UK Paper Mill Open

The long, bitter dispute between ICEM US affiliate PACE and Continental Carbon is over. After a three-and-a-half-year lockout by the Taiwanese-based firm of 86 workers who make carbon black for the rubber industry in Ponca City, Oklahoma, PACE members ratified a new labour agreement this weekend that includes a satisfactory back-to-work agreement.

US Affiliate PACE, Taiwanese Continental Carbon Reach Terms

The United Steelworkers of America (USWA) and German-based Continental Tire are in disagreement over severance and health care benefits for 700 workers about to be sacked due to a plant closing in Mayfield, Kentucky. The company announced earlier this year it was discontinuing manufacture of auto and light truck tyres effective 31 December 2004 in Mayfield. The USWA on 17 September submitted a US$20 million costs-savings proposal to Continental, but the company rejected it, stating investment and lower-cost tyre production from Brazil, Mexico and China is the firm’s priority. Continental will maintain warehousing and a mixing unit in Mayfield, employing only 200 workers.

USWA Takes Issue with Continental Tire’s US Plant Closing

ICEM affiliate USWA, meanwhile, achieved a first collective agreement in the US for 130 Goodyear Tire & Rubber workers in Statesville, North Carolina. Workers there chose USWA for representation last February through a newly instituted card-check/neutrality agreement signed between the union and US rubber-maker in 2003 negotiations. The first labour agreement for the 130 at the tyre mold plant means they will come under the network of job security provisions agreed to in those 2003 negotiations, including the company’s commitment to utilize USWA members before reaching outside for contract labour. The USWA is still negotiating at two other Goodyear plants where workers chose union representation through the card-check, or showing of interest procedure spelled out in the 2003 labour agreement with Goodyear. Those plants are a steel tyre cord plant in Asheboro, North Carolina, employing 350 workers, and a Goodyear textile plant in Utica, New York, employing 160.

USWA Reaches Agreement with Goodyear at Newly-Organized Site

The UK’s Transport & General Workers Union (T&G) says French-based Imerys has unilaterally decided to implement pension scheme concessions on its 2,500 UK workers. Without consultation with the union, the company says it will eliminate the final salary scheme for new hires and terms of the scheme for existing workers will be downgraded. T&G points out that Imerys “had taken a three-year pension holiday” from 2000-03 that cost the scheme £9 million. Imerys also announced it would cut 80 jobs in the UK by next spring.

Transport & General in UK Has Pension Issues with Imerys

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