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In Canada, a tentative agreement was reached in Miramichi, New Brunswick, on 13 August, between the workers at the UPM Kymmene mill, represented by CEP Local 689, and the company management. The result of 12 days of negotiations, this agreement is hoped to be the start of a solution that would bring an eight-month long struggle to an end, which shut down paper production completely in Miramichi. Amongst the 700 employees on strike for a new collective agreement are 400 former employees from the kraft pulp mill, which closed permanently in December 2004. Issues such as severance and pensions were part of the contract under discussion. A large majority of the members of Local 689 has in the meantime voted in favour of the proposed agreement.

Canadian Paper Strike Ends in Miramichi, New Brunswick

The first industry-wide industrial strike in the South African gold sector in 18 years ended on 10 August when an improved wage offer was accepted by the members of ICEM affiliate National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and two other smaller unions. Taking part in a strike for which the support was so overwhelming that there was no need for a picket line, around 110,000 workers had stayed of work, affecting all large enterprises in the sector, such as Goldfields, Harmony and AngloGold Ashanti. The compromise was reached between the South African Chamber of Mines, negotiating on behalf of the gold companies, and the trade unions, agreeing on a pay rise between 6 and 7%.

Wage Gains End South African Gold Mining Strike

Placer Dome, the world's third-biggest gold miner, faces a global trade union campaign aimed at reversing the company's recently announced job cuts and pressing it to repair the severe environmental damage that it has caused in a number of countries where it operates. 
 
Gold mining workers' leaders from around the world unanimously adopted a resolution to that effect this afternoon, at the close of a World Gold Forum held in Durban, South Africa. The event was organised by the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), whose membership includes gold mine workers on all continents. 
 
The forum also agreed proposals for safeguarding the future of the world gold industry as a whole. 
 
The World Gold Forum precedes the ICEM World Congress (Durban, 3-5 November). This will map out a trade union response to globalisation. 
 
Today's resolution was sponsored by South Africa's National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), which is campaigning for the reinstatement of 2,895 workers recently retrenched at Placer Dome's Western Areas joint venture near Johannesburg. The sackings represent a cut of around 40 percent in the company's South African workforce, and are a potentially explosive issue in a country which has an unemployment rate of about 30 percent. 
 
Seconding the action call was Australian mining union the CFMEU. In solidarity with the South Africans, CFMEU members will picket Placer Dome offices in Australia next Monday morning - just a few hours after an NUM rally at Western Areas on Sunday 31 October. 
 
Full text of today's resolution: 
 
 
Noting that: 
 
1. Placer Dome is a Canadian transnational having mining interests in many countries. 
 
2. Placer Dome has a terrible record of destroying jobs and the environment and a disregard for the communities, wherever they have invested, in pursuit of profits. 
 
3. The owners and management have a history of union bashing while projecting itself as the best gold mining company on the earth. 
 
 
Believing that: 
 
1. Global investment should be socially responsible and must not undermine human rights, trade union rights, the community and the environment. 
 
2. In those countries where investments are made, collective bargaining conventions must be respected. A balance between global rules and the scope of domestic regulation has to be struck. 
 
 
We therefore resolve that: 
 
1. Placer Dome be targeted for an international campaign by the ICEM. 
 
2. This campaign should entail demands on the reinstatement of retrenched workers in the Western Areas Gold Mine Joint Venture; and restoration of the environment destroyed in the Philippines, Chile, Peru, Papua New Guinea and Australia. 
 
3. Placer Dome be pressured to sign a Global Agreement on Industrial Relations with the ICEM. 
 
4. A solid foundation for this campaign be built by organising a workshop early in the year 2000 for representatives from countries where Placer Dome has operations. A common platform for worker rights and working conditions and a programme for international worker solidarity must be agreed at this workshop. 
 
5. Unions affiliated to the ICEM must, where necessary, make available organisers and leaders to give direct practical assistance to worker struggles and organise the unorganised in Placer Dome operations throughout the world.

Placer Dome: Unions Launch Worldwide Campaign

Union members of two ICEM affiliates rallied today against the anti-union practices of global paper company Sappi Ltd. outside the firm's Annual General Meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa. 

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PACE members from Michigan protest at Sappi AGM in Johannesburg 

Representatives of US-based Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, Energy (PACE) Workers Union joined union brothers and sisters from South African Chemical, Energy, Paper, Printing, Wood and Allied Workers Union (CEPPWAWU) to condemn the company's aggressive attempts to weaken workers' rights in both countries. 
 
The PACE delegation and CEPPWAWU leaders then gained entry to the AGM, while CEPPWAWU members continued to rally outside the firm's headquarters in the Braamfontein financial district of Johannesburg. 
 
"We have taken this action to serve notice to Sappi management that its refusal to deal fairly with workers and their unions must come to an end," declared CEPPWAWU President Pasco Dyani, himself a Sappi employee at the Adamas paper mill in Port Elizabeth. "We are pleased to join with union members from America to build the international solidarity necessary to confront Sappi's attacks on working families." 
 
CEPPWAWU represents workers at Sappi's seven paper mills across South Africa. The union is in dispute with the firm over management demands to unilaterally impose so-called "labour market flexibility" that would severely weaken the union's ability to protect workers' rights on the shop floor. 
 
In the US, PACE Union members have been without new labour agreements for over a year at two Sappi paper mills in Somerset and Westbrook, Maine. Sappi managers at those locations have proposed to drastically cut workers' income and health care benefits. Sappi has also proposed substantial cuts in retiree health benefits. PACE members at the two mills and a third US mill in Muskegon, Michigan, have formed a bargaining alliance to reject management's demands for concessions. 
 
"Sappi stakeholders should understand that management's attempts to lower the living standards of working families and diminish the rights of workers on the shop floor places the company on a collision course with labour," stated Keith Romig, Director of National and International Affairs for PACE. 
 
The labour agreement at the Muskegon mill is scheduled to expire in June. Together, the three mills account for more than 80 percent of Sappi's fine paper production in North America, and 25% of production worldwide. 
 
The ICEM assisted the two affiliates' actions in Johannesburg today. While in South Africa, PACE, CEPPWAWU and ICEM representatives will lay a foundation for more effective cooperation among unions representing Sappi workers worldwide. 
 
"Every Sappi mill in South Africa, Europe and North America is organized by trade unions affiliated with the ICEM," said ICEM Paper and Chemical Sectors Officer Marc Welters. "By building stronger bonds between all unions at Sappi, workers will gain the strength to deal effectively with this company's hostile approach to labour relations."

US Union, CEPPWAWU Protest at Sappi AGM

Trade unions in Belarus are holding a National Day of Action today to demand a living wage and an end to restrictions on trade union rights. 
 
The 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM) is "alarmed by recently published facts and figures which clearly indicate an unprecedented decline of the standards of living in Belarus," writes ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs in a message of support to ICEM-affiliated unions there. 
 
"Existing structures have prevented the effective development of the national economy and triggered severe inflation," Higgs argues. "Workers' salaries no longer reflect their true contribution to the society and can hardly keep them from the brink of poverty or ensure physical survival." 
 
The Belarus unions "stand as the only force that defends the right of the workers and their families to a decent life," Higgs writes. "This determined attitude has put the unions under severe attack by the authoritarian regime, which the world community is observing with growing concern. I have addressed President Alexander Lukashenko and the Belarus government on several occasions, strongly protesting against the violations of union rights in Belarus." 
 
Pledging full international support to the Belarus unions' campaign, Higgs urges the country's government to "finally negotiate and sign a General Tariff Agreement with the unions".

Belarus Union Action Gains Global Support

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A last-minute compromise in Norway late in the evening on 31 March averted a strike by 38,000 industry workers. A government-appointed mediator reconciled pay and other issues between ICEM affiliate Fellesforbundet and Norsk Industri, representing some 1,000 industrial firms. 
The union was seeking adequate salary increases for 2006, preservation of an early retirement programme, called avtalefesten pensjon (AFP), and a halt to the practice of paying foreign workers lower pay rates. Government mediation, however, failed to stop a construction strike that began yesterday, 2 April, between 19,000 trade unionists of Fellesforbundet and the National Association for the Building Industry.

Norwegian Industrial Disputes Settled on Eve of Strikes

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Trade union members of Amicus, an ICEM affiliate in the UK, staged a second four-hour strike on 30 March at International Paper Co.’s Inverurie mill in Scotland. The union and its 231 members at the paper mill will escalate industrial actions this week with two further strikes, tomorrow and Thursday, 4 and 6 April, if the company does not revise a pay offer for 2006 and 2007. 
Management has proposed an unacceptable pay freeze for this year and a minimal one-off payment in 2007. Workers for the past two years have contributed part of their weekly earnings to help fill a gap in the company’s pension scheme. The industrial actions have boosted Amicus support inside the printing and writing papers mills, as well as in the nearby community of Aberdeenshire.

Further Strikes at IP Paper Mill in Scotland

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French ICEM affiliate FCE-CFDT has called an eight-hour strike for tomorrow, 4 April, at all Total worksites across France in protest to the government’s contrat premiére embauche (CPE), the “first job contract” labour reform being imposed on young workers. 
<img height="130" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/FranceFCECFDT.jpg" width="100"/>
The union is asking all Total workers to join tomorrow’s inter-sectoral day of action, and has asked all trade union delegates to organise general staff assemblies in preparation. 
French labour federations are united in efforts to push the government and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin off CPE, which passed Parliament by decree without dialogue with social partners. The reform would allow employers to sack workers under age 26 in their first two years of employment without needing justification. 
French President Chirac announced last week the scaling back of the two-year period to one year. FCE-CFDT, who together with other unions rejected the Chirac compromise, has called the strike tomorrow at Total without saying exactly when the eight-hour work stoppage would begin.

FCE-CFDT Calls Total Workers Out on Strike

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South African affiliate National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has challenged Harmony Gold Mining’s sacking of 300 contract workers without consulting the union. Harmony fired contractor DBE Mining at the Kalgold mine in the Northern Cape, and will bring in a new contractor employing other workers. 
NUM, which has filed a complaint over the matter in a South African labour court, is demanding that Harmony, “in the current climate of a boom in gold prices,” hire the 300 on a permanent basis. 
In a statement, NUM said, “Harmony would like to hide behind the myth that the 300 workers are employees of a contractor while in reality they do critical work in a Harmony mine … subcontracting and outsourcing are new forms of exploitation through which big companies try to exonerate themselves from the stain of careless laying off of employees.”

Layoffs of Contract Workers Challenged by NUM

UK Trade unionists of Amicus at International Paper Co.’s Inverurie mill in Scotland will extend industrial actions into next week, giving notice to the US-based company that another four-hour strike will occur on Monday, 10 April, and then an eight-hour downing of tools on Thursday, 13 April. It will be the fifth time since 23 March that the 231-strong workforce will have struck, and the 13 April action will mark the first eight-hour strike. 
<img height="82" alt="" src="/sites/default/files/migration/icem/UKAmicus.jpg" width="160"/>
The two sides met on 4 April. The union was heartened that company negotiators moved off a pay freeze for 2006, but the company attached unacceptable conditions to the sub-standard, two-year pay offer. It sought not to make the pay offer retroactive to 1 January, and the company also wants to make the first two days of January mandatory work days each year. 
 
Amicus union officials consulted with union members, and informed management today that their offer was unacceptable. “We will keep the door open to further bargaining,” said Amicus Asst. Branch Secretary Willie Wallace. “We have suggested that ACAS get involved and we sincerely wish to resolve this dispute,” he added. ACAS is the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service of the UK, an independent but public-funded mediation service with a longstanding reputation. 
 
Amicus branch leaders and trade unionists at the Inverurie mill are perplexed by the company’s bargaining posture. Absent in bargaining is good-faith and a fair exchange of ideas and proposals. Instead, managers come to talks with “take-it-or-leave-it” proposals, void of any desire or willingness for dialogue, according to Wallace. International Paper has presented three “last, best and final offers” in recent bargaining sessions, a fact not lost on Inverurie paperworkers as they’ve united more through this dispute than ever before. 
 
This week’s bargaining is a case in point. Amicus members know the company has never had a problem operating paper machines on 1 and 2 January. The voluntary system of working those days has never failed in the past. Considering also the company’s demand that any wage increase for first quarter of 2006 is lost, this week’s restructured “last, best and final offer” was easy to reject. 
 
“The mood among members is hardening,” said Amicus Asst. General Secretary Tony Burke. “The company does not understand that they cannot keep rehashing previous offers which have found no favour amongst our members.”

Eight-Hour Strike Next Week at International Paper’s Scottish Mill

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