FINLAND: Members of the Finnish Metalworkers’ Union will vote on February 5-19 on whether to participate in the establishment of a new industrial union comprised of six national unions representing workers in metal, media, railway, wood, electrical and chemical industries.

The opinion that gets the majority of votes will be put before the Finnish Metalworkers’ Union’s board, who will decide on whether to hold an extraordinary Congress in June 2009 where a final vote will be put before the membership.

The planning stages of the amalgamation initiative, called TEAM, started in 2005, with a membership vote in favour of future participation taking place at the metalworkers’ 2008 Congress in May.

The Chemical Workers’ Union is also voting on the merger over the next few weeks, together they are the two largest unions of the six TEAM unions. It is suspected that the Media Union, the Wood and Allied Workers’ Union and the Railway Workers’ Union are in favour of the amalgamation, however it is unclear what is the leading position the Electrical Workers’ Union membership.

Should the TEAM amalgamation go forward, unions plan to become one union on January 1, 2010.

UPDATE

Voting results were announced on February 19, the majority of the votes, 55,6 per cent, favoured the continuation of the TEAM-project. The voting turnout was 26,5 per cent, the number of entitled voters was 166,700.

The Metalworkers will convene an extraordinary Congress at the beginning of June in Tampere to make the necessary decisions.

FRANCE: Unions estimate around 2.5 million people took part in general strikes across France on January 29, 2009.

Metalworkers joined teachers, hospital, postal, bank and airport workers along with students, pensioners and the general public in the strikes right across the country.

The strikes were called as unions voice increasing concerns over the French Government’s failure to adequately protect workers from the impacts of the global financial crisis.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has been heavily criticized for his decisions to bail out banks and industry without offering more support for workers.

Unions are calling on the President to take action to stem retrenchments, boost wages and end public sector cutbacks.

La CGT Metallurgie demanded that the Government act immediately to assist workers during the economic crisis, including measures to ensure salaries keep pace with the rising cost of living in France.

"The president is taking workers for idiots," said a CGT member told the Guardian newspaper as he marched with Renault workers.

"People have had enough, they can’t keep going any longer on low pay with daily fear of losing their jobs."

French affiliates of the International Metalworkers’ Federation, took part in the strikes.

GENEVA: "The present crisis should be the wake-up call that forces the world to rethink our economic and social models," says IMF general secretary Marcello Malentacchi in his latest opinion column published today (January 28). "We need to reshape the agenda of economic and social organisation to give priority to more security for working people and to bring humanity and an ethic of solidarity into play," Malentacchi added.

"It is scandalous that it took only a couple of weeks for Governments in the rich parts of the world to collect more than 2,000,000,000,000 US$ (that’s right, two thousand billion US dollars) to bail out banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions on the brink of bankruptcy when we know that ten years ago when the UN asked for a tenth of that amount to halve the poverty afflicting the world’s poor hardly anyone moved a finger to collect that money," notes Malentacchi.

Malentacchi points out that the trade union movement has a great role to play in overcoming the current global economic crisis, "through collective bargaining we can begin to renew the dialogue that leads to fairness, reward and justice for the people who have been forgotten in the rush to shore-up the creaking apparatus of globalisation," Malentacchi says, adding to make sure that "the right to organise and the right to bargaining are the foundation stones of a new economic and social structure that will provide us with the means to ensure that we are never again held hostage by slick and shady global marketers."

BRAZIL: The year 2009 began with many workers losing their jobs in different sectors of the country's economy, including the metalworking and automotive industries. Employers blame the global financial crisis and say that lower levels of production mean they must reduce costs. The problem is that it is the workers who pay the price.

The country's most important trade union centrals are therefore implementing an action plan to mobilise workers and public opinion in order to pressure the federal government to adopt effective measures to fight increased unemployment and the slowdown in economic activity.

The Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT), has organised meetings and massive protest marches. On Tuesday 20 January, 18,000 metalworkers marched through manufacturing areas in the industrial Sao Paulo ABC region calling for jobs to be protected. They also held meetings at the factory gates of Ford, Mercedes Benz, Scania and Volkswagen.

CUT president, Artur Henrique, told workers he had held talks with President Lula the previous evening and announced the proposals he had presented to the federal government: an end to the primary surplus, a quick cut in interest rates and a warning to the banks, especially public-sector banks, to reduce their exorbitant interest rates and stop making absurd charges.

Força Sindical is also taking action to prevent unemployment. It called on its leaders and affiliates unions, federations and confederations to hold demonstrations on 21 January. "On 21 January, the Monetary Policy Committee will meet to discuss interest rates. As everyone knows, a significant cut in the rate is vital to stimulate production and channel billions of reales away from financial speculation into investment and working capital for companies and for public use in general", said the organisation in an official communiqué.

It has organised meetings and rallies to make clear that workers are not going to pay for the crisis "and that the federal government has measures at its disposal that will put the country back on the path of economic growth, job creation and income distribution."

KOREA: At Samwoo Precision Industries, an auto parts manufacturer in Daegu's Seongseo Industrial Complex, permanent workers alternate taking two-week holidays during a partial work stoppage to allow irregular and migrant workers to keep their jobs.

While precarious workers are often the first to go in hard economic times, witnessed by the mass layoffs of temporary employees around the world, at this particular branch of the Korean Metal Workers' Union, 18 migrant workers, many of them from Indonesia, and 40 permanent production workers share the burden of the company's December decision to slow production.

After management announced its plans to reduce the number of temporary employees, the KMWU proposed an alternative plan in an effort to save jobs.  On January 12, the new plan went into effect. Plan details include:

• the worksite's 40 permanent production workers will divide themselves into two groups and alternate taking two-week holidays for the next three months;
• the company will then be able to apply for government financial assistance designed to help companies keep people in their jobs during temporary work shutdowns, allowing the permanent workers to receive 80 per cent of their wages during their off-times; so that
• the 18 irregular or precarious workers, who as such are not able to receive governmental assistance, are able to keep working.

The cooperation between Samwoo permanent and non-permanent employees under one union banner, the KMWU, is clearly an indication that the KMWU's bold efforts to organise precarious workers through a national directive of "one union, one worksite" is starting to pay off. While many KMWU worksites still have separate unions for non-permanent and precarious workers, the KMWU is hoping to build on the Samwoo branch model.

For the migrant workers, all of whom were hired through broker agencies and often exploited or denied their basic rights, they now share the same working conditions as their permanent counterparts under KMWU regulations.

USA: Global union leaders have urged the Organisation of American States (OAS) to act immediately on labour and human rights abuses by the Mexican Government.

Secretary of the OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Santiago Canton met with a delegation of international labour leaders who travelled to Washington to support an official complaint by the National Miners' and Metalworkers' Union of Mexico (SNTMMSRM) in relation to political persecution of their members.

The delegation urged the commission to take immediate measures regarding the Mexican government's illegal seizure of union funds and their refusal to officially recognize Napoleon Gomez Urrutia as elected general secretary of the miners' union.

Napoleon Gomez has been forced into exile following a campaign of violence and threats against him and his family. There are extreme concerns regarding the health and safety of striking workers and community members at three mines owned by Grupo Mexico, the largest and most powerful mining company in the country.

Global unions are calling on the Commission to pressure the Mexican Government to:

• return all frozen funds immediately to the SNTMMSRM, including those seized in 2006 and in 2008;
• lift all trumped up charges still pending against Napoleon Gomez Urrutia and other members of the SNTMMSRM;
• prosecute in a court of law, immediately and transparently, all those responsible in the corruption of documents and facts; and
• recognize Napoleon Gomez as the democratically elected general secretary of the National Mexican Miners' and Metalworkers' Union.

Led by Marcello Malentacchi, general secretary of the International Metalworkers' Federation and Juan Luis Zuniga of the National Miners' and Metalworkers' Union of Mexico, the delegation included: international representatives for the United Auto Workers (UAW) and United Steelworkers (USW); Manfred Warda, general secretary of International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM); Stan Gacek of the AFL-CIO; Victor Baez, general secretary of the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA-ITUC); and petitioners Marco Del Toro and Luis Chavez from Del Toro Associates as legal representation to the Mexican miners' union.

For more information on the IMF's work in Mexico, go to: www.imfmetal.org/Mexico

STATEMENT ON GAZA

The military escalation in the urban areas of Gaza is fast transforming the attack that the Israeli army began on last December 27 in a tragedy of unprecedented dimension, that is hitting the Palestinian civilian population, after long months of suffering. There is no doubt that this cannot be the solution to the legitimate right of Israel to protect the Southern part of its territory.

We are informed that workers, particularly our members among them, are suffering as a consequence. The situation when military attacks destroy working places, living areas and sometimes even structures of humanitarian support can only produce anger and more violence in a vicious circle, to which the international community seems unable, or perhaps not really interested, to find a political solution. The population of Gaza is paying the price for this political weakness of the international community.

The International Metalworkers’ Federation can only welcome the Resolution of the UN Security Council calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza as a first step towards building just and durable peace in the region based on the respect of the rights of two peoples and the borders of two states.

This however will remain empty words if the Palestinian population is not granted freedom of movement and the right to a normal life, with food, access to health care and education, and jobs. This would be the only effective answer to the missiles launched by Hamas against the South of Israel, not the military attack against the civilian population and the tragedy it has caused in Gaza, that cannot be justified.

The trade union movement internationally has not been able, despite reiterated efforts, to contribute to a just and peaceful solution in this region. We must renew our commitment to the search of a lasting peace based on justice and freedom for all.

PERU:  A dispute with Gerdau about more than 500 sacked Siderperu workers has become more acute now that other mining companies in Peru have sacked another 2,500 workers.

Siderperu sacked 133 miners on 28 November and 407 on 9 December 2008.

The company halted production, claiming it had very high stocks of iron and that it was more profitable to import iron from other Gerdau companies than produce it at Siderperu.

The CNMM has responded to the company, with the suport of a member of Congress, Maria Sumire, by asking the Ministry of Economy and Finances to produce a technical report on the impact of changes to customs revenue from the import of iron and ferrous products and asking the customs authority (SUNAT) to check Siderperu import orders and volumes during 2008 to see if there were any irregularities.

Finally, the CNMM’s Janet Barzola said she did not discount taking legal action if Siderperu were found to have "disguised its reasons for closure in order to get rid of workers, which would be an infraction of labour law, according to our Penal Code."

Since the sackings, the IMF Gerdau Workers Global Committee has taken solidarity action with Siderperu colleagues and called on Gerdau to reinstate all sacked workers.

The Committee recognized that the crisis will have an impact on sales and on Gerdau’s access to credit.  However, it said that this does not mean that workers are responsible for the crisis.  "Gerdau must not put the burden of the crisis on to its employees or punish them by suspending or sacking them or cutting their pay", the Committee said.

The Committee met on 10/11 December, and given the importance of this case, the IMF sent a statement to the President of the Gerdau Group, André B. Gerdau.  The latter responded that "the Gerdau Group of companies in different countries have been told to seek dialogue with local trade unions to evaluate the situation of each plant and find alternatives that can achieve the best results for both the company and its employees."  He added that governments, trade unions and companies must act together, quickly and flexibly, to seek solutions to minimise the effects of the crisis.

The IMF Regional Office has also communicated its solidarity with the workers by condemning the sackings and demanding that Gerdau reinstate the workers.

PERU:  Unions have denounced the wave of sackings in the mining sector in Peru at a press conference, where they called on Congress to appoint a commission to assess whether the sackings of 3,000 miners were justified.

The following attended the press conference: Jhon Guerra Poma, representing workers sacked by Perubar (who participated with a delegation of 39 sacked workers); Julio Cesar Bazan, President of the CUT Peru; Marino Ávila, General Secretary of the Siderperu blue-collar union; Secundino Torres Marin, General Secretary of Siderperu’s white-collar union; Maria Sumire, member of Congress; and Janet Barzola of the CNMM.

Around 3,000 workers employed by ten mining companies were sacked in the final three months of 2008, due to the effects of the economic crisis.  On 25 November, Perubar S.A., locked out 500 workers; Siderperu sacked 133 miners on 28 November and 407 on 9 December and the Aceros Arequipa factory in Pisco suspended production on 18 November and sacked 300 workers.  The company that sacked the highest number (533) of workers was Huallanca, in Áncash. Other companies that sacked workers: Cerro Verde (300), Argentum S.A.A. (200), Quenuales (62) and Santa Teresa Poroma (30).

Speakers at the press conference said the companies had used the world economic crisis as a pretext for the massive wave of sackings.  They added that mining company profits had increased by more than 150% between 2005 and 2007.

Janet Barzola said that: "The press conference has already had results. Perubar, a subsidiary of the Swiss transnational company Glencore agreed to union demands in record time".  She added that workers at the Santa Teresa Poroma plant have succeeded in having their social welfare benefits recognized and 20 of the 30 sacked workers have been reinstated.

Mexico: On Wednesday 31 December 2008, a rock fall at the Charcas San Luis Potosí mine (gold, silver and other metals), owned by Grupo Mexico, killed Juan Rafael Escalante, 39.

The incident also left another worker, Juan Carlos Aguilar Martín, seriously injured. He suffered blows and fractures that left him in serious state of health. He was taken to Social Security Clinic 50 in San Luis Potosí.

The rock fall occurred at level 10 in the mine at 9.15 p.m. on 31 December.

The miners' union, led by Napoleón Gómez, said the accident "shows once again that the companies given mining concessions by the government, in this case Grupo Mexico, must improve health and safety conditions for workers." The union went on to say that "this has been one of the union's constant and important demands, but the company and federal and local labour authorities have ignored it."

The miners' union has focused on improving health and safety conditions in mines and factories.

It called on the government and companies to accept responsibility for conditions at mining, metalworking and steelworking workplaces in order to avoid this kind of accident.