GLOBAL: The Global Labour University (GLU) is offering four different one-year Master's Programmes in Germany, South Africa, Brazil, and India focusing on sustainable development, social justice, international labour standards and trade unions, and economic policies and global institutions.

The programmes offered are as follows:

• Global Governance and Macroeconomics, Germany
  
• Development Politics, South Africa
  
• Analysis of Transnational Corporations, Brazil
  
• The Informal Economy, India

The programmes are jointly developed by universities and worker organisations from around the world and aim to promote analysis and discussion over the complex challenges of globalisation from a labour and trade union perspective. The programmes offer a multi-cultural and multi-regional environment with students and lecturers coming from developing, transitional and industrialised countries.

Trade unionists who have experience with labour and social movements, and who are willing to assist organisations in these fields to engage more effectively in social dialogue, public debate, and policy implementation are encouraged to apply.

The course in Germany is taught at the University of Kassel and the Berlin School of Economics; the course in South Africa is taught at the University of Witwatersrand; and the course in Brazil is taught at the State University of Campinas; and in India, courses are taught at the Tata Institute.

Interested trade unionists should apply now. The deadline for submission to the Germany and India programmes is April 1, 2008. The deadline for the South Africa programme is September 15, 2008, followed by a deadline of October 1, 2008, for Brazil. Scholarships are available to a limited number of applicants. Courses are taught in English. All universities offer intensive English training during the introductory phase of the programme.

The Global Labour University is supported by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the Hans-Boeckler-Stiftung (HBS), the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) and the Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (BMZ).

Go to www.global-labour-university.org for details and an application.

GLOBAL: IBM workers launched an online petition today, January 23, calling on IBM and AT&T management to guarantee employment of the 5,000 workers whose jobs are being outsourced from IBM to AT&T.

The petition, supported by national unions, works councils and the IBM Workers International Solidarity (IWIS) global network, states that since the announcement of the outsourcing of work two months ago, IBM has not given employees sufficient information about the outsourcing of services and workers.

In the last week, US employees had to accept or reject their transfer. It has also been reported that US employees being moved to AT&T are being classified as management and therefore ineligible for union membership at AT&T. Elsewhere it is reported that the transfers of employees in France has been suspended pending further study.

The workers online petition calls on both IBM and AT&T management to guarantee employment for at least five years, the length of the outsourcing contract, and that all job transfers are voluntary. The petition will be presented to management on February 1.

To read the petition in full and sign, go to:
http://www.petitiononline.com/IBM1/petition.html

GERMANY: More than 15,000 people demonstrated in front of a Nokia mobile phone production plant in Bochum yesterday, January 22, protesting against its announced closure. The workers, unions, European Works Council and supervisory board were all surprised and angered by Nokia management’s announcement that the plant is to close by end of June 2008, with production shifting to Hungary and Romania.

Closure of the plant will affect 2,300 permanent and 1,000 temporary workers. Counting local suppliers and subcontractors, the total job loss will amount to around 4,000 jobs. Speaking at the rally, IG Metall president Berthold Huber called on Nokia to abandon plans to shut down the site, warning the decision to close the plant would damage Nokia’s brand and business.

Workers and unions are particularly angered by the decision as Nokia received subsidies of nearly 100 million euros from the North Rhine Westphalia federal state, the federal government of Germany and the European Union. Nokia was bound by law to guarantee the jobs until December 31, 2007. Only 14 days after this date, Nokia declared the closure.

The International Metalworkers’ Federation joins IG Metall and the European Metalworkers’ Federation in the protest and calls on its affiliates to send letters of solidarity to the works council of the Nokia plant in Bochum and IG Metall Bochum.

Send letters to the following email addresses:
IG Metall: [email protected]
Nokia works council: [email protected]
With copies to the following email addresses:
EMF: [email protected]
IMF: [email protected]

GLOBAL: In 2008 the World Social Forum (WSF) will take place in multiple sites around the world from January 22 culminating in a global day of action and mobilization on Saturday January 26. Women and men from all over the world will take to the streets on this day to promote discussions, protests, music concerts, video exhibitions and numerous other activities that show that another world is possible and necessary. The actions coincide and confront the gathering of neo-liberal elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

More than 430 actions in 85 countries have already been presented on the WSF website at: www.wsf2008.net. Many trade unions affiliated to the International Metalworkers’ Federation, an active participant in the WSF, will also be participating in actions this week and on January 26.

The WSF is an open space where social movements, networks, NGOs and other civil society organisations come together to raise issues, debate ideas democratically, formulate proposals, share experiences, and network for effective action. These movements are opposed to neo-liberalism and a world dominated by capital and all forms of imperialism.

WSFs have taken place at the end of January at different sites around the world each year for the past seven years. The WSF global week of action and mobilisation in 2008 consists of small decentralised and simultaneous activities conducted regionally and/or locally across the world.

Further information about actions taking place in each country can be found on the WSF website where organisations across the world have announced their various actions at www.wsf2008.net

ITALY: After seven months of negotiations backed by the mobilisation of workers, including a 48 hour strike and demonstrations at the local level, Italian metalworkers’ unions FIM, FIOM and UILM reached a tentative agreement on January 19 with the employers’ association on the renewal of the National Collective Agreement. This agreement will now be submitted for approval to the unions’ governing bodies and then to the vote of all metalworkers.

Gains for workers in the tentative agreement include:
• a 300 euro lump sum payment for everybody on March 2008,
• a proportional monthly increase according to an employee’s level (109 euros for 3rd level employees, 115 euros for 4th level, 127 euros for 5th level, etc), and
• an additional 260 euros per year for workers in companies without collective bargaining at the company level, who therefore only have the minimum wage guaranteed by the National Collective Agreement.

The proposed agreement also includes improved health and safety provisions, protections for temporary and contract employees against precarisation of their employment relationship, harmonisation of treatment between blue and white collars particularly on seniority provisions, an improved classification system and new rights for women and migrant workers.

The employers’ requests for further flexibilisation of working time and for a more limited role of workers’ and unions’ representatives were rejected.

MEXICO: Members of the Mexican National Miners’ and Metalworkers’ Union (SNTMMSRM) walked off the job today denouncing the government’s recent attack on striking workers at Mexico’s largest copper mine, Cananea, in the northern state of Sonora.

On January 11, the Mexican federal labour board (JFCA) ruled that the Cananea strike was illegal, ordering miners back to work within 24 hours or face dismissal. Within hours of the ruling, a reported 700 state and federal security forces were immediately called in to evict the strikers from the mine entrances. Police and army troops opened fire on the workers with tear gas and rubber bullets. Between 20 to 40 miners were injured and several others were detained.

The following day, a court granted the union a provisional injunction against the labour board ruling, allowing striking workers to remain on strike without the threat of being fired while a judge considers the appeal. The SNTMMSRM predicts it could take about six weeks for a judge to reach a decision.

Some 1,500 Cananea workers have been on strike since July 30, 2007, over low wages and horrendous health and safety conditions in the Grupo Mexico-owned mine. The company has failed to correct the dangerous conditions despite two investigations citing more than 70 deadly health and safety hazards.

In October 2007, the International Metalworkers’ Federation sent a fact-finding mission to Cananea to interview striking workers and lend solidarity. Miners there reported of poor ventilation, blocked emergency exits, and broken equipment. The workers argued that the Cananea mine was a "Pasta de Conchos waiting to happen,” referring to another Grupo Mexico-owned mine where health and safety violations were ignored and 65 miners were killed as a result.

The union is calling on the government to stop its interference in the strike and to remove the 600 police and army personnel still on guard at the mine. Grupo Mexico is offering a 15,000 pesos ($1,375 USD) bonus to workers who leave the picket line and return to the mine within 72 hours.

“The government’s use of police and military force to break a strike is in clear conflict with the constitutional rights and international rights of Mexican workers,” said Marcello Malentacchi, general secretary of the IMF. “This is just further evidence of the Mexican government’s refusal to allow autonomous unions to operate independently and freely in Mexico.”

GLOBAL:  Reporting on the gold rush in Mongolia, Metal World examines the devastating effects the use of mercury is having on gold diggers, local people and the environment. An estimated 75,000 Mongolians have become involved in the gold rush in a country with potentially 25 per cent of the world’s unexploited gold reserves.

Metal World also shines a spotlight on BHP Billiton, reporting on the recent IMF/ICEM global trade union meeting where worker representatives heard that while BHP Billiton’s approach to unions varies from particular sites and across nations, the company seeks to undermine collective worker arrangements.

And Stefan Löfvén, a welder who is now the president of IF Metall, is profiled in this issue of Metal World. With a long interest in international issues, Stefan discusses the importance of working beyond the national level in dealing with the challenges of globalisation.

This latest issue of Metal World also includes all the latest news and pictures from IMF and its affiliates.

The magazine is available as a pdf download on the IMF website in English (Russian and Japanese editions will follow) and is available in print, by sending subscription details to: [email protected]

Two years ago Sweden saw the creation of a new, very large trade union in the industrial sector when Svenska Metall merged with Industrifacket to form IF Metall. With 450,000 members it is one of the biggest unions in the country. With nine out of every ten blue-collar workers belonging to IF Metall it is a union with a lot of clout.
As IF Metall's newly elected president, the first few months were a tough time for Stefan. During his first year in office he was catapulted into a national election campaign, which resulted in a win for an alliance of four right-wing parties. This alliance quickly introduced a series of changes which had negative repercussions for unions and their members.

As soon as the election campaign was over the collective bargaining rounds started and the union negotiators found themselves facing employers who were tougher than they had been in a long time. Emboldened by having the political decision-makers on their side the employers set about trying to undermine the nation-wide collective agreements.

After months of negotiations IF Metall managed to conclude a three-year agreement which gave workers the biggest pay increases in many a year. "We got a good agreement. This agreement increases our members' real earnings and in addition we managed to raise the level of the lowest rates of pay."

Globalisation is the number one challenge for all trade unions and not least for a union in a small country like Sweden that is dependent on its export industry. "We have always had to live with globalisation in this country. It is with us now and will continue to be with us, but we must trust in ourselves and turn it to our advantage."

Stefan takes a particular interest in international issues. He always has, ever since the day when, as a young welder, he set foot in the workplace and took his first steps into the trade union world.
Working at a saw mill he was fascinated by the repair men's blazing welding torches. A year or so later, he was a qualified welder working for Hägglunds (now BAE) in Örnsköldsvik in northern Sweden. His job was to weld the chassis of locomotives.

Once there it only took a few days before he was taking trade union action for the first time. The welders only had wooden crates to sit on during breaks. "We can't have this," he said, "We have to have chairs and tables." And very soon they did. The trade union activists noticed the newcomer. They had been joined by a workmate hungry for knowledge, keen to take part in discussions and advocating contributions to the labour movement's international fund.

When Stefan moved to Stockholm ten years ago and started working for Svenska Metall he spent some time as its international secretary and now, as the new union president, he has, for instance, taken a special interest in Belarus because, as he says, "Our sisters and brothers there are having a very hard time and it is important that they get support so as to be able to build up a union structure capable of defending the rights of the workers."

The Swedish trade union movement has a long tradition of international work and support for trade unions suffering under dictatorships. Recently Stefan met with the President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva in Stockholm. Lula was just one leader who received support from the Swedish unions in the 1970s and ’80s.
"We wouldn't want to boast, but a lot of good work was done and the results speak for themselves in countries like Brazil, South Africa and South Korea. We have also gained a lot through providing this support. Our trade union has grown in stature and we have learned many valuable lessons from working with people in other countries."

According to Stefan the challenges of globalisation are such that trade unions can no longer limit themselves to working in the national arena. "We need global framework agreements between trade unions and employers to regulate basic working conditions within multinational groups. We began by building up our strength at the local level and then moved on to the national level. Now it is time to step out into the international arena in earnest and start cooperating across borders."

Here you may download the pdf file of the story with illustrations.

SPOTLIGHT

BHP Billiton

As the world's largest resources company group, with a market capitalisation of more than $US140 billion, BHP Billiton has over 100 operations in 25 nations across six continents. This year it continued a period of extraordinary expansion with the announcement of a record annual profit to July 2007 of $US13.42 billion, with plans for more than $US12 billion in new developments plus more lucrative sales strategies.

The profit surplus is being used to buy back shares to further concentrate power in the hands of the management group. BHP Billiton has also tabled a bid for mining giant Rio Tinto.

In the global supply chain, BHP Billiton is already the world's biggest supplier of metallurgical coal and manganese, among the top producers of energy coal, copper, lead, zinc, uranium and silver, and the third largest exporter of iron ore, nickel and cobalt.

While the company reports an increase in costs of 3.6 per cent over the year due to rises in contractor charges, fuel and consumables, it also clawed back some US$203 million in costs savings.

At a joint meeting of the International Metalworkers' Federation (IMF) and the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM) in Brisbane, Australia in October, union representatives from around the world raised concerns that at least some of these savings may include unstated cuts to labour costs by the company's tough policies on wage bargaining, which could flow through to conditions to protect health, safety and the environment.
BHP Billiton's critical dependence on the exponential mineral demand from its main customer China, as well as from unpredictable Indian expansion, create long term concerns about the impact of future market instability on its 39,000 workers around the world, less than half of whom are unionised.

While BHP Billiton's corporate policy prevents donations to any political party, its surplus of investment funds outweighs most competitors for government contracts, and makes it a powerful influence on the rules for development projects.

While the company's approach to unions varies from particular sites and across nations, the conference heard that wherever it can, BHP Billiton seeks to undermine collective worker arrangements.

UNION ENGAGEMENT: A CHANGING HISTORY
The company's titanic status resulted from the controversial merger in 2001 of Billiton with Australia's mining and steel giant BHP. Since then, Australian unions which had for decades worked closely with BHP management have been excluded from top level negotiations, with new employees in many operations required to sign individual contracts which effectively surrender International Labour Organisation's rights to collective bargaining.

The IMF-ICEM conference heard that while the company's stated policies do not oppose unions in principle, BHP Billiton has divided employees by decentralising negotiations to local levels, fragmenting bargaining periods and avoiding responsibility through the contracting out of labour, management and joint ventures.

ANTI-UNION TACTICS
ICEM president and South Africa's National Union of Mineworkers leader Senzeni Zokwana told the conference that BHP Billiton's takeover of Anglo-Coal and other operations in his country had resulted in significant job cuts and a shift of permanent employees to informal arrangements, with the number of casual workers now double that of permanent employees – most on inferior employment conditions.

Many vulnerable employees were induced to enter casual contracts which "buy out" long term conditions such as family leave in exchange for short term payments which erode standards over time. Dividing unions between themselves through exclusive incentives and fragmented bargaining times were key tactics in the industrial relation strategy, Zokwana said.

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH & SAFETY
BHP Billiton boasts a top priority for workers' safety, including a zero fatality target across its operations. However, the company's safety reports can exclude incidents where the operation is managed by contractors or minor joint venture partners. Delegates to the IMF-ICEM conference reported significant health concerns at operations in South Africa and South America.

In Australia – where three workers were killed at BHP Billiton's de-unionised Pilbara iron ore operations in 2004 – the Western Australian Government's Ritter inquiry linked the increased use of individual contracts with a reluctance to report safety concerns. But union leaders reported a subsequent failure of government mining inspectors to increase scrutiny.

Delegates to the IMF-ICEM conference remarked on the disparity between the low level of reporting of safety breaches in developing nations compared with the USA or Australia, possibly attributed to concerns about job security, or the fear of losing "safety bonuses".
"There is a vigorous campaign against any prosecution for breaches of the law. And in fact mining in Australia has fewer prosecutions than other industry in Australia, because of that campaign by mining companies," Julius Roe told the conference.

Abram Mathibela of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) also reported the routine dismissal of workers suffering the chronic, debilitating condition of manganism – or manganese poisoning – so the company could avoid responsibility for their welfare.
Another tactic to reduce the company's negative safety reports is to discount incidents which were allegedly not work related, for example diseases of disputed origin or off-site incidents.

ENVIRONMENT AND INFORMATION CONTROL
BHP Billiton has a sophisticated public relations strategy to promote its environmental-friendly policies and to distance itself from any ecological damage of its operations, especially since its withdrawal in 2002 from the catastrophic poisoning of rivers in its former Ok Tedi copper mine in Papua New Guinea.

Legal opinion differs on the level of responsibility which BHP Billiton leaders have in actually complying with their stated environmental company policies, as opposed to their duties under corporate law. Only the future will reveal the extent of their integrity.

THE WAY FORWARD
The global unions' conference on BHP Billiton decided to implement a number of combined strategies and specific tactics to improve the workers' bargaining position across the company and its related entities.

Plans to encourage the group to apply best practice safety standards internationally and significantly improve environmental protections are well advanced.

IMF and ICEM are committed to close collaboration in engaging BHP Billiton on industrial relations globally. Through a new international information network and growing links with local communities, concerned organisations, suppliers and customers, unions can increase public scrutiny of the corporation's performance in complying with its ambition to be a responsible employer wherever it operates.

ONCE A WORLD LEADER
Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union (AMWU) national president Julius Roe reminded the conference that BHP's previous relations with unions resulted from a 21-month strike from 1919 to 1921 at the company's original mine at Broken Hill in New South Wales, which won a 30-hour week for underground workers and the establishment of a world-first workers' compensation scheme for injured employees in the Dust Diseases Board.

"The board was set up basically to prevent diseases of the lungs caused by dust, and these standards were decades ahead of what was established anywhere else in the world, and you can now see BHP Billiton almost 100 years later fighting all around the world to undermine those standards that were established at Broken Hill by the unions nearly a century ago," Roe said.

"In Mozambique, in Surinam, in many, many places where BHP has operations around the world, there aren't proper measures to protect health and safety and one of the key reasons for the 30-hour week underground was precisely to reduce workers' exposure to dust. Today in many BHP mines in Australia and in other countries workers are working seven days per week, 12 hours per day," Roe said.

BHP Billiton: the essential facts
Headquarters: Melbourne Australia, but with dual listing of BHP Billiton Ltd on the Australian Stock Exchange and of BHP Billiton Plc on the London Stock Exchange. BHP Billiton Plc also has a secondary listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in South Africa. Major corporate centres in Johannesburg, and Houston, USA.

Employees: 39,000 direct employees, but more through joint venture partners and contractors.

Revenue: $US47.47 billion (year to June 2007)
Attributal Profit: $US13.42 billion
Underlying Earnings Before Interest and Tax: $US20.07 billion

Products: iron ore, thermal coal, metallurgical coal, bauxite, alumina, aluminium, manganese ore and alloy, petrol, gas, nickel, cobalt, copper, lead, zinc, uranium oxide, silver, diamonds.

Main Locations: Australia, South Africa, central and northwest Africa, Brazil, Mozambique, Peru, Chile, Columbia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Algeria, Mexico, USA and Canada.

Customers: energy suppliers, power generators, steel makers, construction, manufacturing, automotive and packaging, especially to China, Europe, Japan, and India.

BHP Billiton at a glance.
Five delegates to the IMF-ICEM BHP Billiton meeting were asked what issues BHP Billiton workers and their union face in their country and how can international union organisation improve conditions for workers.

Senzeni Zokwana
President ICEM and President of South African National Union of Mineworkers
"In South Africa now through our alliance with the ANC Government we have laws for the right to collective bargaining, the right to join a union, but we are facing global companies which disregard the law in relation to workers. We have also seen them increasingly introducing contractors and reducing the number of permanent workers, and that is difficult for our organising. A major challenge for us is to ensure the government is sympathetic to the union cause at all times because of course employers will try to do their best to win the government over. We must be ensuring housing, health and safety rules are complied with, including family housing to help fight AIDS, but employers will do their best to change the conditions.

"Internationally we can share our ideas and plans for organising, to see how we can provide incentives for workers to support their union, and keep the community on our side. If global companies can succeed against unions in one country, of course they will try to do it in other countries as well. Our motto is simple – we don't check the colour of a man's skin, we look at the policies that he is coming up with and we engage him on that basis."

Sergio Luiz Guerra
Secretary Administration and Finance, CNM-CUT, Brazil
"The main problem we are facing in Brazil is low wages, because we deserve more than what we are really getting. The second most important issue that affects workers from BHP Billiton is health problems because of the working environment. Many problems have to do with air pollution because of dust – it is pollution that leads to asthma and rhinitis, especially affecting the eyes.
"The Samarco (iron ore operation in Espirito Santo north of Rio De Janiero) where I work is half owned by BHP Billiton and the other half by CVRD (Brazil-based resources giant Companhia Vale do Rio Doce). So BHP Billiton mainly doesn't know about the problems we are having. Unions have to be joined together, we have to be strong by being together in order to confront all those problems that the workers have got. An International Framework Agreement would be positive because already some companies in Brazil have implemented this, and it would be useful for BHP Billiton to be included in a framework agreement."

Paul Howes
National Secretary Australian Workers' Union
"As one of the richest and most powerful companies in the world, BHP Billiton is still trying to drive down wages and conditions through a hostile approach to collective bargaining, particularly in its metalliferous and uranium mining operations in Western Australia and South Australia. This has led to serious concerns about its ability to meet its stated aims of corporate social responsibility, including in its health and safety practices and the protection of the environment.
"BHP Billiton's operations as a truly global corporation make it important for all its unions to have an ability to respond globally to represent workers no matter which country they come from. I also think it's important that the union global network build on its information sharing links to be able to mount truly international campaigns across the company's international borders, including the benchmarking of wages outcomes for employees from all areas of its operations."

Abram Mathibela
National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa
"A major question is the health and safety environment within the factories of BHP Billiton in South Africa. There's even been some footage on the TV about how some plants have exposed most of our members to quite horrible health and safety conditions whereby members in one part of this company have contracted this disease called manganism (manganese poisoning).
"What the company is doing is immediately they establish that a member or a worker has contracted that disease, immediately they avoid (dismiss) that member, and that member will have to die outside the company. They are using a lot of methods to try and disown or withdraw, or refuse to take responsibility for that particular case.
"Another major issue is job cuts and the contracting out of permanent workers onto informal arrangements.
"We think the support of other workers in the company from other nations can help us. Already our union has united many labour organisations in South Africa, but there are much more in other countries. It is important for people around the company's overseas operations to know what is happening in South Africa."

Ediles Francisco Marinas Vergaray
Secretary General of Sutracomosa, Peru
"The way they treat the workers in Peru is discriminatory for the people that are hired who live around the area where the site is. While the wages are good if you take into account the normal wages in Peru, those people that are hired locally don't have the same conditions as the people that are hired from other areas, so their conditions are poorer.
"This IMF-ICEM meeting has given us a clear perspective of what is happening and what we want to do is to educate people regarding unions. We want to get the workers to understand what the union can do for them. We want them to become members of our union – our union is growing slowly, but growing. We think with the help of other unions we will be able to achieve this. As a recognised union we have the support of the company, but only some of the officers of the company – we have 80 per cent support from the higher level directors of the company but lower officers of the company don't really support us that much, they don't want to take into account the labour movement."

To get full story with illustrations, please download the pdf file.

UYANGA SOUM It smells of dry dust, the kind that dries out moisture in mucous leaving a scab around the noses of the five-year-olds who are helping their mothers dig in the pile of earth next to us. Badamtseren, a man of 48, sets aside his gold pan and takes a West cigarette from his trouser pocket.

What do you think about all day long? “I think about gold. That’s all you can think about here,” says Badamtseren. Like an estimated 75,000 other Mongolians, he has become involved in a frantic gold rush. As much as 20 per cent of Mongolia’s population has come to depend on the “ninjas”, as the small-scale gold diggers are called. According to local lore, this name came about when security guards caught a group of miners trespassing on land controlled by a legal mine. As the miners ran away with their green gold-pans on their backs, someone thought they resembled the teenage mutant ninja turtles of the comic-strip series.

The scene here in the Olt valley, 500 kilometers southwest of the capital Ulan Bator, could have been taken from the California gold rush of 1849. The ground is strewn with vodka bottles, gnawed off sheep legs and filth. Badamtseren tells how the children are in the habit of tumbling down in dug out holes. Sometimes the mineshafts collapse over the ninja diggers when they are working down in the earth.
The gold they find is smuggled over the border to China. This is usually accompanied by fights with legal mining companies. In the middle of the interview a guard in military dress and armed with a pistol begins to push people back. A front-end loader then drives right into the pile of earth while gold diggers are still standing on it. Because their activity is illegal, the authorities do not care. Worldwide at least 20 million people are active in similar small-scale mining operations, and another 100 million depend on them. Indeed, there are more “ninja diggers” in the world than people employed in the traditional mining industry. And that figure is rising rapidly as the price of metal increases.

A ninja digger earns about 200,000 tugriks (US$170) per month. That is more than what a teacher or policeman makes in Mongolia, according to Robert Grayson, who runs Eco-Minex International, an environmental and mining consulting firm. I met him in Ulan Bator at a big conference organized by Communities and Small-Scale Mining (CASM), an agency sponsored by the World Bank that works to fight poverty in small-scale and artisanal metal extraction. He estimates that Mongolia potentially has 25 per cent of the world’s gold deposits.

MERCURY EPIDEMIC
The ninjas are important for a country where 27 per cent of the people live below the poverty line. Thanks to the mining industry, both legal and illegal, Mongolia’s economy has begun to grow by seven to eight per cent a year. The problem is mercury, the toxic substance that is used to separate gold from ore. “Mongolia is on its way to a mercury epidemic. This concerns thousands of households!” says Robert Grayson. In the book Alice in Wonderland, a tea party is depicted with a mad hatter. Formerly mercury was used in hat making. It caused changes in personality, hence the English phrase “mad as a hatter”. That is a fate that also awaits many ninja diggers.

Grayson tells about a river 40 km long in the north where the threshold values are sometimes exceeded by as much as 3,000 times. A discharge of several tons is moving toward Lake Baikal. It is getting into the fish and drinking water. And in southern Mongolia herdsmen have begun to find pools of cyanide and mercury mixtures in the desert (cyanide is also used to extract gold). That toxic cocktail trickles down into the groundwater and poisons humans and livestock.
Mongolia is the second largest landlocked country, and the least densely populated with only 2.9 million inhabitants, of whom almost half live in the capital. The country is thus one of Asia’s few remaining untouched wildernesses. But the ongoing mining boom is threatening its clean rivers and its fauna. In the township of Khongor, the inhabitants have called for help since their animals began to give birth to deformed calves or simply to lie down and die. A study by the health department found that of the 2,000 inhabitants in Khongor, 1,132 exhibited symptoms of poisoning. Once mercury enters the body it is impossible to get it out. It damages the brain and kidneys.
“One of the symptoms of mercury poisoning is shaking. In the end you shake so much that you can’t eat. You also get tunnel vision. With pregnant women the mercury goes through the placenta into the fetus. The worst part is that the mother doesn’t feel the poisoning while the child ends up handicapped and brain-damaged,” says Peter Appel of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), which has conducted a three-year baseline survey of artisanal and small-scale mining.

“We see the same problem in Asia and Africa. Countries like Zambia, Zimbabwe and Bolivia have also been hard hit. Growing populations and higher metal prices force people to choose between moving to the city or out to the bush to dig gold.

“We haven’t seen too many cases of poisoning in Mongolia so far. That is because the gold rush only started recently,” says Appel. “It takes four to six years to go mad and eight to nine years before you die. But poor people often don’t care when they are warned about something so far in the future. Their concern is to get food for this week.”

Appel and Grayson are at the CASM conference to advocate alternatives to mercury. Borax is one substance that works just as well and is also cheaper, they claim (but others, such as Bern Klein of the Institute of Mining Engineering of the University of British Columbia, think the advantages of borax are overrated). Grayson says that he has documented 75 ways to extract gold without mercury. The difficulty is to convince the ninjas. They live in isolation and are suspicious of the authorities and of society.

DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES
“The fundamental problem is that the ninjas’ activity is illegal,” says Gotthard Walser, who works in the CASM secretariat. “We want to turn the mining industry into a means of development. But as long as they (the ninjas) are illegal, it won’t work.”

“There are many good examples from South America. In Ecuador, for example, conditions were medieval. But five years after legalization, what we see is orderly development and improved earnings. In Mongolia the trend has been rather toward an increase in raids against the ninjas. In the areas around the mines such as Zaamar the mining company managed to get the police to declare something resembling a state of emergency in which the ninjas are arbitrarily thrown in prison.”

Mining minister Lu Bold has not mentioned any plans to legalize their activity. All political energy in Mongolia is presently devoted instead to Oyu Tolgoi, an enormous mining project in the Gobi Desert to be run by the Canadian firm Ivanhoe. It has the potential to become the world’s biggest gold and copper producer. After years of negotiations, the agreement has been brought before parliament. If it goes through, other western and Asian companies will be lining up to get a piece of Mongolia’s rich mineral deposits. For example, there is Tavan Tolgoi, which is estimated to have enough coal to cover all of China’s imports for three years. And China is the world’s biggest consumer of the stuff. That could potentially lift Mongolia out of poverty. But examples from other countries rich in natural resources such as the Congo are terrifying. Mongolia is a democracy. Ivanhoe investment projects have led to angry protests from pressure groups. They are afraid that the foreigners will take too large a share of the profits out of the country. Many also fear the proceeds will end up in the pockets of corrupt politicians.

“It would be better if the ninja activities were legal. Then there wouldn’t be such chaos here,” says Badamtseren as he looks out over the Olt valley. No mercury is used here. But even so, the effects on the environment are still evident. There used to be a river here, but now it’s been ruined. Downstream the herdsmen are complaining that the water is polluted and that there is no longer enough of it. When the water runs out, they will be forced either to join the ninjas or move to the growing slums of Ulan Bator.

“I sometimes feel pain when I see this, it looks dreadful! But we have to survive; I don’t know what to say… The big companies ought to restore the land,” says Badamtseren. He himself used to be a herdsman on a collective farm. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, he lost his job. He says he misses the security of Soviet times. And for an old herdsman who believes that nature is sacred it is difficult to collaborate in destroying the environment. Then his wife suddenly shouts: “Look at this!” she says smiling, holding up a straining cloth. In it is a glittering flake of gold, as big as the head of a pin.

MONGOLIA’S UNION ON THE OFFENSIVE
Additional research / Jargal Byambusuren
“This is not Burma, this is a country with a glorious history and a democracy. The foreign investors have to learn to understand that,” says Ganbaatar Sainkhuu. In June he was elected as president of the Confederation of Mongolian Trade Unions (CMTU), the national centre of 14 national sector unions that represents 450,000 members and affiliated to the International Trade Union Confederation in 1994. (The IMF does not have any affiliates in Mongolia.)

The transition to capitalism in the 1990s was a shock for the CMTU. Their methods and organization were left over from the Soviet period. Over the last 16 years they have struggled to adapt to a modern society.

Recently the CMTU has been actively learning from Mongolia’s lively civil society. During the autumn, the CMTU conducted a strike that succeeded in forcing up the price of coal and thus the miners’ wages. Ganbaatar used to be the leader of “Just Civil Society”, which protested against the government’s stability agreement with foreign companies such as Ivanhoe.

“If we had not taken up the struggle, our ancestors would have punished us. We have nothing against Canadian investors per se, but they can’t just come in here and grab whatever they want.” Afterwards Ganbaatar was pleased with the protests.
“It was worth the struggle. At first Ivanhoe gave the Mongolian people only two per cent of the profits. Now we get 34 per cent. That means a lot to us, it corresponds to hundreds of hospitals, schools, libraries and theaters.” At the same time, Ganbaatar stresses that the CMTU does not want to be seen as a troublemaker, it wants to contribute to constructive solutions.

He says that Mongolia’s politicians are not experienced enough to be able to negotiate against shrewd multinational corporations.
Next year the CMTU will concentrate on defending its members’ interests. “We won’t be able to work with the ninja gold diggers before 2009. They are part of our program to organize the informal sector. Step by step we will come closer to these groups,” says Ganbaatar.

He explained that 70 per cent of Mongolia’s population worked in the grey, informal economy. “The ninja gold diggers are a result of the government’s failed policy. We have to create more jobs that pay more than what they can make by digging.”

Ganbaatar thinks that the situation for the unions in Mongolia is quite good compared to that in most Asian countries. “We are independent of party politics and we work exclusively for our members’ interests.”
A few months ago they signed a National Tripartite Agreement. The concept comes from the United Nations’ labour organization, the ILO. It is a forum that brings together the government, the union and the employers’ organization. They negotiate inter alia national and regional collective contracts. Ganbaatar sees that as great progress since it gives the union real influence at the level of the authorities. So far the CMTU has had no experience with union activity in big foreign mining projects.

“The foreign companies used to ignore us. But now they have to realize that they need us, since according to the tripartite agreement the CMTU has the right to take part in the licensing process for strategically important foreign investments,” says Ganbaatar.

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