USA: To highlight efforts to win a first contract at the Norton Abrasives plant in Worcester, Massachusetts, members of the UAW have demonstrated outside the North American headquarters of Saint-Gobain, the French glass, ceramics and materials conglomerate which owns Norton Abrasives. “Saint-Gobain managers tried very hard to prevent workers at Norton Abrasives from forming their own union,” said the UAW’s president, Ron Gettelfinger. “They did not succeed, because those workers were determined to exercise their right to organise. Now, Saint-Gobain managers are trying equally hard to frustrate the collective bargaining process,” said Gettelfinger. But he said the UAW is determined to get that first contract. Detailing the problems faced by the Norton Abrasives workers, the demonstrators distributed a letter to employees at the Valley Forge headquarters describing safety problems, pay and benefit cuts and repeated labour rights violations which have taken place at the Saint-Gobain-owned plant in Massachusetts. The document also points out that while Saint-Gobain management has stalled on negotiating a fair agreement in Worcester, the company now enjoys over $1 billion in annual profits, and company executives continue to receive substantial salaries and large annual bonuses.

TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO: The Steel Workers’ Union of Trinidad and Tobago (SWUTT), an affiliate of the IMF, has reported the worsening of health and safety conditions in the steel plant of Caribbean Ispat Ltd, a member of the LNM Group, Ispat International. The union says that safety deficiency has reached crisis level throughout the plant.

In 2002, due to the lack of health and safety measures and the absence of budgeting for health and safety provisions, there were over 80 serious workplace accidents, plus an increasing number of workers obliged to retire because of workplace injuries or other health problems contracted in the plant. Contract workers are also being allowed in the plant without proper safety orientation, and when accidents occur, little or no investigations are made which could allow for corrective actions to be taken to prevent reoccurrences.

All this, says the union, confirms the clear violation of standards established at international level by the ILO, and although laws concerning health and safety are on the books in Trinidad and Tobago, they are being ignored.

The IMF has written to all its affiliates requesting strong protest letters be written to the company. In its own letter to Caribbean Ispat's CEO and to the country's minister of labour, the IMF has urged that the company respond positively to union demands on health and safety and called on the government to ensure international rules on health and safety are respected in Trinidad and Tobago.

The IMF is informing the ILO of the situation in the Ispat plant.

SERBIA: The IMF’s affiliate, GSM Nezavisnost, reports that violations of trade union rights in Serbia are continuing since October 5, 2000, when the country’s authorities officially opted for the respect of human rights. Such violations are particularly the case at the tractor maker IMT in Novi Beograd. The minister of labour and employment, Dragan Milovanovic, who is chairman of the company’s board of directors, has abused his office and terminated the employment of 12 trade union activists of GSM Nezavisnost. In a letter to the Serbian prime minister, Zoran Djindjic, IMF general secretary Marcello Malentacchi has reminded him that trade union rights are incorporated in the ILO’s conventions and that it is the duty of the ILO and UN member states to respect these rights. “We protest in the strongest terms against such behavior, such an anti-worker, anti-trade union attitude of your government,” writes Malentacchi, “and we lend our full support to our colleagues in the GSM Nezavisnost. For the purpose of protecting our members, we will be obliged to undertake certain action and will inform the ILO, the Council of Europe and our trade union affiliates about this.”

INDIA: A mammoth march on Parliament by 250,000 to 300,000 workers and trade union activists was staged in New Delhi on February 26, in continuation of an unrelenting struggle against the government’s new economic policies of liberalisation, globalisation and privatisation. All IMF affiliates from across India actively participated in this massive show of strength, which some described as “the best turnout ever”. Trade union leaders at the rally strongly condemned the government’s anti-labour policies and growing unemployment, warning that if the government did not respond positively to their demands, a further course of action was being mapped out for the near future. A joint trade union declaration contains the following demands:

• a halt to privatisation of profit-making, potentially viable public sector undertakings;
• no changes in labour laws in favour of employers and against workers’ interests;
• an immediate enactment of comprehensive legislation for agricultural workers;
• no to policies leading to severe aggravation of joblessness and unemployment;
• the widening of comprehensive social security schemes for all, including workers in the unorganised sector;
• restoration of quantitative restrictions on imports;
• the amendment of Payment of Bonus Act by removing all ceilings;
• restoration of the 12 per cent interest rate on providence fund deposits.

ROMANIA: Strike action was necessary to obtain an agreement on wages at the Electrolux plant in Satu Mare, in northwestern Romania. When the Samus Electrolux Union, a member of the IMF-affiliated National Metalworkers’ Federation of Romania (U-Metal), experienced difficulties in its wage talks with the local management of Electrolux in January, workers downed their tools for about a week and a half. The union said that management had not been negotiating in good faith and had been unwilling to compromise to find a solution to the deadlock. Following the strike action, which began on January 31 and lasted 10 days, an agreement could finally be reached. When first informed by U-Metal of the conflict in negotiations, the IMF wrote to Hans Stråberg, president and CEO of Electrolux, at corporate headquarters in Sweden, to ask for his intervention so that a solution acceptable to both sides could be found.

CANADA: When met by a company refusal to drop its demand for increased employee payments for health benefit coverage, 1,100 Canadian Auto Worker members at Sterling Trucks in St. Thomas, Ontario, started strike action on February 20 at 11:59 p.m. The union says that the company, which is owned by DaimlerChrysler, already has a US$5 cost advantage over its American plants on health care coverage, and “now they want an even greater saving at the expense of their Canadian workforce.” The workers at the Sterling Trucks assembly plant joined the CAW in December, and negotiations for this first contract have been underway since January. Other remaining key issues in the talks include wages and time off the job. The company manufactures commercial trucks — day haulers such as dump trucks and cement mixers. It assembles the trucks for DaimlerChrysler’s Freightliner LLC subsidiary.

GENEVA: As a follow-up to the IMF Seminar on Organising Non-Manual Workers, held in October 2002, the IMF has published a report which highlights activities of affiliates from various parts of the world in the recruitment of non-manual workers.

The report describes the experience of affiliated trade unions in organising these workers, examines new recruiting tools and strategies and seeks to map out a way for future work. The IMF hopes that this will give a new impetus to the discussion and help affiliates address the issue of organising non-manual workers in their own structures.

Recruiting new members is fundamental to all trade union work, and with non-manual occupations in the metal industry constantly on the rise, even out-numbering production workers in some countries, the IMF is focusing increasingly on the importance of recruiting these workers. Indeed, the issue of organising the unorganised is one of the top priorities of the IMF for the years to come.

The report, "Organising Non-Manual Workers", can be downloaded under "Publications" on this website, in English, German and French.

USA: Some 95,000 U.S. hourly workers at Ford Motor Co. will again benefit from profit-sharing as the company has announced a modest return to profitability for the year 2002. Ford will give checks worth an average of $160 in profit-sharing to each of its hourly employees on March 12. Under provisions in the United Auto Workers’ contracts with the Big Three automakers, which hinge on their corporate U.S. profits, the companies are required to pay profit-sharing bonuses to their production workers. However, hit by an industry-wide downturn in 2001, none of the three paid out profit-sharing in 2002, for the first time in over a decade. Ford, for example, suffered a $5.45 billion loss for 2001. General Motors has also announced it will distribute profit-sharing checks, which will average $940, to 130,000 U.S. hourly workers for 2002, as well as the Chrysler Group, which is expected to pay anywhere from $500 to $1,000 to its over 65,000 UAW employees.

GENEVA: With International Framework Agreements (IFAs) a main focus of the IMF’s work in the coming years, a new IMF website section has been launched — www.imfmetal.org/ifa — to provide in-depth information about IFAs and the importance of this global instrument for fundamental workers’ rights. Basically, an IFA is a tool for global union federations, such as the IMF, in which rules of conduct are laid down for transnational companies. These agreements are negotiated between unions at a global level and company management. You will also find information, texts, etc. concerning the three International Framework Agreements which the IMF has signed so far: Merloni Elettrodomestici, Volkswagen and DaimlerChrysler. In addition, the IMF has published an introduction leaflet on IFAs in English, German, French and Spanish.

GENEVA: The world over, public opinion against a war in Iraq is growing. Those attending the recent World Social Forum in Porto Alegre unanimously expressed an anti-war view. Amongst other regions, across Europe trade unions and other NGOs will be marching against the imminent war on February 15. The IMF general secretary, Marcello Malentacchi, commented in his just-published opinion column that such rejection must send a “strong signal to the USA that world security must be governed by the United Nations, and not unilaterally by a ‘superpower’.” Read the full text of the general secretary’s opinion on the associated link. Also, consult the attached link on LabourStart’s “Special report on unions and the war on Iraq”.