USA: The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers reports that their organising drive to represent 17,195 white-collar professional and office employees at Boeing concluded on July 19 with the tally of ballots by the National Labor Relations Board. Employees voted 85 percent to decline union representation on this occasion (13,142 versus 2,329).
“No industry was ever successfully unionised the first time out — not auto, not steel and certainly not aerospace,” said the union’s international president, Tom Buffenbarger, following news of the vote count for 16,500 office and clerical employees at Boeing. “Today’s vote was one battle in the war, not the war itself. The movement to gain union representation among Boeing employees will continue.”
The organising campaign reached out to people with almost no prior exposure to unions. The union’s chief representative for District 751 in Seattle commented that as long as Boeing continued outsourcing and downsizing, the issues of job security, fair compensation and respectful treatment would only grow sharper.
The union said it would now focus on preparing the 2002 negotiations representing 27,000 IAM members at Boeing and intends to improve pensions, medical benefits and job security protections for its members. The current collective contract expires on September 1, 2002.
Source: IAMAW

DENMARK: The IMF was deeply shocked and saddened to learn of the death on July 20, 2001, in Denmark of Poul Erik Olsen, former head of the IMF Education Department from 1990-1997. He was 69 years old.
Poul Erik dedicated his entire working life to the trade union and wider labour movement. His heart was in the fields of education and international solidarity, and over the years he made hundreds of friends in countries the world over, and through his hard work helped greatly to improve their working and living conditions. His energy and his enthusiasm were boundless, a real inspiration to all who knew him.
The IMF general secretary, Marcello Malentacchi, said that “Poul Erik was one of the best teachers I’ve ever known, always developing new methods to make it easier for students to understand and actively participate in training programmes. Education for him was the best way to achieve and practice democracy, the supreme goal to achieve to make life worth living.”
The IMF wishes to express its condolences to the family of Poul Erik and to the CO Industri trade union in Denmark.

ROMANIA: Sidex Galati, Romania’s largest steel plant, is being taken over by LNM Holdings, the owner of Ispat Karmet in Kazakhstan, which belongs to Lakshmi Mittal, the owner of Ispat International.
Sidex is an integrated flat products steel plant, with a nominal capacity of 10 million tonnes per year and approximately 28,000 employees. In 2000, however, the company only produced 3 million tonnes.

USA: In what is a huge victory for the workers at Avondale Shipyard, the U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has issued an order to the company to rehire 22 workers who were illegally fired between 1994-1997 because they had tried to organise the shipyard.
The NLRB’s judge also ordered the New Orleans shipyard to compensate for lost pay, benefits and seniority all workers who were illegally suspended or disciplined and to repay not only $5.4 million in related legal fees it billed to the U.S. Navy but also the NLRB’s legal costs and those of the New Orleans Metal Trades Council, which lodged the first unfair labour practice complaint against Avondale in 1994.
In 1999, the anti-union company was sold to Litton Industries, which was in turn taken over in April 2001 by the present owner, defence contractor Northrop Grumman. The company is considering to appeal the NLRB decision.
The struggle for trade union rights at Avondale lasted for eight years. After finally winning union recognition at the shipyard in August 1999, the AFL-CIO affiliated New Orleans Metal Trades Council and management signed the first 45-month collective agreement covering 1,500 union members in December 2000.

GERMANY: The German metalworkers’ union IG Metall has welcomed the announcement by German auto multinational BMW that it will open a new plant near Leipzig, in eastern Germany. With daily production capacity at the new plant expected to reach 650 cars, 5,500 jobs could be created directly at the new site and another 4,500 jobs at suppliers.
Construction of the new facility, at a cost of 1 billion euros ($859 million), is scheduled to begin this winter, and production of the new model of the BMW 3-Series will start in 2005. The present 3-Series model is being manufactured in Regensburg, which will switch to the newly invented 1-Series after the opening of the plant in Leipzig.
With approximately 17 per cent unemployment in the eastern part of the country, which is over double that of western Germany, news of BMW’s decision was especially well received in Leipzig.
As some 250 European cities were competing to house the new plant, IG Metall sees the decision as a confirmation that cars can be built competitively in a so-called high-wage country.

THE AMERICAS: The third meeting of the IMF Working Group on the Free Trade Area of the Americas was held on July 10-12, 2001, in Cuernavaca, Mexico. The main aim of the meeting was to:
– evaluate the Buenos Aires Trade Ministerial and the Quebec Summit, both of which took place in April 2001, and assess the trade union input;
– analyse the potential impact of any FTAA on the metal industry in the Western Hemisphere, and
– discuss follow-up activities.
An IMF report on the potential impact of an FTAA on the metal industry will be produced later this year.

EUROPE/GLOBAL: On July 18, 2001, the European Commission adopted a communication proposing an EU strategy to promote core labour standards and social governance globally. The communication proposes action at European and at international levels, to support the effective application of core labour standards at global level.
The development dimension is central to the strategy, which aims to help developing countries apply core labour standards for social development.
Commenting on the launch of the proposals, Commissioners Pascal Lamy (Trade) and Anna Diamantopoulou (Employment) said: “Citizens feel there is a need for an equitable global economic system which promotes social development and fundamental rights and that our current governance model does not adequately address this. Global market governance has developed more quickly than global social governance. We should rebalance the system to help promote social development and ensure that globalisation benefits all people and all countries.”
Access the full text of the communication on the associated link.
Source: Trade Directorate-General of the European Commission

ITALY: The announcement on July 18, 2001, by Fiat Auto SpA that it will slash output by 18,000 units in September 2001 due to a slowdown in European sales will result in large numbers of layoffs at the carmaker. Italian unions have reported that 5,400 workers will be laid off between August 27-September 2; 4,700 workers between September 3-9; 700 between September 10-16 and 7,200 workers between September 24-30.
The models affected are the Fiat Punto and Marea, the Alfa Romeo 166 and 156 and Lancia Lybra. The plants involved are Mirafiori, Rivalta, Pomigliano, Termini Imerese and Arese.
Source: AFX News

GREAT BRITAIN: Responding to British prime minister Tony Blair’s current “reform or bust” drive to privatise public services in the UK, the GMB executive board decided on July 17 to cut the union’s funding to Britain’s Labour Party.
In opposing the prime minister’s push for public sector privatisation, the over 700,000-member general workers’ union, affiliated to the IMF through the IMF British Section and one of the largest unions affiliated to the Labour Party, said it would cut its support by £250,000 a year (from £650,000 to £400,000) over the next four years in protest at the prime minister’s uncompromising stand. It has been suggested that the money will be used to finance a campaign to protect public services from privatisation.
The GMB has set up a special section on its website with campaign material and a copy of the press advertisement on the campaign.

CHINA, PEOPLE’S REP: It has been reported by the Xinhua News Agency that 28 shipyard workers were crushed to death yesterday (July 17) when a 600-ton crane toppled over at the Shanghai Hudong Shipyard. The accident occurred when the crane was attempting to lift a load into a structure where approximately 30 employees were working.
It was not immediately known if more workers were buried underneath the collapsed crane.
The Shanghai Hudong Shipyard is one of the largest shipyards in Shanghai.