PORTUGAL: Yesterday on this website the IMF reported on a serious situation which had developed at Johnson Controls in Portalegre (see news item dated July 16, 2001).
The Portuguese metalworkers’ union SIMA has now written to inform its friends that very early this morning (July 17) company management agreed to SIMA’s demands that the company accept the workers’ legal rights at Johnson Controls to the collective agreement in force for that industrial sector.
José António Simões, general secretary of SIMA, said the union wanted to “thank all those who very quickly answered our request for support in order to stop the denial of workers’ rights at Johnson Controls in Portalegre. Your support has been very helpful.”

AUSTRALIA: Over the last few years, much has been reported on the anti-union stance of BHP, the giant mining and metals multinational. In an attempt to deny collective representation to workers in its iron-ore mining operations in the Pilbara, Western Australia, the company — Australia’s largest — has been offering individual contracts. A case brought by the unions, which charged that in November 1999 BHP’s offer of individual contracts had unlawfully discriminated against union members and was an attempt to lure workers away from their unions, was rejected by the Federal Court in Melbourne in January 2001. The decision has been appealed.
The combined unions representing workers at the Pilbara BHP operations have now set up a joint website in order to give up-to-date briefings on the progress of the dispute and to send messages via the forum.
The unions say that BHP demands absolute power, but “we demand the right to have a say in how we are treated at work through collective representation. We will campaign against BHP until they agree to the fair treatment of its workers both now and in the future. Our campaign will seek to highlight the reality of BHP’s un-Australian conduct and its impact on the environment, community and its own workforce when it has absolute power. We will seek the support of our members in mounting that campaign, within the Pilbara and around the whole country. As Australians, we are not going to go away, we simply demand a fair go.”
Click on the associated link to access the new joint website (www.pilbaraunions.com). For related news items, go to the IMF website search engine and type in the letters BHP.

PORTUGAL: The IMF’s Portuguese affiliate SIMA (Sindicato das Industrias Metalurgicas e Afins) is requesting urgent solidarity support to help put a stop to a serious situation which has developed at Johnson Controls in Portalegre.
Management at the transnational company, a major automotive supplier producing seating and interior systems and batteries, is denying its workers their legitimate rights by refusing to apply the existing collective agreement for this sector of the industry. In addition, SIMA reports that union representatives and shop stewards at the company are being harassed and threatened by the management. At a meeting called for all its employees, the company even told them it did not intend to apply the collective agreement.
As a result of this gross abuse of their rights, workers at Johnson Controls in Portalegre, with the support of SIMA, have decided to call a strike for July 17, 18 and 19, in order to force the company to restore the agreement.
In a letter to Johnson Controls management in Portalegre, the IMF general secretary, Marcello Malentacchi, reminds the company that the government of Portugal has ratified all key ILO Conventions, including No. 87 on Freedom of Association and No. 98 on the Right to Collective Bargaining, and thus the company has an obligation to uphold the rights of its workers. Malentacchi adds that he will make sure these “illegal and unwarranted actions are brought to the attention of the appropriate authorities” and advises the company to negotiate with the democratically-elected officials of the trade union.
The IMF would ask all its affiliates to send protest letters directly to Johnson Controls in support of the workers, and demonstrating rejection at international level of the company’s actions. Please write to:
Dr. Antonio Pinto, Managing Director
Johnson Controls
Zona Industrial
7300 Portalegre, Portugal
Fax.: +351 24 5362240
Kindly send a copy to SIMA on:
Fax: +351 21 8409851
E-mail: [email protected]
and to the IMF.

GERMANY: After massive worker protests and following the decision by the Executive Committee of the German metalworkers’ union IG Metall to ask its membership in the two Philips semiconductor plants in Germany for a strike vote, Philips has announced that the outsourcing of the two plants into an independent new company will be postponed for four weeks, until August 1. One of the plants in question is in Hamburg, with 2,300 employees, and the other in Boeblingen near Stuttgart, with 760 employees.
Due to the pressure of IG Metall and the Philips Works’ Council on the company, as well as a constantly increasing trade union membership rate — more than 600 Philips workers have joined IG Metall since the conflict started — the management of Philips has now also accepted to start negotiations on the outsourcing and a collective agreement for the affected workers. The negotiations will already start this week.

GENEVA/CIS: The IMF’s new Project Office for the Commonwealth of Independent States (POCIS) is now up and running. With the establishment of this project office, the IMF expects to better serve the over 2.5 million metalworkers organised in its nine member trade unions in the CIS. The Office also services non-member CIS metal unions, as well as the IMF’s membership in the Baltic states.
The address of the office is:
IMF Project Office for the CIS
Room 211
Str. 2, d. 13, Grokholsky per.
129010 Moscow, Russia
Tel: 7-095-9746111
Fax: 7-095-9741622
e-mail: [email protected]
The person in charge of the Moscow office is Svetla Shekerdjieva.

BRAZIL: An accident occurred at the Alumar Aluminium Company in São Luís, Brazil on the afternoon of July 6, 2001, resulting in six workers being so seriously injured that they had to be hospitalised. The full extent of their injuries, as well as the cause and circumstances of the accident are not known because the plant’s management has refused to provide any information to Sindmetal, the trade union representing the workers at the refinery.
In addition to this lack of cooperation on the part of management, union officials are being threatened by armed security guards, and the hospital staff has been instructed by Alumar not to give any information regarding the injuries to the union.
Alumar Aluminium Company is a part-owned subsidiary of both Alcoa and Alcan. The IMF is writing to all its affiliates requesting protest letters be sent to the CEOs of both companies and to Brazil’s president, prime minister and minister of labour, calling for an urgent enquiry into the causes of the accident and into Alumar’s attempt to prevent public knowledge of the accident.
In its own letters to Alcoa and Alcan and to the Brazilian government, the IMF is strongly encouraging the adoption at Alumar of an adequate occupational health and safety policy, with an active health and safety committee comprised equally of management and trade union representatives.
Brazil has ratified a number of ILO Conventions related to occupational health and safety, and the OECD’s Guidelines for Multinational Companies requires all MNCs such as Alcoa and Alcan to respect fundamental human and workers’ rights and to provide a good example of corporate behaviour wherever they operate.

BRAZIL: The Parliament of the Republic of Brazil has just ratified ILO Convention No. 174 on the Prevention of Major Industrial Accidents, as well as ILO Recommendation No. 181 on the Prevention of Major Industrial Accidents. It will now be up to Brazil’s president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, to follow this up and hopefully approve the decision of Parliament.
Both the Convention and Recommendation were adopted by the ILO on June 22, 1993, and since 1994, Brazilian trade unions have worked to get this ILO instrument into national law.
According to the CUT trade union confederation, major accidents are not frequent in Brazil, but when they do occur, the impact on workers, public health and the environment is more serious than in some industrialised countries because the companies and public services are not in a position to respond properly with emergency measures.
For two years now there has been a national tripartite group working on this issue with the aim of building a national policy for the prevention of major accidents and to prepare public emergency services.
See the full text of ILO Convention No. 174 and ILO Recommendation No. 181 on the associated links.

SOUTH AFRICA: In a press release issued today, July 11, 2001, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), affiliated at international level to the IMF, reports that major industrial strike action in the car industry could be close. Numsa and the Automobile Manufacturers Employers’ Organisation (AMEO) are meeting today for a final round of wage negotiations. The parties have not made significant progress since bargaining resumed in May of this year.
AMEO has tabled a 6.5 per cent wage increase across the board and insists on a five-year wage agreement, but the union is demanding a wage increase of 15 per cent and a two-year agreement.
Although the industry’s 3.5 per cent increase in productivity is substantial, the union says that the increased income from these profits has not gone to the workers and the employers’ side has put little effort into the bargaining talks, “thus putting the whole industry at great risk”.
Most of Numsa’s demands are based on protecting workers’ purchasing power in order to not only boost workers’ income but also contribute positively to the economy and the car manufacturing industry. In the last five years, car manufacturing workers have been getting an inflation-related increase, but their purchasing power has been drastically diminishing. A high wage increase would close the wage gap and increase purchasing power.
The unemployment rate among Numsa member households is close to 60 per cent and is way above national South African unemployment figures.

USA: The IMF-affiliated International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers recently announced the completion of the largest union organising drive ever in the U.S. Pacific Northwest — a bid to represent 16,500 white-collar professional and office employees at Boeing.
The IAM’s president, Tom Buffenbarger, commenting on the union’s campaign, said that it was “a massive undertaking. Win or lose — and we fully expect to win — the Machinists set new records during this organising drive.”
According to a press statement released by the union, over 7,500 homes in the region were personally visited by IAM members and more than 10,000 credit card-sized CD’s containing video interviews with Boeing employees were distributed. Also put to use was the union’s new video-on-demand capability in order to keep employees at Boeing informed on developments.
The National Labor Relations Board will count the ballots July 19.

USA: The IMF-affiliated United Steelworkers of America announced in a press release issued in Washington, D.C. on July 6, 2001, that it is filing a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court to challenge the constitutionality of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
The USWA originally brought federal suit in July 1998, charging NAFTA is unconstitutional because it is by definition a treaty and therefore required a two-thirds vote of the U.S. Senate before being implemented. In February this year, the Federal Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Georgia, ruled that the Steelworkers’ challenge raised a “political question” beyond that Court’s jurisdiction.
The USWA president, Leo Gerard, has stated that “NAFTA continues to demonstrate it is a bad trade policy for American workers. Our members’ lives are being profoundly affected by a treaty that has never been properly voted on by their elected representatives. Americans continue to lose jobs and family security. Communities are losing their economic base, and America continues to lose manufacturing plants. Given the magnitude of harm being inflicted, it is incumbent on the Supreme Court to render a decision in this case.”
According to the USWA, it was at the urging of the Clinton Administration that NAFTA was approved by simple majorities in both the U.S. House and Senate in 1993. The Senate approved NAFTA by a vote of 61 to 38, short of the two-thirds margin needed for a treaty. The USWA argues that NAFTA is a far-reaching agreement having major impact not only on jobs and the economy, but on domestic laws as well, and that NAFTA plainly constitutes the kind of agreement that under the U.S. Constitution cannot be adopted without approval of a two-third’s Senate vote.