GREAT BRITAIN: In response to the May 3 announcement by the Anglo-Dutch steel company Corus that it was rejecting the unions’ alternative proposals for saving 6,000 jobs and preventing plant closures, unions have declared that they may take strike action.
The Iron and Steel Trades Confederation, which had presented the steel group with the trade unions’ detailed and viable £90 million rescue package, said they were “bitterly disappointed” over the company’s negative response to their counter proposals. Decisions as to whether or not to take industrial action will be made at local branch level very shortly. Five plants are affected.
Following the confirmation by Corus of the job losses and plant closures, the British government announced it would make a lump sum payment of £2,500 (US$3,601) to each of the thousands of steelworkers who will be affected across the UK. A government spokesman said that the priority now was to offer practical support such as training and put in place measures to promote economic regeneration and job creation. A £48 million package for such measures has been announced for England and another for Wales.

MALAYSIA: After several months of stalled bargaining talks between the IMF-affiliated Electrical Industry Workers’ Union and the Matsushita Air-Conditioning Group of Companies, negotiations for the 9th MACG Collective Agreement are set to reconvene today, May 3, at the EIWU headquarters in Subang Jaya.
Upon hearing the news that the company had consented to resume talks with the union to settle an agreement, the IMF’s regional representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, P. Arunasalam, said it was “certainly a step in the right direction and we earnestly hope the collective agreement would be amicably concluded soon.”
Negotiations came to a halt when the company called a deadlock in the talks, and the minister of human resources referred the dispute to the Industrial Court for arbitration. The main bargaining issue opposed by the EIWU was the company’s attempt to radically alter the conditions of employment for the more than 6,000 MACG workers. The company had tried to change the shift system and to withdraw checkoff, an unprecedented move in the otherwise positive relationship of over 20-25 years between the EIWU and MACG. The EIWU has concluded eight collective agreements with the company up to now.

GREECE: Much of Greece came to an abrupt standstill on April 26 during the 24-hour Panhellenic strike called by the Greek General Confederation of Labour (GSEE). The IMF-affiliated Panhellenic Metalworkers’ Federation (POEM) and Federation of Electrotechnicians of Greece (FEG), who were among participants in the general strike, said the action was a strong protest against proposals made by the Socialist government of Costas Simitis to reform the social security system.
The strike closed down most of the industrial sector, all public offices, schools, hospitals, public transportation and the media. General participation in the metal branch was remarkably high and without precedent, and reached 100 per cent in the larger companies.
As a result of this massive pressure on the government, it was forced to put a freeze on its plans and is now asking its social partners to start a dialogue from scratch. Originally, the government wanted to raise the minimum retirement age for both men and women from 55 to 65, reduce pensions, abandon special categories of insured workers such as those who perform hazardous or especially hard work, and ignore certain categories of uninsured workers – all of which the unions reject.
Among measures being called for by the trade unions are the tripartite financing of the social security system, the strict enforcement of fiscal and social security dues for employers, reduction by at least half of the present 13 per cent unemployment level, and the incorporation of migrant workers (estimated at 800,000 in Greece) into the social security system.
The GSEE is organising a new Panhellenic strike on May 17.

SOUTH AFRICA: A deal struck between Goodyear and its workers, represented by the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, could set a precedent. The agreement includes special provisions under a “Social Plan” and has turned what threatened to be a confrontation with serious international implications into a settlement that Numsa says is a labour victory against the negative aspects of globalisation.
Goodyear and the union first entered into negotiations last November after the tire company, which had announced a 10 per cent reduction in its workforce worldwide, said it would cut 400 jobs at its Port Elizabeth tire plant as part of its global restructuring. Numsa reacted by calling a strike and threatening to escalate the affair by seeking support from the international trade union movement.
Now, after months of intensive negotiations, Numsa members are picking up a severance package which includes a 4 million rand (US$ 499,000) social plan to benefit the local economy by funding retraining for workers and getting them into Black empowerment projects and their own small business ventures.
For the upcoming 2001 collective bargaining negotiations with South African motor industry employers, Numsa is being encouraged by the government to get commitments from employers that the big companies will buy from smaller companies that are established by retrenched workers under programmes such as that agreed with Goodyear. Automotive worker bargaining strategies in South Africa are also increasingly focusing on training and retraining, particularly improving computer skills.
Source: just-auto.com

EUROPE: Major job losses announced in the past week in Europe affecting thousands of jobs have come from companies such as Motorola, Ericsson and Moulinex.
Ericsson, the Swedish telecommunications giant, revealed on April 20 that it would cut as many as 12,000 jobs worldwide. Some 5,000-6,000 of these job losses are expected in Sweden, mainly in research and development. Mari-Ann Krantz, president of the IMF-affiliated Swedish non-manual workers’ union SIF, said that the company’s most important asset was its highly-experienced and technically-competent workforce and warned of the risk, when fears of job security prevailed in a company, that the more competent staff might leave first. She hoped that Ericsson management was aware of the possibility of a serious dialogue with SIF to find solutions which would safeguard jobs, because not only the future of the company is at stake but the future of its staff.
Moulinex-Brandt, the French appliance group, announced on April 26 it would proceed with major restructuring plans, cutting 4,000 jobs worldwide, of which 1,500 will be in France. The company, which produces coffee makers, vacuum cleaners and other small household appliances, will close three plants in France, as well as plants in Ireland, Brazil and in Poland, where 1,700 workers will lose their jobs. The IMF-affiliated FGMM-CFDT stated last year, when the Italian Elfi group, which owns Brandt, took over Moulinex, that the takeover was not accompanied by even minimum guarantees for the future and job security. The union will continue its efforts to safeguard as many jobs as possible at Moulinex and Brandt.
The U.S. electronics multinational Motorola has made known its plans to cut 7,000 jobs worldwide, and close its biggest plant in Great Britain, located in Scotland, in six months’ time, with the loss of 3,100 jobs. Two other UK plants will also be shut down, totalling another 500 jobs. The general secretary of the Manufacturing, Science and Finance Union, Roger Lyons said that the company had earlier told workers they “did not need a trade union as their jobs were secure!” Unions, workers and politicians strongly condemned the company, which has received approximately £17 million in state aid in the last six years.

May Day is not just a day off from work. It is to celebrate international solidarity among workers. Every one of us should be out on the streets joining manifestations being organised worldwide by trade unions and labour movements. Staying home would be to betray the union and its struggle.
In the last few years, many people have expressed their wishes to me to mark the metalworkers’ struggle around the world by devoting one special day to them. Honestly, I do not think it is necessary to change or to add a new day to celebrate our struggle.
Maybe you think I am too traditionalist and a little bit conservative, but on this particular issue I want to stick to our traditions. May Day came about more than 100 years ago when workers in Chicago went on strike and demonstrated for the 8-hour workday and better working conditions. That day was just a normal working day, but police attacked the group and 11 of them died, shot down by bullets. They were unarmed and inoffensive, like all workers struggling to make a living.
After that tragedy, the labour movement declared the First of May, or May Day, as THE day to pay respect and tribute to all workers around the world. In the USA and Great Britain, however, May Day is still not recognised as the special day for Labour. This is regrettable and, hopefully, will at some point be changed.
Just a couple of days before the First of May, on April 28, the trade union movement also observes International Commemoration Day for Dead and Injured Workers. This year, for the first time, the International Labour Organisation will join in marking this day to commemorate the victims of unhealthy and unsafe workplaces. Every year, 1.3 million workers are killed (3,300 every day) as a result of accidents or disease related to exposure to bad environmental conditions at work. 12,000 are children. 160 million new injuries and work-related diseases are reported annually. Asbestos alone claims about 100,000 victims.
This is not acceptable for the trade unions or for society as a whole. This was also what the workers in Chicago fought against when they demonstrated on that first May Day in our history, and this is what we must continue to fight for today, if we want to guarantee our children a better and safer future.
Join your union demonstration next Tuesday, MAY DAY 2001!

GLOBAL: May Day is not just a day off from work. It is to celebrate international solidarity among workers. Every one of us should be out on the streets joining manifestations being organised worldwide by trade unions and labour movements. Staying home would be to betray the union and its struggle.
In the last few years, many people have expressed their wishes to me to mark the metalworkers’ struggle around the world by devoting one special day to them. Honestly, I do not think it is necessary to change or to add a new day to celebrate our struggle.
Maybe you think I am too traditionalist and a little bit conservative, but on this particular issue I want to stick to our traditions. May Day came about more than 100 years ago when workers in Chicago went on strike and demonstrated for the 8-hour workday and better working conditions. That day was just a normal working day, but police attacked the group and 11 of them died, shot down by bullets. They were unarmed and inoffensive, like all workers struggling to make a living.
After that tragedy, the labour movement declared the First of May, or May Day, as THE day to pay respect and tribute to all workers around the world. In the USA and Great Britain, however, May Day is still not recognised as the special day for Labour. This is regrettable and, hopefully, will at some point be changed.
Just a couple of days before the First of May, on April 28, the trade union movement also observes International Commemoration Day for Dead and Injured Workers. This year, for the first time, the International Labour Organisation will join in marking this day to commemorate the victims of unhealthy and unsafe workplaces. Every year, 1.3 million workers are killed (3,300 every day) as a result of accidents or disease related to exposure to bad environmental conditions at work. 12,000 are children. 160 million new injuries and work-related diseases are reported annually. Asbestos alone claims about 100,000 victims.
This is not acceptable for the trade unions or for society as a whole. This was also what the workers in Chicago fought against when they demonstrated on that first May Day in our history, and this is what we must continue to fight for today, if we want to guarantee our children a better and safer future.
Join your union demonstration on MAY DAY 2001!

MALAYSIA: The Malaysian Trades Union Congress is organising a nationwide picket of offices of the Employees Provident Fund on May 12, 2001. All 230 affiliates of the MTUC, representing 550,000 members, have been invited to participate in the picket, to protest against, among others, the investment policies of the EPF and the decreasing amount of its annual dividends.
In a statement issued by the MTUC general secretary, G. Rajasekaran, who is also general secretary of the IMF Malaysia Council, he says that since August of last year, the MTUC has repeatedly highlighted workers’ dissatisfaction with a number of issues concerning decisions of the EPF. Last November, the 230-member MTUC General Council unanimously rejected the EPF annuity scheme and the drastic reduction of the long-established death and incapacitation benefits. The EPF has still not restored these benefits. Workers were then shocked when the EPF announced the 6 per cent dividend rate for the year 2000, the lowest in 26 years. Following this, the EPF also made a huge loss overnight when it invested heavily, with 78.7 million shares, in a Time dotCom initial public offer, even though it had knowledge of the company’s poor showing.
The EPF has 9.7 million members. The MTUC representatives on its board are in the minority, with five representatives, compared to 18 employer representatives.

GLOBAL: Speaking at the IMF/SIF Seminar on Stress and Burnout, taking place in Djurönäset, Sweden, on April 23-24, Mari-Ann Krantz, president of the Swedish non-manual workers’ union SIF and president of the IMF Non-Manual Workers’ Department, said that among the issues of particular importance for non-manual workers which need to be addressed is the psycho-social working environment for these workers and the ever-increasing proportion of non-manual workers who are on long-term sick leave because of stress and burnout. Organising non-manual workers into trade unions remains a high priority for the trade union agenda.
Krantz believes the IMF Non-Manual Workers’ Department has an important role to play when it comes to trade union approaches to the psycho-social working environment for non-manual workers worldwide, as together the group will be enabled to evolve methods which, “even if they do not provide complete solutions, will constitute a shared point of view on how to tackle this problem.”
Addressing the seminar for the IMF Secretariat, Anne-Marie Mureau commented that the way work is organised changes considerably when one goes from North to South, however “there are a number of common threads which link the high prevalence of stress and burnout to changes taking place on the labour market, due partly to the effects of economic globalisation. And economic globalisation affects us all.”
It was time, she said, to raise the issue of stress in a worldwide context and give it a higher profile. It was necessary to envisage ways and means to meet the challenge posed by this problem. What should the trade union response be and how can it be translated into practical policy-making? Had programmes been developed to help workers, had legislation been passed? There had to be more public awareness of the problem.

Thirty-four countries of the Americas have decided to sign an agreement on free trade. Even though it concerns 800 million people, few of them know about it.
In a few years, all countries of the two American continents will have opened up their borders for goods, services and capital.
Although free and fair trade remains one of the best instruments for development, if it is organised in a proper and just manner, certain fundamental conditions will have to be fulfilled for this purpose:
1. The agreement, regional or global, must aim at creating sustainable growth for every country.
2. The main objective should not be just to benefit Capital, but to create jobs and through that good living conditions and standards for all people concerned.
3. The purchasing power of the entire population must increase considerably, particularly in the developing countries in the region. People must be able to afford to buy what they produce.
4. A clause guaranteeing minimum labour and environmental standards must be part of such an agreement.
I am afraid that the new FTAA agreement has not been negotiated in this spirit, and therefore will not benefit the people. The negotiations, which have been going on for some years, have been carried out behind closed doors, and no document was released before the conference in Quebec was over.
Once again, politicians have missed the opportunity to exercise democracy the way people would expect them to do.
If trade unions, along with other organisations representing consumers, environmentalists and others, now react strongly against the FTAA and continue protesting, the governments of the 34 countries will have to assume their responsibility.