INDIA: The Maruti Suzuki Employees Union (MSEU) affirms that production is at a complete halt since August 29. The Plant employs around 3,500 workers — 900 regular, 1,500 trainees and 1,100 contract workers and apprentices.

The conflict goes back to June 3, 2011. When workers at the MSIL Manesar plant filed an application for registering Maruti-Suzuki Employees Union (MSEU), the management demanded that workers sign statements that they will not join the new union. Protesting intimidation and demanding trade union rights workers went on sit-in strike from June 4.

On June 17 an agreement was reached between the parties in the presence of government officials. For more details on the 13 day long sit-in strike see here.

According to the agreement, 11 dismissed workers were reinstated pending domestic inquiry and the parties agreed to cooperate. In the meantime, on July 16 elections were held for Maruti Udhyog Kamgar Union (MUKU) which existed at Maruti-Suzuki’s Gurgaon plant. Workers allege that it is a pocket union for which no elections have been held for 10 years. As this union was dominated by workers in Gurgaon, workers in Manesar did not take part in the election, preferring the separate union MSEU.

However, on July 27 the Registrar of Trade Unions rejected their application to register the MSEU, questionning their documents’ genuineness. Subsequently, the management started victimising workers through suspensions and terminations. It peaked on August 29 with the termination of 11 and suspension of 10 workers. On the same day the Maruti-Suzuki management locked gates and declared that only workers who sign a Good Conduct Bond/Undertaking could enter the plant. All workers refused to sign the bond. As of September 8, 23 workers have been terminated and 34 suspended.

The management alleges that workers engaged in go-slow tactics and hampered the production process. Workers are sitting in front of the factory gate in two shifts demanding withdrawal of the termination and suspension orders. A large number of trade unions in Gurgaon including Suzuki’s other plants namely Maruti Suzuki’s Gurgaon plant, Suzuki Motorcycle India, Suzuki Powertrain and Suzuki Castings are supporting the struggling workers.

Officers from the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF) South Asian Office visited the Maruti site on September 6. The IMF calls upon the Maruti-Suzuki management not to indulge in victimisation and to engage with workers in good faith to solve their genuine grievances on working conditions and trade union rights.

 

MALAWI: Nationwide protests in July this year organised by civil society was violently put down by police sparking two days of riots. 19 people lost their lives as the result of indiscriminate violence unleashed by security forces in several urban centres during those two days and scores more were injured. Following the July events, much attention was drawn to the situation in Malawi, with an online campaign by the International Trade Union Confederation on Labour Start as well as many organisations including the IMF condemning the violence and calling for the government to address the demands made by civil society through dialogue. 

Civil society had given government one month to respond to demands and had planned a protest action for August 17th if progress had not been made to address these. However these plans were cancelled to give dialogue a chance after a meeting with the UN on August 16th where the UN offered to facilitate the talks. At the time, civil society leaders had not been able to have injunctions preventing the planned action vacated. Also, civil society representatives had met the police on 15th and 16th of August to work on issues of safety and security where the police stated that they were not confident in their ability to manage nationwide actions and that should riots break out they would look to hold civil society leaders accountable.

The UN facilitated dialogue is currently underway, with initial meetings setting the ground rules and demands categorised into those that must receive immediate attention, and those that will require more time to address defined as either medium or long term. Issues requiring immediate attention include urgently addressing the shortage of drugs in the country, repairing diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom and resuming talks with the IMF to address economic issues. Also included is the reopening of Chancellor College of the University of Malawi, the withdrawal of all legal proceedings against lecturers and reinstatement of these academics. Labour is fully involved, with the Secretary General of the Malawi Confederations of Trade Unions (MCTU) elected to the civil society team engaged in the dialogue.       

The Malawi government will have to act quickly to address these immediate issues should it wish to prevent protest action taking place on 21 September. Civil society organisations including trade unions affiliated to the MCTU are ready to take action to keep up pressure to ensure reform. Undule Mwakasungura, head of the Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR) says that it is important to be clear as to what civil society is trying to achieve. "We, as civil society, as much as we are not happy with the current regime, we are not asking for regime change or fighting for political space. We want political and economic reforms for a better Malawi, and would like to see our politicians championing these reforms."

Mwakasungara also spoke of the difficult and risky environment that civil society and human rights defenders have to deal with.  CHRR offices were ransacked in February with no arrests made to date. Civil society is aware that they are being closely monitored and threats against them continue. A person working to advise civil society on matters of security was attacked and hacked with a panga knife in the back on 16 August, he sustained critical injuries but is recovering. 

The office of the Institute for Policy Interaction (IPI) was petrol bombed on the night of September 1st shortly after the formation of a pressure group Forum for the Defence of Democracy (FDD) in which the head of IPI, Rafiq Hajat, participates. Hajat believes that an example is being made and IPI has been targeted because he won’t back down. Adding insult to injury, an official spokesperson of the government said that staff of IPI had set the fire to cover up misappropriated donor funds recieved to work on gay issues, a claim that has been dismissed by Hajat as an attempt to discredit him. He is extremely concerned for the safety of his family and staff. IPI is without office premises but continues to work out in the open, under a tree, using a solar panel to power the computer.  

Despite the dialogue, government officials including the Malawi President have continued to make statements in efforts to undermine civil society. It is reported that President Mutharika has declared war on civil society, saying he is prepared to take them on if September 21st protests go ahead.

ZIMBABWE: Comrade Japhet Moyo had been ZCTU’s First Deputy General Secretary since its 2006 Congress. He has worked closely with Comrade the former ZCTU Secretary General Wellington Chibebe, acting on his behalf in his absence. Chibebe has left the ZCTU for the International Confederation of Trade Unions (ITUC) headquartered in Brussels, having been elected as their First Deputy Secretary Genera. After the ZCTU Congress, Chibebe expressed his confidence in Moyo saying that he has left the organisation in safe and capable hands.

NEWU fully supported Moyo in his candidacy and believes that Moyo’s leadership, under which the union has grown from strength to strength, will be a great asset to the labour movement in Zimbabwe. NEWU’s President Comrade Josiah Thwala said he was happy that Moyo got this great opportunity to be the Secretary General of the National Labour Centre but that Moyo would be greatly missed by NEWU.

The departure of Moyo from NEWU means that Comrade Lovemore Mazenge will take over as Acting General Secretary, in accordance with the union’s constitution. Mazenge dismissed rumors that there were others vying for this post saying, "For now we will follow what the constitution says, any other person will have to wait until the next congress or until a decision has been taken by the National Council".

Commenting on Moyo’s election, Mazenge said "It was a pleasure to have worked with Japhet. I worked with him for about 17 years and I learnt a lot in terms of administration of the organization." IMF is confident that Mazenge will keep up the good work of the union in representing metal and engineering workers in Zimbabwe and looks forward to working closely with in the future.  

IMF wishes Moyo well in his new position. Moyo has been a great asset to the region, displaying sound values steering NEWU on the principles of worker democracy and committed to worker solidarity in the region and abroad. There is no doubt that his leadership of ZCTU will be beneficial to the workers of Zimbabwe.

Based on an article contributed by Miriam Chipunza, NEWU

AUSTRALIA: August 29 in Canberra, the unions met with Prime Minister Julia Gillard and urged her Labour Government to launch an inquiry into Australia’s manufacturing crisis.

BlueScope, formed in 2002 when BHP Steel was spun off in the BHP and Billiton merger, announced on 22 August that it was shedding nearly half of its Port Kembla Steelworks staff of 3,100 and another 200 jobs at a hot-strip steel mill in

Last Thursday’s heated union meeting came when workers also learned that senior managers of the troubled company are awarding themselves A$3.05 million in bonuses, including A$721,000 for CEO Paul O’Malley. The company recently posted an operating loss of A$118 million plus an asset write-down of A$900 million, mainly from a rising Australian dollar, high raw material costs, and depressed order books.

The BlueScope job cuts come at a time when booming Australian resource exports are driving up currency exchange rates to the detriment of Australia goods and product manufacturing. BlueScope is chopping 1,200 full-time and contract labour jobs by idling a blast furnace, coking battery, slab caster, and oxygen-based steelmaking vessel at Port Kembla south of Sydney, and the 200 steel-rolling jobs on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula.

Speaking at Port Kembla the day BlueScope made the announcement, AMWU National Secretary Dave Oliver said, "The benefits of the mining boom come with very big downsides and 1,400 families have learnt today the hard way about the downsides. "Today is a massive wake-up call for to state and federal governments to take more action on this issue."

The full ICEM release is available on the ICEM Web-site (http://www.icem.org/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4627-BlueScope-Steel-Sackings-Reveal-Crisis-in-Australian-Manufacturing )

GLOBAL: In an extensive analysis of the global financial crisis of 2008 and the risk for a new downturn in 2011 the International Metalworkers’ Federation and its sister Global Unions, as well as the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC), demand action and policy changes in the International Monetary Fund and World bank. These will gather for their annual ministerial-level meetings in Washington, USA, on September 23-25.

In the 12 page statement the unions state the case for employment-creating measures and their support for infrastructure programmes, health care and education, and climate-related investments rather than fiscal consolidation by cutbacks in social programmes that will hit the poor and vulnerable, and risk creating a ‘lost generation of children and young people with insufficient and inadequate education’.

Deficits should be reduced through tax measures that have the least impact on employment, and that help reduce income inequality, such as the replacement of flat taxes by progressive income taxes. The Monetary Fund is urged to support debt restructuring, including reductions of home mortgages and rescheduled sovereign debt repayments in unsustainably indebted countries. A financial transactions tax, as already implemented in Brazil and proposed by Germany and France, should help finance job-intensive recovery programmes and achieve development and climate-finance goals.

In order to avoid new financial crises, the unions urge the Financial Stability Board created after the crisis of 2008, the international financial institutions and their member countries to regulate the financial system by breaking up financial institutions that have become too big to fail, to implement controls over the non-bank shadow financial economy, hedge funds and private equity firms, and to eliminate tax and regulatory havens.

The unions point to serious shortcomings specifically in the World Bank and IFC Doing Business unit: "The popular uprisings in countries of the Middle East and North Africa showed the short-sightedness of analytical frameworks that ignore key phenomena such as persistent high joblessness, particularly among youth; exorbitant income inequality; concentration of wealth from the exploitation of natural resources, industry, trade and finance in a few hands, often as a result of privatization of state assets; lack of freedom of association and expression and political repression.

Some of the countries whose regimes were overthrown were designated top global performers by the World Bank’s Doing Business or declared by the International Monetary Fund to have exemplary macroeconomic performance. For example, in February 2011 the Fund’s executive board stated that it ‘welcomed Libya’s strong macroeconomic performance and the progress on enhancing the role of the private sector and supporting growth in the non-oil economy [and] … commended the authorities for their ambitious reform agenda’".

A counterexample, highlighted by the global unions, is Brazil, ‘previously one of the most unequal countries in the world, where improved access to education, increased state benefits to the poor and higher minimum wages all contributed to reducing income inequality over the past decade.’

Read the full text of the Statement by Global Unions to the 2011 Annual Meetings of the IMF and World Bank Washington.

MEXICO: From early morning on September 1 organizations worked together in the Zocalo in central Mexico City to come up with a counter-report in anticipation of Calderon’s fifth annual report to the nation.  In the afternoon representatives of the unions, student and campesino groups rallied outside of Congress and sent a delegation of leaders from the UNT, SME, the joint IMF and ICEM affiliate Mineros, and others inside demanding a change in direction of the government, an end to persecution of independent organisations and criminalization of social protest, and a halt to the present labour and security law reform.

Lorraine Clewer of the Solidarity Center, AFL-CIO reports that the organisations then marched to the Zocalo where a ‘counter-report’ was read out to an estimated 40,000 people: The number of poor has increased with 10 million during this administration, real income is down by a third for the working and middle classes, unemployment is up 3 million, youth unemployment is up 7 million and there have been 50,000 deaths and disappearances as a result of the narcowar since December 2006.  

Although they differ in the details, the unions showed unity throughout the day, with representatives from all of the major independent unions present both outside Congress and in the Zocalo.

The Mexican electricians union SME have camped in the Zocalo since March 2011 to protest against mass redundancies in the electrical utility. They demand jobs for the more than 16,000 workers who have not accepted the severance package, an immediate release of 13 detained SME members, access to frozen SME bank accounts and return of expropriated dues, an annulment of arrest warrants against the SME secretary general Martin Esparza Flores and other SME leaders, and that authorities confirm registration of 26 recently elected national union officials.

Many unions and other organizations have joined the camp in the Zocalo. An estimated 1000 people are now camping in the square, and the call is for more people to join. Electricity consumers will march against tariffs hikes on September 8. On September 15 the military plans to parade in the square, but the demonstrators are saying they will not move until there is a solution to the SME conflict, the Mexicana workers conflict and the Mineros conflicts, and jailed unionists have been freed. They fear that the government of Mexico will intervene militarily to evacuate the Zocalo, there have already been threats and movements of Army trucks on September 2.

ITALY: FIM and UILM, and their national centres CISL and UIL, demand the immediate withdrawal of the austerity measures concerning pensions, and will demonstrate in front of the Senate on September 1 against "inadequate measures that hit the usual victims instead of those who created the national debt." They urge the government to withdraw the pension measures, and to concentrate on combating tax evasion, on big fortunes and on the costs of the political system in order to remedy the lack of resources.
 
FIOM prepares a series of initiatives on September 5 and 6 against the government’s plans, the attack on workers and on workers’ rights. The national centre CGIL calls for an 8 hour national general strike on September 6 in all sectors to demand changes in the government’s austerity plan of August 12. Rallies and demonstrations will be organized in all Italian counties.
 
The government’s austerity plan is considered unequal and ineffective to counter the social, economic and financial crisis affecting Italy.
 
"The government’s measures puts burdens only on workers’ and pensioners’ shoulders, cutting public sector wages, jobs and services, reducing public funds for municipalities and local authorities and imposing solidarity taxes only on incomes and revenues, preserving private property and wealth."
 
The government also interferes in industrial relations and divides the social partners, CGIL says, distorting the contents of the agreement on the representativeness recently reached between the main social partners. Without any economic and financial justification, it introduces rules to reduce individuals’ protection against indiscriminate firings.
 
No provision to support growth and employment, particularly for young people, is included in the government package, says CGIL.
 
Instead of the government’s austerity plan, the CGIL proposes several measures designed to boost growth and revenues, such as:

• a structural plan to fight tax evasion, amounting to 130 billion euro per year
• an extraordinary tax on large real estates, generating 12 billion euro
• an ordinary tax on wealth over 800,000 euro, generating income of 15 billion euro
• a reduction of the costs of the political system, politicians and public administrators, a wage ceiling for high-ranking state officials and reductions at public local companies that do not produce services – generating cost savings of up to 8.5 billion euro
• a "Growth and innovation fund" to invest in the insertion of young people in the labour market
• support for incomes, by reducing taxation for workers and pensioners.

CANADA:  "Workers in the auto parts sector across Canada have faced tremendous stress and uncertainty in recent years as employer after employer has demanded concessions and cutbacks and threatened closures," said Jerry Dias, assistant to the Canadian Auto Workers president.

During negotiations management informed the union that they were going to move 165 jobs to a Johnson Controls facility in Michigan, USA. "Ultimately, we were successful in preserving all the current work for the General Motors Oshawa complex," said Jerry Dias.

The members’ base hourly wage was not affected, but the new agreement reduces paid time off and freezes the cost of living allowance. On the positive side, the union was successful in negotiating 40 buyout packages for senior members and to establish an overtime bank for time off.

Production workers voted 85 per cent in favour of the agreement and skilled trades 88 per cent in favour at a ratification meeting on August 28.
"I’m pleased that we were able to reach this agreement that secures our members jobs in the facility well into the future," said Chris Buckley, CAW Local 222 president. The Local represents more than 300 workers at the Whitby facility.

The facility produces door pads and floor consoles for the Chevrolet Impala, as well as seats for the Camaro, which are manufactured at General Motors’ Oshawa plant in Ontario. A strike would have had an immediate impact on car assembly.

GLOBAL: The Trans-Pacific Partnership aims to liberalise the economies of the Asia-Pacific region. Negotiations have occurred in conjunction with APEC summits. The original signatories when the agreement entered into force in 2006, were Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore. Five countries, including in the Americas, are negotiating to join the group — Australia, Malaysia, Peru, United States, and Vietnam. They aim to conclude the negotiations in November 2011.

In an IMF statement the views and the concerns of metalworkers are expressed as well as their unions’ demands to the Governments in the run up to the next negotiation round in Chicago in the beginning of September.

The IMF affiliates believe that sustainable development and the creation of quality employment in each and all of the countries involved must be key explicit goals of any trade agreement. A possible TPP must include a strategic review of the impact of past agreements, and a preliminary assessment of the possible repercussions on jobs and on employment conditions in each country as well as of the development prospects for the developing countries involved. A labour chapter must include all fundamental workers’ rights and other appropriate labour standards explicitly defined by ILO Conventions and accompanying jurisprudence. These labour standards must be met by all signatory countries prior to finalization of the agreement.

Furthermore the TPP must not include provisions on any essential public services;  rules that can limit the governments’ sovereign right to legislate in the interest of their citizens or prevent access to affordable medicines; and commitments on financial services and investment liberalization that can limit the countries’ ability to control capital flows and undermine effective financial regulation.

See here for the full text of the IMF statement.

BRAZIL: In accordance with the new agreement valid from 2011 to 2013 autoworkers at Renault will get up to a 20,19 per cent real wage hike in addition to the inflation indexation, plus R$61.500 as part of their profit sharing bonus.

The agreement is considered the biggest pay deal in the entire history of wage negotiations in Brazil. It sets a benchmark for a new form of negotiations next year.

Sérgio Butka, president of Força Sindical in the state of Paraná,  commented: "When there is common sense, you can make good deals that benefit both the worker who sees his work valued and the company which increases its competitiveness in the labour market".

"This agreement is a response to those who criticize the workers’ struggle for better pay, saying it will scare away companies from our state. Thanks to this agreement, profit sharing and bonuses alone will contribute to inject R$343 million in the economy of Paraná. This will keep the wheel of the economy turning, increase production and encourage job creation. The metalworkers of Paraná are showing the way, and the country should follow to counter the effects of the global crisis," said Butka.

The Paraná Renault factory employs directly 5,700 workers and has the capacity to produce 224,000 cars per year. Currently the models produced at the factory are New Renault Sandero, Renault Sandero New Stepway, Logan and Grand Tour. The factory also produces ten million spare part units per year for Brazilian and Argentinean markets. 41 percent of the production is exported, with deliveries to Renault factories in Argentina (22 per cent), Colombia (13 per cent), Romania and Mexico (4 per cent). This year the automaker celebrated the milestone of 1 million cars produced since its inauguration in 1998. The company ranks fifth in the national ranking of automakers.