CZECH REPUBLIC: On April 20, 2012 at its extraordinary meeting OS KOVO Skoda Company Council approved the results achieved during the collective bargaining rounds with Skoda Auto management and granted the chairs of the company trade union organizations the mandate to sign respective agreements. As a result the earlier announced strike alerts were called off.

Following the 16th collective bargaining round which took place in Vrchlabí (in the northern part of the country) the trade union and the employer reached among others the following results:

• Wage agreements remain valid and effective in the period from April 4, 2012 to March 31, 2013;
• Tariff increase of about five per cent;
• Increase of employers´ contribution to pension insurance up to 800 CZK ($40 US) per month;
• Full amount of the variable bonuses based on achievements in 2011 will reach 20,000 CZK ($ 1,000 US) and will be paid together with the wage for April 2012.

The Skoda Company Council extends gratitude to all employees and colleagues for their support during the collective bargaining and information meetings. Their special thanks go to colleagues in the Volkswagen European and World Works Councils and to all trade union federations and trade union organizations who rendered their support.

USA: After more than a year of talks with Ford management led by IMF-affiliated United Auto Workers (UAW), the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF) signed an International Framework Agreement with the company during the first meeting of the Ford Global Information Sharing Committee in Detroit on April 25.

This is the first IFA to be signed by an automotive company outside Europe and represents a significant development in labour relations in the global automotive sector.

"With an IFA, companies commit to basic human and labour rights not only in their "home countries" but also in all other countries where they are based. In addition, and this is really important, they demand their suppliers to follow these principles also. This enable us, even in countries where these rights are not respected, to achieve better living and working conditions for the people there," stressed Helmut Lense, Director of the IMF Automotive Department.
At the same time Ford also agreed to a "Ford Global Information Sharing Committee", a forum in which workers’ representatives and trade unionists from Ford sites worldwide can meet once a year to share information and to discuss  mutual support.

Part of this annual meeting is also a conference with management where the management will inform participants of the situation of the company, investment plans and all other issues which affect workers and workplaces. And it’s also a forum to address cases to the HQ management that have not been solved locally.

Holding the meeting for the first time on April 24 and 25, worker representatives from Ford’s main sites in US, Canada, Europe, Australia, Brazil and South Africa participated, with their costs covered by the company. Other representatives from Europe and India also attended the meeting and it is hoped that eventually the committee will include worker representatives from all production plants of Ford.
"This is a significant step forward in international cooperation and mutual support among the workers at Ford plants all over the world," said Bob King, President of UAW.

A copy of the IFA and the agreement for the information sharing committee with Ford can be found on the IMF website here.

THAILAND: Somyot Prueksakasemsuk, a trade unionist, activist and journalist in Thailand has been in jail since April 2011 on charges of lèse majesté. The charges allege that he has defamed the King by publishing two articles in the magazine he edited, The Voice of Thaksin. Somyot, a former ICEM Thailand Coordinator, is innocent of these charges, a position supported by expert witnesses and human rights organizations.

An international campaign has been underway for the last 12 months to secure his release, which has included demonstrations across the region and a hunger strike by Somyot’s son, Tai, for 122 hours earlier this year. The campaign is supported by a number of international and national trade unions and human rights organizations, including the International Federation of Journalists, International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions (ICEM), Article 19 and the National Human Rights Commission in Thailand.

Somyot is now in the last week of hearings and we are concerned that a fair trial takes place. He has been denied bail nine times and is experiencing extraordinarily harsh conditions. Thai trade unions will hold a demonstration outside Parliament and the UN delegation in Bangkok on the April 30.

Please support the online campaign at LabourStart here:

http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=1383

For more at ICEM’s website go here:
http://www.icem.org/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/4984-Free-Somyot-NOW-Unionists-Urged-to-Send-Letters-Demanding-Thai-Justice–

GLOBAL: The World of Work Report 2012 states that 2012 global unemployment will increase to 202 million from 196 million in 2011. The report says this figure is likely to increase by another five million in 2013, and up to 210 million by 2016.

"Four years into the global crisis, labour market imbalances are becoming more structural, and therefore more difficult to eradicate," the report states. "Certain groups, such as the long-term unemployed, are at risk of exclusion from the labour market.

"For a growing proportion of workers who do have a job, employment has become more precarious. In advanced economies, involuntary part-time employment and temporary employment have increased in two-thirds and more than half of these economies."
 
The ILO report condemns the austerity policies in many industrialized countries, making the inevitable obvious: employers gaining greater latitude to sack workers, lower pay and corresponding social benefits, with an effect of reducing "job stability and exacerbate inequalities while failing to boost unemployment levels."

The result has been vast increases of long-term unemployed, with upwards of 40 per cent of job seekers in developed nations between the ages of 25 and 49 not having worked in more than a year.

The ILO said societies are "becoming increasingly anxious about the lack of decent jobs." It says that 106 countries surveyed that have available data, 57 of them indicate an increase in the Social Unrest Index for 2011 over 2010.

"The two regions of the world that show the most heightened risk of unrest are Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa but there are also important increases in advanced economies and also in Central and Eastern Europe."

The ILO report expressed grave concern at the way young people are being shut out of labour markets, as well as the rise of short-term contracts, which, it says, affect young adults and women the most. "Youth unemployment rates have increased in about 80 per cent of the advanced economies," the report says.

For a copy of the report go to: http://www.ilo.org/global/publications/books/world-of-work/lang–en/index.htm

GLOBAL: This May Day, the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF) joins with all Global Unions in calling on governments to assume their responsibilities and join together to end the financial crisis by creating decent, sustainable jobs and standing up for the rights of people at work.

"It is more than five years since the financial crisis hit, followed rapidly by a larger economic crisis. This economic earthquake exposed the dangers of financialisation; of having the real economy subservient to finance; and of two decades of growing inequality," writes the Global Unions in a joint statement issue on the occasion of May Day 2012.

Together the global unions are calling on governments for:

• global regulation of financial markets,
• urgent action on creating jobs with secure employment
• sustainable responses to the challenges of climate change
• fair taxes, including a Financial Transactions Tax
• full respect of trade union rights
• comprehensive social protection for all
• guaranteed rights to basic needs such as food and housing
• opposition to austerity measures
• sustained investment in public services

The full statement, Government must act for a sustainable and equitable recovery, can be seen here.

TURKEY: For the first time, representatives of all twenty  future affiliates of IndustriALL (current affiliates of IMF, ICEM and ITGLWF) came together in Ankara on April 25 and 26 to discuss the growing problem posed in Turkey by precarious work.

The meeting took place in the context of  the Turkish government putting forward legislation for a ‘new employment strategy’ which, if passed,  will severely curtail trade union rights and expand precarious employment. According to Musa Servi of national centre  Deri-Is, the government’s strategy is an attack on unions. He told delegates that, "We need to take a national and international position against this attack on workers that is precarious work."

Part of the government’s legislative reform package is to expand subcontracting. This  will have particularly severe impacts on the textiles sector with the result that unionization and collective agreements will decrease with the resulting spread of private employment agencies.

Adnan Serdaroglu, President of IMF affiliate Birlesik Metal-Is, told conference delegates that "Precarious work is like a cancer that infiltrates into all parts of the international union movement and is taking away all our rights. Governments everywhere are legislating to legitimize precarious employment. Precarious practices are becoming the main rules of labour relations and employers are calling it ‘flexibility’."

IMF affiliates from Germany, Netherlands and Sweden were also present at the conference and shared their experiences of precarious work with the Turkish unions and a speaker from the workers’ bureau of the International Labour Organization (ILO) told delegates how ILO standards can be used to protect precarious workers.

Actions taken so far by Turkish unions include providing training for subcontracted workers, recognizing that such workers are not well aware of their rights and do not even always know who they are actually employed by. Other unions have submitted amendments to the government which include recognizing a work relationship between the subcontracted worker and the real employer, and making wages and conditions for subcontracted workers the same as for regular workers.

GLOBAL: Every year, on April 28, the World Day on Safety and Health at Work, workers take a moment to reflect on the devastating toll taken by workplace fatalities, injuries, and occupational diseases.

IndustriALL Global Union will soon be created, a new organization speaking for some 50 million workers represented by its affiliates. Here are some statistics that should give us all pause. Of IndustriALL’s 50 million affiliated workers:

• An estimated 16,400 will die in 2012 as a result of their work. That’s about 45 fatalities per day.
• About 5,000 IndustriALL members will die this year of cancer, alone.
• 1,570,000 will be diagnosed with a non-fatal occupational disease.
• An enormous number, millions, impossible to estimate with any accuracy, will be injured on the job.

These numbers, shocking as they are, are certainly gross underestimates.

Drawn from International Labour Organization’s Bureau of Labour Statistics and estimates of occupational fatalities and diseases produced in 2008, they rely on nationally accepted statistics reported to the ILO by member countries. In most cases, these are taken from the country’s workers’ compensation systems, immediately omitting workers whose disease or death was not accepted as "occupational" in origin, or who were not covered by the workers’ compensation system. Occupational diseases are chronically under-diagnosed, and occupational injuries are subject to various strategies to suppress reporting or fraudulently misrepresent them.

In addition, these estimates simply divide world totals by IndustriALL’s fraction of the global labour force. In reality, IndustriALL will represent workers in industries with many more hazards than most. It is worth remembering that even in traditionally dangerous workplaces such as coal mines, an estimated five times as many workers die of occupational diseases, than of sudden accidental causes such as fires, explosions, falls, or encounters with machinery.

IndustriALL clearly has to make occupational health and safety one of its highest priorities.

There are a large number of global standard-setting agencies and agencies that engage in different aspects of occupational health and safety. The alphabet soup of their acronyms includes ILO, WHO, OHSAS, ISO, GRI, UNEP, GHS, REACH, SAICM. IndustriALL must watch all of these closely and pressure them to do a better job of protecting workers.

IndustriALL will inherit a substantial number of Global Framework Agreements with trend-setting multinational companies. Occupational health and safety provisions must become more prominent in most of these.

Global campaigns on specific issues, such as the ongoing campaign to raise the number of ratifications of ILO Convention 176 on Safety and Health in Mines, must continue.

Occupational health and safety is a complex problem. Interconnected systems must be created to identify and control workplace hazards, and protect workers from them. Central to that effort must be the full participation of workers through their representatives, and on Joint Health and Safety Committees.

There is no simple, magic solution that can be quickly implemented. Instead, occupational health and safety requires hard work and determined campaigning by union activists. Despite the global race for profits, our health is not for sale."

GLOBAL: ITUC released a new report "Growing Green and Decent Jobs" that trade union leaders can use in negotiations on green investment and job creation as a part of their national policies. The report, released on April 18, analyses seven industries including manufacturing and energy industries in 12 countries and shows that investing two per cent of GDP in a greener economy could create up to 48 million new jobs over the next five years.

Since  world leaders adopted Agenda 21 in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, governments have been called upon to  invest in a greener economy and accelerate  the adoption of clean technologies, but actual progress at the global level has fallen short of the expectations expressed in Agenda 21 (1992), the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs, 2000, and the 2008 update), the Johannesburg Program of Implementation (JPOI, 2002), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Especially on sustainable job creation, a review by the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) secretariat reports "global delivery of the employment and green jobs-related commitments is sobering. While judgment is needed to assess delivery against the not so well defined commitments, there is ample evidence to suggest that progress has been slow and in some cases even contradictory to the stated goal. It is impossible to say whether delivery of commitments specifically relating to "green jobs" has fared better or worse than those generic to employment as a whole."

Twenty years after the adoption of Agenda 21 at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit as a roadmap towards a sustainable future, representatives of governments, businesses, and international organizations, including trade unions, NGOs, business leaders, academics, politicians, bureaucrats and journalists, will once again discuss the issues on sustainable development at UNCSD-RIO+20 on June 20 to 22, in Rio de Janeiro. The main objective of the Conference is to assess the progress to date and the remaining gaps in the implementation of the outcomes of the major summits and to secure renewed political commitment for tackling poverty eradication and sustainable development challenges. The RIO+20 will also highlight seven critical issues which need priority attention; these include decent jobs, energy, sustainable cities, food security and sustainable agriculture, water, oceans and disaster readiness.

As representatives of  industrial workers in the metal, chemical, energy, mining, paper, rubber, textiles, materials, and related sectors,  the IMF, ICEM and ITGLWF have been jointly promoting common policy demands on sustainable development; including:

• a strong, legally-binding, comprehensive global agreement with  an ambitious reduction target for  greenhouse gas emissions,
• creation of  sustainable jobs that meet ILO definition of Decent Work while ensuring a Just Transition, and
• building a strong financial foundation for a  sustainable future  using instruments such as a  financial transactions tax.

The IMF, ICEM, and ITGLWF  fully support following three key demands as articulated by the ITUC:

Green&Decent Jobs
http://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/greendecentjobs_madesimple.pdf  

Social Protection Floors
http://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/socialprotectionfloor_madesimple.pdf

The Financial Transaction Tax
http://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/ftt_madesimple.pdf

We hope that all industrial workers who attend RIO+20 as labour delegates will play an active role in supporting the common union demands. The international labour movement  could play a strong role at RIO+20 to ensure that international commitments are turned into national legislation.

For further information on ITUC’s campaign on RIO+20, please go to:
http://www.ituc-csi.org/rio-20.html

MEXICO: On April 24, the federal tribunal cancelled the only remaining warrant for the arrest of the leader of the Mexican Miners’ Union (SNTMMSRM), Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, regarding $55 million of union funds.

On Tuesday April 24, the First Unitary Criminal Court of Mexico City notified the union that the federal justice system had cancelled the preventive measure.

Napoleón Gómez Urrutia’s lawyer, Marco Del Toro, said: "All the arrest warrants issued as part of this unprecedented campaign of political persecution have fallen one by one. We are very happy with today’s ruling. It is a lesson to those in Mexico who think they can still conduct this kind of immoral persecution, which is alien to our legal system."

"Once again, it has been shown that the political persecution against the miners’ union and its leader is completely and absolutely illegal. Once again, the truth has been established. Napoleón Gómez Urrutia has never committed any kind of crime," said the union, in a press release.

Gómez Urrutia has been in exile in Canada for six years, during which time he has worked constantly to establish his innocence and provide leadership for the miners’ union.

THAILAND: The challenge facing union leaders in Thailand was whether or not they could use the creation of IndustriALL Global Union as a platform to work together on national issues. Leaders from unions affiliated to IMF, ICEM, and ITGLWF and other non-affiliated unions came together to discuss how to do this.

Like most countries, the unions have a long history of sometimes working well together but there have also been some conflicts in recent times. Despite this, all the participants in the meeting worked well together and were able to develop an ambitious national strategy in preparation for the creation of IndustriALL, helping to shape a new approach that will bring new levels of cooperation among the unions.

The strategy was developed by creating four working groups and mixing the union leaders and brainstorming key issues facing the Thai unions. The issues identified by the working groups included outsourcing, the legal framework in which the unions operate, communications/ education and building union capacity.

Outsourcing in Thailand has led to many workers being paid only the minimum wage and adds to a sense of insecurity of employment amongst permanent and contract workers. The challenge is made more difficult with the high level of migrant workers that make up the workforce. Organizing contract workers and improving conditions through collective bargaining are some of the tactics identified by the leaders.

Thailand has a labour force of over 39 million and manufacturing accounts for 13 per cent of the economy in sectors such as automotive, electronics, textiles and steel. The union density is under five per cent. Although Thailand has been successful in attracting Foreign Investment its government continues to argue that strengthening labour legislation would undermine its attempts to attract more. Organizing workers in Thailand is a very difficult process and often new union leaders are fired as they attempt to gain recognition for their union. Influencing the national legal framework and getting the government to ratify ILO Conventions 87 and 98 is a priority for local unions.

In order to do this the union leaders are seeking to build up their communication and education programs to get public support. The unions committed to developing a news letter and also building a new web site for IndustriALL Thailand.

Rob Johnston Executive Director IMF summarized the meeting saying, "The Thai unions have a huge potential for growth. There will be big challenges to overcome and no one is being naive. But this group of leaders have proved that given the opportunity to work together, they can develop an ambitious plan that will make a difference and have an impact."