South Africa: Zara accused of design theft

Zara conceded to its guilt by withdrawing some of the merchandise. It had appeared in stores in South Africa, the US and UK Instead of playing copycat, SACTWU is urging Zara to work with local designers and clothing factories to create more jobs in the garment sector.

According to SACTWU the “cut-and-paste” of designs by big multinational companies ignores the “little folk” whose businesses are vulnerable to such practices and can collapse as a result. The union argues that the niche market is the lifeblood of small boutique brands and can be easily killed off by mass production by big retailers like Zara. This will wipe out the local and global market for local designers.

Says Andre Kriel, general secretary of SACTWU:

“It seems they are comfortable acting like colonialists – simply exporting the money they make in South Africa to Spain and causing damage to local factories and workers. Now they are stealing some of our cultural artefacts and damaging a niche designer along the way”.

Kriel explains further:

“International brand Zara appears to have appropriated the designs of South African homegrown talent, the inspiring local designer Laduma Ngxokolo and his brand maXhosa. If this is true – and it is certainly suggested by the ‘coincidental’ stylistic overlaps between some Zara products and maXhosa’s iconic designs – it would represent the worst form of fashion colonialism: the extraction by global retail powerhouses, based in the developed world, of intellectual and cultural heritage from far less powerful designers based in the developing world”.

SACTWU says Zara is more interested in commercial value than design rights.

“Culture, designs and styles are reduced to fair game that can be poached or cut-and-pasted – the more so if these designs are considered exotic, other and traditional. There is no sensitivity to the origins of the designs, their context, history, and meaning”.

Says Paule France Ndessomin, IndustriALL regional secretary for Sub Saharan Africa.

“Local designs and factories should be promoted instead of being destroyed by big brands. For this reason, we support SACTWU in its campaign for an agreement with Zara.” 

SACTWU has been trying since last year to get Zara’s parent company, Inditex, to procure goods from South Africa to save local factories from closing but the company is refusing to commit to an agreement.

eSwatini: Union celebrates court victory

Therefore, the two unions no longer exist but are now part of ATUSWA which is a registered union under the Commissioner of Labour.

Reads the court ruling: “In the light of the evidence before the Court, the proper application of the law is that all trade unions that amalgamated ceased to exist and are defunct. Their membership, rights and duties were assumed by the newly formed trade union, ATUSWA”. This puts to rest attempts by the merged unions to revert to their old names and former autonomy. The old unions with support from employers and some in government were bent on dividing and weakening ATUSWA.

However, the court challenge took its toll on ATUSWA finances because the union was unable to receive subscriptions from members who were being claimed by the former unions. This explains the relief to the union brought by this court victory. The Court ordered that the challenging unions to pay the legal costs.

ATUSWA thanked the Trade Union Congress of Swaziland for its support during the court challenge. It also recognized IndustriALL for “standing by our organization when it was not fashionable to do so. We were able to keep the fires burning because of the support we received from IndustriALL”.

Wander Mkhonza, secretary general of ATUSWA says:

“To the employers who took advantage of the situation to frustrate the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining we say shame on you. Workers, who made an informed decision to form this giant union and to stand behind its leadership, will go down in history for standing for their rights when odds were stacked against them”.

Says Paule France Ndessomin, IndustriALL regional secretary for Sub Saharan Africa:

“Court battles often waste union time to the extent that its core activities suffer because of the uncertainty created by legal challenges. Therefore, we join ATUSWA in celebrating the court victory, and to use this moment to focus on the important work ahead of recruiting and organizing more workers.”

28 April – we mourn for the dead, we fight for the living

28 April is a day of sadness and anger, of public mourning to commemorate all workers who have died as the result of work: whether as the result of a sudden violent accident, a slow wasting disease, or an act of suicide brought on by workplace stress.

Workplace conditions cause deaths, not workers. IndustriALL campaigns for health and safety in mining, in the textile industries, for an end to sandblasting and a ban on asbestos – but more generally for health and safety within all industries and companies treating workers as disposable commodities.

The myth that careless workers cause most accidents is used to blame victims and justify behaviour-based safety programmes. Yet, consider the relentless drumbeat of deadly mining disasters, or the nearly two million workers who die of occupational diseases each year. None of these were caused by worker carelessness.

Demanding perfect, non-stop vigilance is not a safety system. Instead, it is a blackmail tool to create fear of reporting accidents; a propaganda tool for avoiding responsibility and liability.

Safety and health at work is a union issue. Let us take it back from the hacks, consultants, apologists, psychologists, underwriters and lawyers who have taken it from us.

Workplace health and safety is fundamentally a question of workers' rights to:

• Know about workplace hazards

• Refuse or shut down unsafe work

• Participate fully in health and safety decision-making

As workers, we have the moral right to know, fully, about the hazards of the materials, tools and equipment we work with; particularly chemicals. Gaps in toxicological knowledge must be filled by independent research. Industrial secrecy, the frequent excuse for concealment, only keeps knowledge out of the hands of workers and consumers – competitors already know what is in their competitor's products.

We demand the absolute right to refuse to perform, or to shut down, any work we perceive to be unsafe or unhealthy without fear of retaliation or discipline and with joint investigation of the reasons for the refusal, and joint agreement on resolution of the concerns.

We demand full participation in the development and implementation of health and safety policies, programmes, procedures, risk assessments, inspections, audits and investigations. Health and safety must be done with us, not to us – our lives and health are in play, and the moral authority to assess a risk belongs to those who face it.

Globally, many workers have no health and safety rights at all. Even in the best of regions we accept compromised versions of these three principal rights. We must insist to have them in full.

In the end, it's very simple. Workers have rights; employers have responsibilities – and unions make work safer.

Free Lula!

Addressing around 150 trade unionists from IndustriALL’s Executive Committee and participants from global unions, IndustriALL president Jörg Hofmann stressed the importance of showing solidarity and standing with Lula.

Lula has the right to an impartial review of his case. We call on the government of Brazil to immediately comply with international law and to protect the fundamental rights,

Hofmann said.

And very importantly, Lula must be allowed to run in the next presidential election.

Attacks on democracy are escalating in Brazil: these range from the systematic sabotage of the presidential election in 2014 to the parliamentary coup d’état against President Dilma Rousseff in 2016. There have been attacks on social programmes and the fundamental rights of workers.

Lula’s politics has helped millions of Brazilians to a better life and is the most popular politician in the country by a huge margin. The arbitrary arrest undermines democracy by denying the people of Brazil the right to choose who they want as President.

Lula is a champion of labour rights and an inspiration to other countries,

said IndustriALL general secretary Valter Sanches.

This attack on Lula is an attack on all workers who fight for their rights, it’s an attack on democracy and it is an attack on the Brazilian constitution.

After the demonstration, IndustriALL, together with global unions ITUC, Uni Global Union, PSI and IUF, handed over a letter to the Brazilian mission to the UN, demanding that the government of Brazil:

IndustriALL Women’s Committee continue campaign to end violence

With a 40 per cent target for women’s participation, most of IndustriALL’s sector meetings are lagging behind. Since the last Women’s Committee in November 2017, actions have been taken to improve women’s representation.

With consensus on that women’s issues are union issues, regional reports showed concrete steps.

Hashmeya Alsaadawe, president of the Iraqi union Basra Trade Union Federation, reported on a 30 per cent women representation in Iraq, which is an achievement as they started from zero.

We need greater commitment from our brothers in the unions to empower women,

said Lucineide Varjão from Brazilian affiliate CNQUT.

Combatting violence against women in the workplace

Violence against women at the workplace is present in all IndustriALL sectors. It concerns all unions and all union members, men and women.

The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) is campaigning for a binding ILO convention on gender based violence at work.

In June, the International Labour Conference (ILC) is launching a two-year long discussion on a possible adoption of a convention and recommendation on gender-based violence in the world of work.

Speaking to the Women’s Committee, Raquel González from the ITUC, stressed the need for unions to lobby governments and employers for a binding convention.

IndustriALL’s campaign to combat violence against women in the workplace has been gaining momentum since adopted in November 2017, with more than 50 affiliated unions taking the pledge.

Referring to the campaign to stop violence against women, Hashemya underlined its importance as aggression against women exists nearly everywhere in the Middle East, in all structures, in the workplace as in the home:

We are working on combatting the violence, and are making progress in the region.

Marie Nilsson, president of Swedish union IF Metall, told the Women’s Committee about what impact the #MeToo movement has in Sweden:

We have discussed sexual harassment with the employers and have set up a joint working group in order to tackle it in the workplace together.

As participants told of taking and implementing the pledge into the union structures, the Women’s Committee renewed its commitment to eradicating violence and harassment against women at the workplace.

International labour rights prize awarded to independent unions in Kazakhstan

The prize was established by IndustriALL affiliate Industri Energi, and includes both a cash award and support for union projects.

IndustriALL Global Union supported the nomination and celebrates the decision of the prize committee, made up of prominent members of the Norwegian trade union movement. Unfortunately, none of the three union leaders will be able to travel to Norway for the award ceremony.

The prize committee stated, “The three union leaders have shown great courage in continuing their involvement. The precarious situation of the laureates is only an example of the fierce reality faced, by not only workers in Kazakhstan, but also many the working people all over the world.”

Trade union rights are rapidly declining in Kazakhstan. In 2017 IndustriALL and the International Confederation of Trade Unions (ITUC) brought the case of workers’ rights violations in Kazakhstan to the ILO’s International Labour Conference in Switzerland.

On 25 July 2017, Kharkova, former chairperson of the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions (KNPRK) was sentenced, on false charges, to four years of restriction of her freedom of movement, 100 hours of forced labour, and a five-year ban on holding any position in a public or non-governmental organization.

Chairman of the oil service company OCC workers trade union, Amin Yeleusinov, and labour inspector Nurbek Kushakbayev were arrested and tried earlier the same year following a peaceful mass protest of workers in the Mangystau region, demanding the restoration of their federation KNPRK.

In an attempt to control independent trade unions after the 2011 massacre in Zhanaozen, the authorities adopted a repressive law limiting union freedom. The criminal prosecution of the three leaders is based on this legislation.

Valter Sanches, IndustriALL general secretary, said:

“We welcome the award this year of the International Prize for Trade Union Rights to independent unions in Kazakhstan. We supported their rightful cause in the past and will continue doing so in the future, until all workers of this country enjoy their human and trade union rights in full.”

Previous winners include the South African Commercial, Stevedoring, Agricultural and Allied Workers Union (2017), LabourStart (2016), Bahrain Teachers Association (2015), Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, General Secretary of Los Mineros, the National Miners' and Metalworkers' Union of Mexico (2014).

For further information visit www.svenssonprize.com

South Africa: Union protests Glencore malpractices

The march was part of a nation-wide strike called by the Federation of South African Trade Unions, which saw tens of thousands of workers taking to the streets in South Africa’s main cities to stop amendments to labour laws compromising the right to strike, and the introduction of a minimum wage, too low to meet workers’ needs.

Demonstrators called on Glencore to stop undermining wages and conditions of employment, end union bashing and denying workers freedom of association, and stop polluting the environment through reckless acid waste disposal at its operations.

Glen Mpufane, IndustriALL director for mining says:

Multinational companies like Glencore should lead in responsible mining by respecting workers and human rights, collective bargaining and protecting the interests and rights of mine-affected communities. To this end, we will continue our campaign to force Glencore to comply.

NUMSA is demanding the re-registration of smelters with South Africa's Department of Minerals and Resources, and the disciplining of managers involved in collective bargaining that violated ILO conventions. Additionally, Glencore should engage NUMSA as the majority union in the company’s coal division. Contract workers and those employed by labour brokers should get better deals instead of unequal wages, bad working conditions and deplorable health and safety standards.

Thabo Mogoroe, NUMSA, said, when handing the petition to Glencore staff who received the document from behind a steel gate:

We want to inform Glencore that this is the beginning of a series of actions that we will take to fight back its attack on workers, the poor and their families. We are gathered to protest the abuse of workers, communities and the environment by Glencore, not only in South Africa but internationally.

NUMSA was part of the IndustriALL mission to DRC in February, and condemns the human and workers’ rights abuses at Glencore operations at Mutanda Mine and Kamoto Copper Mine. These include constant threats of dismissals, poor health and safety practices, occupation diseases, racism and discrimination, unfair and unjust job classifications, low pay and inferior salaries for Congolese workers compared to foreign ones.

The union also condemned the discharge of acid waste into local rivers at Luilu copper refinery also in Kolwezi. There are also acid waste drainage problems in Mpumalanga, South Africa, where communities will be left with polluted water long after mining has stopped.

*This article was amended on 30 April to reflect that NUMSA wants smelters to be registered under the Department of Minerals and Resources, and not the Department of Labour

Democratic unions in Mexico declare new alliance

Mexico is largely dominated by so called ‘protection contracts’ meaning a partnership between unions and employers against the interests of the workers.

The group, which includes unions representing workers at carmakers Volkswagen, Audi, and Nissan, tyre manufacturers, Bridgestone and General Tyre (Continental), and aerospace multinational, Bombardier, met in San Luis Potosí on 13 April. The unions discussed important aspects such as the name, structure, principles, objectives, work plan and operating rules of the new alliance. These matters will now deliberated in the individual unions. 

The meeting also approved a solidarity campaign with Bridgestone workers, took a position against the proposed new labour reform and made plans for a joint meeting to be held in September with with a broader group of international allies. 

The meeting was attended by IndustriALL director Georg Leutert and Fernando Lopes, adviser to IndustriALL’s Brazilian affiliate, CNM-CUT.

Leutert expressed IndustriALL’s support in strengthening genuine unions in Mexico and fighting protection contracts, signed between companies and ghost trade unions, which deny workers the right to freedom of association and the right to bargain collectively.

Lopes stressed that the CNM-CUT will continue to strengthen the ties between unions in the sector in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico.

The meeting included a press conference where the unions outlined their common objectives and values, as well as their common position against proposed labour reforms in Mexico, which have now been postponed until after the general elections on 1 July.

A follow-up meeting is scheduled for July 6.

Welcome to Global Worker

The future sustainability of industry depends on governments making strategic choices. Unions are developing their own vision of how our industries and jobs should be transformed to meet sustainability goals.

We encourage unions around the world to develop sustainable industrial policies, which is a challenge for all. In Latin America and the Caribbean, many of our affiliates are presenting proposals for sustainable industrial policies to their governments. In Chile for example, affiliates are campaigning to make lithium a strategic national resource. This is an excellent trade union initiative to regulate and determine the production and use of the country’s natural resources. See the full article on pages 16-17.

Organizing to increase union membership is key if unions want to have a voice that is heard. Take a look on page 23 at how IndustriALL affiliate, Mining and Metallurgy Trade Union of Kyrgyzstan (MMTUK) has managed to almost double their membership in a five-year period.

While some unions are thriving, others face serious attack from companies and governments. From the USA to South Korea, Algeria to the Philippines unionbusting is widespread and is becoming increasingly sophisticated, but our unions are fighting back. See our full report onpages 18-22.

Too much power in the hands of multinational companies has negative impacts on communities and societies, governments need to push back against corporate greed, and that includes defending the right of freedom of association through strong action. After years of unsuccessful attempts to engage in dialogue with mining giant Glencore, IndustriALL has launched a campaign that has taken off in full force. There are serious workers’ rights and health and safety issues at their operations globally and something has to be done. Take a look on pages 5-10 to find how Glencore got where it is today.

An IndustriALL delegation visited DRC in February 2018 to meet with local unions representing mineworkers. Affiliates face a huge challenge in organizing in such a vast country, where mineral resources have contributed to war and chaos. IndustriALL affiliate Travailleurs Unis des Mines, Métallurgies, Energie, Chimie et Industries Connexes (TUMEC) is committed to fighting for workers’ rights, better pay, improved health and safety, and to organizing women, see their union profile on page 11.

In November last year, IndustriALL launched a campaign to end violence against women in the workplace. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, we must take the opportunity to push for real change and to combat violence and sexual harassment, see pages 14-15 for more on what unions around the world are doing to make this change.

In 2017 three women were elected in top leadership positions of our affiliated unions; Nora Garofalo FEMA CISL and Francesca Re David FIOM CGIL in Italy, and also IF Metall’s president Marie Nilsson in Sweden who is interviewed on pages 12-13. She talks about what her union is doing tackle harassment, among other things.

Valter Sanches

General Secretary

SPECIAL REPORT: Glencore, the commodities giant with no soul

Text: Walton Pantland

When IndustriALL Global Union visited DRC in February 2018 to meet with local unions at Glencore mines, the company denied access to its operations, and security forces attempted to break up a union meeting in a church and arrest the organizers. What are they hiding?

Last year, the Paradise Papers revealed that Glencore paid huge sums of money to a corrupt fixer to obtain mining interests in DRC. Adding to its reputation for corruption, human rights abuses and environmental degradation, Glencore’s treatment of its workforce – in DRC, and across more than 150 operations in the world – is the scandal that has not received the attention it deserves.

The company directly employs 83,679 people around the world, with a total of 145,977 including contractors. Glen Mpufane, IndustriALL mining director, says:

“For Glencore, workers are a disposable and replaceable resource like any other.”

These include miners at Glencore’s Oaky North mine in Australia who were locked out of their workplace for 230 days, workers at CEZinc in Canada having to strike for nine months to prevent a raid on their pensions, the loss of thousands of jobs through casualization in Zambia, a spate of preventable accidents at the Cerrejón mine in Colombia, and brutal labour conditions in DRC.

IndustriALL’s Glencore campaign

At its Executive Committee meeting in Sri Lanka in October 2017, IndustriALL launched a campaign against Glencore. This follows years of unsuccessful attempts to establish global dialogue with the company to resolve workers’ rights and health and safety crises at its operations around the world.

Speaking at the launch of the campaign, Tony Maher, national president of Australian affiliate the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Engineering Union (CFMEU), said:

“Glencore has no corporate soul. This is a Frankenstein company, stitched together with body parts.”

Glencore is a hybrid, whose sole purpose is to make money, a corporate colossus with a stranglehold on world resources. The company has built up an extremely complex network of 80 or more subsidiaries on five continents, using shell corporations, partnerships and offshore accounts to obscure transactions and avoid tax, and working with corrupt intermediaries to gain access to resources.

Unions representing Glencore workers in Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, DRC, Germany, Italy, Norway, Peru, South Africa, the UK and Zambia have come together to coordinate action against the company: many have been confronted by the arrogance and intransigence of Glencore in their own countries.

Kemal Özkan, IndustriALL assistant general secretary says:

“The purpose of the campaign is to restrain the monster, to prevent it from causing further damage. IndustriALL affiliates are seeking to negotiate with the company at a global level, to create a transparent mechanism for resolving disputes wherever they arise.”

Company profile

Glencore’s criminal past – its founder was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list for almost 20 years – and ongoing contempt for the law means the company tries to keep a low profile and stay out of the spotlight. But recently, since the company’s public listing in 2011, and the leaks of the Panama Papers, Paradise Papers and Hilary Clinton’s emails, more information about the company’s behaviour has come to light.

Glencore, originally named Marc Rich + Co, was founded in 1974 by Marc Rich, a Belgian-American commodities trader. Before Rich, oil production and trading was dominated by big, established companies like BP and Exxon, who made long term deals with stable governments. Rich flew into conflict zones with borrowed money, making deals with officials to buy oil directly. Rich brought two great innovations to the world of commodities trading: defying international law, and using leverage – trading with borrowed money and reselling at a profit – to corner lucrative markets.

The company’s fortune was built on tax avoidance and sanctions busting: Rich defied international trade embargoes to do business with pariah regimes from across the political spectrum, including Iran during the hostage crisis, Libya under Ghaddafi, Chile under Pinochet, and apartheid South Africa. Rich also did deals with North Korea’s Kim Il Sung, Yugoslavia’s Slobodan Milosevic and the Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos, and through convicted money launderer Gilbert Chagoury, with Sani Abacha in Nigeria.

Never fussy about the sources of his wealth, Rich claimed that breaking the UN embargo of South Africa resulted in his “most important and most profitable” business deals.

In the 1980s, Rich worked with the Israeli secret service, Mossad, to set up a secret pipeline to sell Iranian oil to Israel. In 1983, Rich was charged in the US with tax evasion, fraud, trading with the enemy and illegal business dealings. A fugitive from justice – and for almost two decades, on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list – he fled to Switzerland.

Although Rich was controversially pardoned by Bill Clinton on his last day in office in 2001, Glencore’s headquarters remain in canton Zug in Switzerland. Despite being the largest company in Switzerland, and at number 16 on the Fortune Global 500 of the world’s biggest companies, Glencore prefers to keep a low profile.

In 2011, the company went public and was listed on three stock exchanges; London, Hong Kong and Johannesburg. The public listing forced a greater degree of scrutiny, and Glencore’s dealings are now more widely reported. The company’s prospectus was candid about its strategy of operating in high risk and volatile environments.

Laura Carter, IndustriALL Latin America regional officer, has had a lot of experience with Glencore:

Glencore profits from the misery of others. It is an ogre with the feet of a ballerina, honing in on shortages and disaster with razor-sharp precision.

The business model is to borrow money to buy controlling stakes of commodities, influencing the price and potentially making a huge profit. Glencore originally traded mostly in oil, but moved into coal, zinc, copper, lead, nickel, ferroalloys, iron, aluminium and agricultural products.

Seeing the benefit of controlling production as well as trade, Glencore began investing in mining company Xstrata in 1990. In 2013, Glencore merged with Xstrata, by then the world’s largest coal mining company, and acquired a number of significant mining operations. The company has moved along commodities supply chains, controlling primary extraction as well as value added processing and logistics, and bought controlling interests in mines, coal terminals and freighters, refineries, smelters and warehouses. Glencore also moved into agriculture, buying interests in grains, oils, cotton, sugar and storage facilities.

Glencore’s model of borrowing money to carry out trades almost led to bankruptcy in 2015, when a crash in worldwide commodities prices left the company over-exposed and overwhelmed with debt.

To ensure more sustainable and long-term sources of financing for commodities deals, Glencore has begun to form partnerships with state-owned sovereign wealth funds, such as the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), which owns 8.2 per cent of Glencore stock. In 2017, QIA and Glencore bought 19.5 per cent of Rosneft, the Russian state energy company. Other sovereign wealth funds, from Norway, United Arab Emirates, Singapore and China have also been major Glencore investors.

Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg owns 8.4 per cent of Glencore stock, tying his personal fortune to that of the company.

Glencore’s opaque network of shell companies and intermediaries allows it to show a loss in the countries where it extracts raw materials and to sell these products for a pittance to subsidiaries in tax havens.

Contempt for the law

In 2015, Glencore was fined in South Africa for supplying substandard coal to utility company Eskom, and accused by the government of Ghana in 2017 for illegally importing and reselling petroleum products.

The McArthur River mine in Australia has not paid royalties to the government since it opened in 1995, and in 2017, the tax office ruled that Glencore had understated its taxable income by diverting US$190 million offshore. The company was also accused of tax evasion in Zambia in 2011, and in 2018 the UK Court of Appeal upheld sanctions against Glencore for tax evasion.

Subsidiary Xstrata faces a lawsuit in the UK after allegedly paying the police force in Peru to attack protesters. In 2017, the London Metal Exchange fined Glencore US$1.4 million for falsifying warehouse documents.

DRC subsidiary Katanga is subject to legal proceedings in both the US and Canada for giving false statements to investors.

The company also has a reputation for bullying governments, after suing Bolivia and Colombia through Investor-State Dispute Settlements, and using oil-backed loans to control resources in Chad, leaving the country in a financial crisis.

Human and workers’ rights

Glencore has been accused of human rights abuses in many countries. In addition to the case in Peru, in Colombia, Glencore subsidiary Prodeco is accused of financing a paramilitary group between 1996 and 2006, during the country’s armed conflict in an attempt to control the carbon industry.

IndustriALL campaigns director Adam Lee says:

“Workers are expendable commodities to Glencore. In operations in Europe – where Glencore employs few people in an environment of strong unions and regulations – conditions generally meet industry standards. But in many other countries, the company has either neglected or viciously attacked its workforce.”

Health and safety

“Glencore claims to want to be an industry leader in the field of health and safety and proudly announced that it only killed nine people in 2017,”

says IndustriALL health, safety and sustainability director Brian Kohler.

“But our affiliates around the world report a lax attitude to health and safety.”

In Bolivia, workers complain that safety equipment is substandard. Because they are paid for what they produce, stricter health and safety regulations slow production and have led to a considerable drop in wages. Unions say contract workers are not properly trained, leading to fatal accidents. According to Glencore’s annual report, two workers were killed in 2017. After a worker was killed at the San Lorenzo mine in 2014, the company put pressure on the workforce, threatening to close the mine if there are any further accidents.

In August 2017, the Sintracarbón union in Colombia reported that in less than one month there were 13 work accidents at Glencore’s open-cast coal mine, Cerrejón, five of them in a single day. Tragically it was only a matter of time before somebody got killed. On 25 January 2018, Carlos Urbina Martinez died in an accident at the mine.

The problems at Cerrejón have a long history. Colombia is yet another of the resource-rich, conflict-ridden countries favoured by Glencore. As early as 2006, there were allegations of corruption and severe human rights violations with the local union accusing the company of forced expropriations and evacuations of entire villages to enable mine expansion, in complicity with Colombian authorities.

Outsourcing and contracting

Like many employers, Glencore casualizes its workforce to avoid responsibility, leaving over 62,000 of its workers and their families without the security of a permanent contract, pension and health cover. In the last few years, the proportion of contractors to permanent workers has gone up, while overall employment is falling.

In 2016, Cerrejón was fined US$2 million

for illegal and excessive use of contractors. Unions in Bolivia report that the company employs subcontractors even though this is illegal, and hires workers classified as ‘employees of confidence’ to limit their right to organize or to strike.

According to the Mineworkers’ Union of Zambia, about half of the workers at Glencore’s Mopani copper operations in Zambia are casual and these workers make on average under a third of the wages of permanent employees. This is despite Mopani’s claim that it aims to pay every contracted employee 80 per cent of a permanent salary.

Breaking industrial relations

A frequent complaint from Glencore workers is that the company refuses to bargain centrally – even at country level – and there is no consistency in terms and conditions at different operations. The company owns a number of operations in South Africa where local unions are campaigning for a company level agreement.

Although Glencore claims that “We are committed to working honestly and openly with labour unions at all our locations and treating employees with respect”, the reality is very different.

Instead of negotiating in good faith with unions as representatives of the workforce, Glencore tries to actively break unions.

In Australia, workers at Glencore’s Oaky North mine were locked out by the company for more than 230 days for resisting a plan that aims to replace permanent workers with contractors. Rather than making a fair offer, the company chose to lock out its workforce.

Workers were punished and intimidated for opposing the company’s plans. Australia’s state labour arbitrator, the Fair Work Commission, had to order the company to stop its surveillance of workers and refusing to allow them to wear union T-shirts. Workers and their families were followed around town to their homes, and filmed at social events, by private security guards employed by the company. Workers say that security guards filmed their children at the playground.

Glencore uses its employees as political tools. In 2017, the Copperbelt Energy Corporation, which supplies electricity to mining companies in Zambia, raised the price of electricity. Mopani halted operations and threatened the Zambian government to retrench 4,700 workers, claiming the hike in electricity tariffs would have a huge effect on their budget. 

Chasing cobalt: Glencore in DRC

Perhaps the starkest example of Glencore’s treatment of its workforce is in DRC. A vast and frequently lawless country, DRC produces a range of extremely valuable minerals, including cobalt and copper. DRC is central to Glencore’s newfound fortune, and much of the company’s recent success is dependent on its operations here.

In 2012, Glencore was exposed for purchasing copper mined using child labour. It has worked hard to improve its public image since then, but conditions remain terrible for workers mining some of the most valuable minerals on the planet.

According to the leaked Paradise Papers, Glencore loaned US$45 million to controversial Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler for his help in obtaining mining concessions from state-owned mining company Gécamines at a discounted price, saving Glencore US$440 million.

Glencore paid Gertler a further US$960 million to buy his stake in the mines. Gertler is linked to a string of bribery allegations and is subject to criminal proceedings in Switzerland. The US treasury sanctioned Gertler in December 2017, saying his corruption had cost DRC US$1.3 billion.

Since buying the stakes, Glencore employs about 15,000 people in DRC through its subsidiaries Mutanda Mining and Katanga Mining. It intends to double its cobalt production over the next few years.

Seven workers died at Katanga in 2016 when the wall of an open pit mine collapsed. A February 2018 mission by IndustriALL to the Glencore operations in the Kolwezi area exposed horrendous conditions. Workers say they are treated like slaves, exposed to danger at work, and are exposing their families to occupational diseases because they have no facilities to wash.

“We are so filthy when we get home that we cannot hug our children,” said one worker.

The grinding poverty of the region was on clear display. Cobalt – essential to the production of many high-tech products – is hugely valuable, yet almost all this wealth disappears into foreign companies, or locally through corruption, with the complicity of foreign companies.

Glen Mpufane said:

"We were shocked by the desperate poverty of the people of Kolwezi, and the lack of development and infrastructure. The contrast with Glencore’s vast wealth is stark. There is a great irony in the fact that environmentally-conscious electric car buyers rely on a supply chain built on Glencore’s environmental and social pillaging".

Glencore denied IndustriALL access to the sites and when local union TUMEC held a meeting in a church, security forces attempted to break it up and arrest the organizers.

It is possible to produce copper and cobalt, and make a profit, while still respecting workers’ rights. Belgian-headquartered Umicore is a competitor of Glencore’s, also producing cobalt, lithium and other precious minerals.

But the company has signed a global framework agreement on sustainable development with IndustriALL covering 14,000 workers in 38 countries. The agreement also covers environmental sustainability, as the company increases its focus on extracting minerals by recycling electronic equipment.