Willbes & Co reinstates 15 dismissed workers in the Dominican Republic

IndustriALL Global Union wrote to the mother company, the brands supplied by Willbes and the Minister of Labour, calling on the company to reinstate the workers who were no longer being paid and to work with the union to end the climate of fear that had been created. The national council of unions affiliated to IndustriALL in the country also expressed its solidarity.

"We feel the strength and solidarity of IndustriALL Global Union’s support for unionizing workers,"

said Carlos Reyes, president of the National Union of Free Trade Zone Workers (UNATRAZONAS, affiliated to IndustriALL).

The clothing factory workers were dismissed at the start of August, a few days after notifying company managers of the creation of a steering committee to form a union at the company, the Willbes Dominicana Barahona Free Trade Zone Union (SITRAWILLBES), affiliated to UNATRAZONAS.

Finally, in the early hours of 21 August, the company reinstated all members of the steering committee to their jobs, including three leaders, who had, at the company’s insistence, accepted redundancy payments. The company agreed to respect the freedom of association.

Laura Carter, assistant regional secretary for Latin America and the Caribbean and regional officer for the textile sector said the following about the workers’ victory:

“This is the result of workers’ courage and national and international solidarity of the trade union movement and other institutions, combined with the intervention of global brands to promote responsible employment in their supply chains. IndustriALL will closely accompany efforts to consolidate the union, negotiate a collective agreement and establish positive labour relations at the company”.

Bangladesh: Haesong garment workers assaulted

The sit-in and strike, which took place outside the Korean-owned company’s headquarters in Hizalhati, Gazipur, was organized by IndustriALL Global Union affiliate the National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF).

Among those injured were the union’s general secretary and vice-president who are both women. Furthermore, an NGWF organizer was kidnapped and released many hours later at 9pm in the evening. Despite multiple requests, local police have refused to file workers’ complaints about the kidnapping or the attacks.

The demonstration was rooted to an ongoing dispute with Haesong, which suspended 218 workers on 4 April. The workers had been demanding payment for their unused leave for the year 2016.

Haesong presented the workers with a ‘show cause’ letter saying they were being suspended under the pretext of false charges, including work stoppage. Workers responded to the letter but the company has not since replied, nor has it officially terminated the workers.

On 22 June 2017, following workers’ protests, workers reached a written agreement with factory management, which promised to pay all dues and legal compensations by 4 July 2017. When the company failed to comply, the deadline was extended to 4 August. However, the workers have still not been paid, which led to the demonstration on 16 August where the attacks took place.

The NGWF is demanding that the Bangladesh government arrests and conducts a judicial trial of the factory owner, general manager and the attackers. Workers’ representatives have also urged the government and the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers & Exporters Association to take steps for immediate payment of all legal dues to Haesong workers. They urged the Prime Minister of Bangladesh to intervene to make sure that the owner of Haesong does not flee from Bangladesh without addressing workers’ demands.

Christina Hajagos-Clausen, IndustriALL director for the garment and textile industry said, “IndustriALL strongly condemns the physical attacks on Haesong workers and the kidnapping of a union activist. Haesong must respect workers’ rights, reinstate suspended workers and should immediately release their dues and wages. The government should take stringent action against the attackers.”

Amirul Haque Amin, President of NGWF, said: “All suspended workers should be reinstated and pending wages and dues must be paid immediately. The factory management must bear all expenses for medical treatment of injured workers. In the meantime, the government should investigate and take action against the police officer who refused to take workers’ complaints.”

ILO launches Future of Work global commission

The high-level international body will work on a comprehensive report providing an in-depth examination of the future of work that will serve as the analytical basis for the delivery of social justice and fairness at work in the 21^st century. The commission will focus on the relationship between work and society, the challenge of creating decent jobs for all, the organization of work and production, and the governance of work.

The commission is composed of 28 members, including the co-chairs themselves and its four ex-officio members – ILO Director General Guy Ryder and the officers of the ILO Governing Body. Philip Jennings, general secretary of UNI Global Union, is also part of the group.

The commission was set up as part of the ILO’s Future of Work Centenary Initiative launched by the ILO Director General in 2013. The members of the commission will produce an independent report that will be submitted to the Centenary Conference of the ILO in 2019.

The launch of the global body was addressed by Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, President of Mauritius, and Stefan Löfven, Prime Minister of Sweden.

Opening the ceremony, ILO Director General Guy Ryder spoke about the importance of the future of work in light of the unprecedented large-scale transformative change of the world of labour due to technological innovation, demographics, climate change and globalization.

“It is fundamentally important that we confront these challenges from the conviction that the future of work is not decided for us in advance. It is a future that we must make according to the values and preferences that we choose and through policies that we design and implement,” he said.

In her address at the launch, the President of Mauritius strongly encouraged

“all countries and stakeholders to come up with comprehensive recommendations and novel ideas on how to address the opportunities and challenges of the future of work. We can accomplish this by ‘putting people first’, by recognising that labour is more than simply a commodity in the labour market in the spirit of the ILO Constitution, or even just a factor of production.”

Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said:

“We cannot stop development, nor should we even try. What we need to do is come together: to harness innovation to improve the daily lives of millions, to use new technology to build cleaner and more sustainable societies, and at the same time create new jobs with better conditions for everyone. These objectives lie at the heart of this Commission."

Valter Sanches, IndustriALL Global Union general secretar,y attended the ceremony and said,

“As a global player representing the interests of 50 million industrial workers in the world, we certainly welcome the launch of the ILO initiative. Workers must have a place at the table to discuss the Future of Work. A Just Transition is one of our answers to the challenges faced by people of labour in the fast changing work environment. We expect that this initiative will help us on how to achieve fairness and justice especially in the countries where workers’ conditions are still at the level of ‘Industry 0.4’ in terms of precarious working conditions.”

Watch the video of the event is available on the ILO website.

Garment unions from across the world meet in Myanmar to share strategies

Concluding three years of work on organizing in global supply chains and campaigning for living wages under two projects funded by German organization the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), participants from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Mauritius, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines, South Africa and Turkey, compared strategies and evaluated progress in an industry that is seen as synonymous with low wages, long working hours and sub-standard working conditions.

Welcoming the unionists to Myanmar, many of them for the first time, Maung Maung, President of the Confederation of Trade Unions in Myanmar, provided an update on discussions for setting the second minimum wage in the country. Myanmar’s first ever minimum wage was introduced in 2015 at 3,600 kyats/day (US$3.6). It is far from a living wage and unions are currently conducting wage research around the country, before putting forward new demands at the end of September.

Sharing successful strategies for organizing in the supply chain, participants from the Philippines spoke of the increased strength gained by using alliances.

Myanmar unionists stressed the importance of education:

“We meet workers in the streets and in tea shops, and teach them about their rights and the law even before the union in the workplace has been officially registered.”

Turkey counts 1,1 million workers in the textile and garment industry, and there is a need to educate workers on unions and collective bargaining agreements:

“Organizing is made additionally difficult as it is often linked to a big risk of dismissal.

Implementing global framework agreements

IndustriALL has signed global framework agreements (GFAs) with Inditex, H&M, Mizuno and Tchibo.

Talking about the implementation of the GFA with H&M in Cambodia, Christina Hajagos-Clausen, IndustriALL garment and textile director, presented the work of the national monitoring committees (NMC), set up in a number of countries as conflict solving mechanisms.

“The NMCs consist of three union representative and three H&M representatives, and they gives us a possibility to exchange concerns. The GFA has been instrumental in resolving conflicts in Myanmar and Pakistan.
“There is a shift in the supply chain, a move away from voluntary initiatives to functioning industrial relations.”

Creating a level playing field for wages

Campaigning for a living wage is a key goal of IndustriALL. Many speakers talked about the inadequacy of garment worker wages and how difficult it is to negotiate higher wages when factories are being squeezed by their multinational brand customers.

IndustriALL assistant general secretary Jenny Holdcroft says that unions must look beyond the minimum wage and push for a new wage fixing mechanism that takes account of the way that brands contract with suppliers and the prices they pay.

The meeting was joined by Frank Hoffer, newly appointed Executive Director of the ACT initiative between IndustriALL and global brands who spoke of how ACT aims to introduce industry collective bargaining linked to brand purchasing practices to garment supply chains.

“The minimum wage does not take into account other wage-related factors like working hours, skills training and productivity. We need a system that lifts standards across the market and enables workers to enforce their own agrements.
“To achieve a living wage there is a need for higher wages to be set across the entire industry in order to prevent individual factories and brands from negotiating lower prices based on lower wages.”

While many of the countries represented at the workshop have a minimum wage, this is set at a level that does not enable workers to meet their basic needs, leaving them reliant on excessive overtime hours to supplement their wages. Having heard positive examples from South Africa, Sweden and Indonesia, the meeting concluded on the importance of making the case to employers and governments of the mutual benefits of introducing industry bargaining more widely in the garment sector.

Mexican trade unions and social organizations march against renegotiation of NAFTA

The march was organized to coincide with the first round of negotiations, being held in Washington, to modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Canada, the US and Mexico. The mobilization in Mexico City began just hours after the talks were launched in the United States.

The march started at the city’s emblematic Angel of Independence monument and culminated at the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs. Around 2000 people representing free and democratic trade unions attended the march.

On reaching the secretariat, the protestors read out a manifesto, which they then handed over to the department of foreign affairs. The text proposes that rather than modernising NAFTA, the parties should work towards a cooperation and complementation agreement that does not leave everything in the hands of the market.

“We are seeking a new form of integration within a global dynamic that benefits all peoples and the planet. We are proposing a new agreement that contributes to strengthening the domestic economy and diversifying Mexico’s external relations, an agreement that respects the national sovereignty of the three countries and recognizes the right to self-determination,”

said Humberto Montes de Oca, foreign relations secretary of the Mexican electrical workers’ union Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas (SME), affiliated to IndustriALL.

The main premise is that since the treaty took effect, in 1994, it has undermined workers’ rights. They point out that NAFTA has led to the marginalization of small farmers and has contributed to impoverishing the country and its workforce.

Paradoxically, during the talks scheduled to take place between now and the end of the year, the United States is planning to put pressure on Mexico to raise its labour standards and wages, with a view to preventing “unfair competition” with US workers.

“This is owed to the fact that the original treaty had considered a parallel agreement to protect workers’ rights, but it was never included or formally respected within the trade agreement,”

explained Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, president of Los Mineros miners’ union and joint regional president of IndustriALL.

Urrutia believes that what Mexico really needs is a progressive labour reform “that brings about profound rather than superficial change, which will not only provide genuine protection for workers’ fundamental rights but also for democracy and freedom of association”.

The demonstrators also condemned the federal government for failing to call on the workers to elect representatives to take part in the renegotiation of the free trade agreement and holding the talks behind closed doors.

“Negotiations that will determine our future should not be carried out in a hurry and in secret. We are demanding that the roadmap and the terms of the negotiations be made public, and that final approval should not be given without broad consultation of all sectors of society,”

insisted Montes de Oca.

The government unilaterally appointed a leader from a pro-employer trade union centre, the Confederación de Trabajadores de México (CTM), which does not represent workers’ interests.

IndustriALL director, Fernando Lopes, commented:

“This is a crucial time for us to strengthen the alliance between trade union and social movements in the United States, Canada and Mexico. The governments will try to pit the workers against each other, but they will not succeed. Workers of the three countries will stand united in defence of their rights!”

Violence breaks out at Grasberg mine as dispute drags on

Hundreds of striking mineworkers blockaded entrances to the mine from 14:00 on Saturday 19 August in an attempt to stop production and force the company to negotiate with them. During clashes with police and security guards, several miners were injured with rubber bullets, and office buildings and a number of vehicles were set alight. Police and security guards regained control at about 23:00.

The local police chief stated that the army would be deployed to maintain order.

The blockade was carried out by both direct employees and contractors, and was not organized or endorsed by the union. The workers are in a desperate situation, after being fired for taking strike action.

The escalation comes as the crisis at the mine deepens. In a case that is still under investigation, shots were fired at a company vehicle last week, injuring the driver. Workers at Grasberg mine have been on strike since 1 May this year. The mine is owned by PT Freeport, the local subsidiary of US mining company Freeport McMoRan. The company has so far fired 4,200 striking workers.

IndustriALL Global Union has warned for months of the possibility of serious conflict. In a statement issued in May, mining director Glen Mpufane said:

“The situation is very tense. We need to intervene urgently to prevent another Marikana.”

The current crisis adds pressure to an already volatile situation. The Grasberg mine is controversial for a number of reasons, and the sovereignty of West Papua is contested, sometimes violently. In the past, Freeport has used the Indonesian army to provide security, and a number of people have been killed in clashes.

A recent solidarity mission to Indonesia by IndustriALL found a social crisis at the mine: workers and their families have been without income, access to credit, accommodation, education or medical care for four months, and several people are believed to have died as a result.

To make the situation worse, severe flooding two weeks ago meant several areas had to be evacuated.

The strike is the result of a dispute between Freeport and the Indonesian government over control of the mine. The Indonesian government wants a 51 per cent stake in the mine, and cancelled Freeport’s export permits when the company refused. In response, Freeport slowed production and began laying off workers, triggering the strike. Indonesian media reports that Freeport has now signed a new contract with the government.

On Friday 18 August, before the recent clashes, IndustriALL wrote to the director general of the ILO, Guy Ryder, urging the ILO to urgently intervene in the crisis.

IndustriALL assistant general secretary Kemal Özkan said:

“IndustriALL has warned for months now of the possibility of violence. Workers at Grasberg are in an absolutely desperate situation. Despite our repeated warnings, Freeport has escalated the situation at every turn.
“IndustriALL finds it despicable that Freeport plays games with people’s lives and livelihoods, to score political points in their dispute with the Indonesian government.
“The situation has to end now. All parties need to get around the table and immediately resolve this crisis.”

Mozambique: South-South solidarity boosts leadership skills for women

The training programme, which is taking place from 2015 to 2017 in Maputo, is carried out by leadership and facilitators from another IndustriALL affiliate, CNM/CUT from Brazil. The programme brings the solidarity and expertise from CNM/CUT to train SINTIME. Both unions organize in the metal and energy sectors, in Sub Saharan Africa and Latin America respectively.

Important topics covered in the training modules include women’s role in political life in Mozambique and globally, women in the trade union movement, in the labour market and in collective bargaining, women’s health at the workplace, and basic human and trade union rights. Participants learn to share experiences and trust each other to grow together within the union.

Under the leadership of Marli Melo do Nascimento, CNM/CUT’s national women’s secretary, and in close cooperation with the IndustriALL head office project officer, two to three participative training modules are designed and conducted yearly in Maputo by a team of experienced union leaders and educators. The Brazilian women leaders from different industrial sectors give examples of women’s needs and demands, and how women leadership was enforced in their unions, showing how this process is relevant for unions in Mozambique. They emphasize the common struggles of the working class against global capital and the importance of building a strong women leadership at local, national and global levels.

Inocência Ernesto Tembe, coordinator of SINTIME’s national women’s committee (Comutra) said:

“The training is helping us to overcome obstacles women face daily at work and in social life. The training emphasizes how to achieve gender equality and to access opportunities for women. We learnt about the Labour Act and how to be effective in collective bargaining processes. The employers now respect us because we know our rights. This is not a struggle that will be won overnight but we will continue to the end. SINTIME decided to conduct additional workshops for women who did not take part in the training programme so that they would benefit as well.”

Maria Eulália Raul Muianga from SINTIME added:

“After the training we were able to interpret the Labour Act on maternity protection and defend our rights as women workers. SINTIME’s women’s committee representatives’ participation in collective bargaining became more noticeable after the training”.

IndustriALL will continue to seek support from its affiliate Unifor, CNM-CUT and other Brazilian affiliates to extend this outstanding and unique experience of women empowering young women.

Global unions call to support independent union movement in Belarus

15 days have passed since the Belarusian authorities began an unprovoked campaign against independent trade unions and their leadership in Belarus. Two union leaders, Gennady Fedynich and Ihar Komlik from Radio and Electronics Industry Workers’ Union (REP), an IndustriALL affiliate, and also an affiliate of ITUC through Belarusian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions, are under criminal investigation and may face up to seven years in prison. Ihar Komlik remains in custody since his detention on 2 August.

Visit LabourStart and demand the release Ihar Komlik and the dropping of all groundless accusations against REP leadership. https://www.labourstartcampaigns.net/show_campaign.cgi?c=3512

Both union leaders are now under investigation for alleged large-scale tax evasion. However, the accusations of unpaid taxes refer to the solidarity support received by the union in 2011, and cannot be treated as private funds. In reality the accusations are groundless and aim at undermining the union in retaliation for their leaders' active civil position and the work to protect the social and economic interests of the working people in Belarus.

One of the recent episodes was the REP’s active participation in mass protests against a presidential decree imposing a tax on the unemployed, dubbed in Belarus the decree “on social parasites”. Already then REP leadership was subject to reprisals. Fedynich was accused of taking part in an unauthorized, illegal "March of angry Belarusians" on 17 February in Minsk and repeated violation of the law "On Mass Events”. The authorities then fined him for US$ 640.

In their letter to the Belarusian president IndustriALL and ITUC called the attacks on trade union leaders and their unions by the Belarusian authorities, an “interference in the internal affairs of the trade unions, which is a grave violation of ILO Convention No. 87 on Freedom of Association.”

Gennady Fedynch is a prominent union leader, who has been chairman of Radio and Electronics Industry Workers’ Union (REP) since the beginning of the nineties. Together with a few other unions from former Soviet Union in 1999, REP was recognized by global trade unions as a free and democratic organization, and joined the International Metalworkers’ Federation, predecessor of IndustriALL.

At the founding Congress of IndustriALL Global Union in June 2012 Gennady was elected as titular member of the Executive Committee of IndustriALL. Four years later at the 2^nd World Congress of IndustriALL in Brazil his colleagues from the CIS region re-elected him as substitute executive committee member, representing unions of the region.

Ihar Komlik is also not a stranger to the trade union movement. An engineer and labour lawyer by background, he worked in the design bureau at the radio and electronics plant “Planar” from 1994 to 2004. In the same time he was also elected as working chairman of REP local union organization there. Since 2010 he has lead REP Minsk city union organization and also works as REP chief accountant.

IndustriALL Global Union appeals to all affiliates to support the LabourStart campaign https://www.labourstartcampaigns.net/show_campaign.cgi?c=3512 and demand the immediate release of Ihar Komlik, and an end to his and Gennady Fedynich’s criminal prosecution.

Valter Sanches, IndustriALL General Secretary said,

“We call on all our affiliates to help us defend our affiliate Radio and Electronics Industry Workers’ Union and its leaders, Ihar Komlik and Gennady Fedynich, in Belarus. They are only guilty of not staying silent at continuously falling living and working standards of the working people in Belarus. Truly independent unions make life better in every country. Send your demands to Lukashenko’s regime today, let’s stop this attack on independent trade unions and their leaders in Belarus."

ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow said,

“These actions constitute state interference in the activities of independent trade unions. They have interrupted the work of the two unions’ secretariats and created an atmosphere of repression and fear. Belarus must bring its legislation into conformity with its international obligations and implement in full the recommendations of the ILO Commission of Inquiry, including on external aid, and cease using existing legal provisions like these to harass trade union leaders.”

Two workers killed in explosion at Gerdau Brazil

Gerdau workers continue to die because of health and safety problems at the company's plants. Less than a year after an accident caused the death of three employees, the same plant was again the scene of a tragedy.

“This is the fourth major accident in less than a year at the plant, which employs around 2,000 workers. Last year, five workers died in three separate accidents,” said Jorge García-Orgales of the Gerdau World Workers’ Committee."

On this occasion, the incident occurred at the top of a chimney on Coking Plant 2 during maintenance of a gas tower. Two workers were killed, including an outsourced worker, another two are in intensive care and in a serious condition and others were injured.

The Ouro Branco Metalworkers’ Union (SINDOB, affiliated to the CNTM, which is in turn affiliated to IndustriALL Global Union) called a halt to work at the plant for one hour and announced it will consider further action during the week. Sindob attributes the deaths to the lack of preventive maintenance.

The coordinator of the Gerdau World Workers' Committee and general secretary of the CNM/CUT (affiliated to IndustriALL), Loricardo de Oliveira, reported that the Committee is calling workers at all Gerdau facilities in Brazil and in other countries to mobilize on 23 August in solidarity with the steelworkers of the plant of Ouro Branco and against precarious work at all plants of the company.

The Gerdau World Workers’ Committee visited Gerdau's Ouro Branco plant for the first time in May and approved an action plan to promote a health and safety policy capable of preventing this type of accident.

Fernando Lopes, Director at IndustriALL and a union leader at a Gerdau plant in Brazil said:

“This proves that Gerdau's zero accident policy does not work. After so many deaths, it is time the company sat down with the unions to discuss a serious safety policy at its plants.”

Israeli High Court signals end of right to strike at state-owned enterprises

The conditional order overturns an earlier judgement in support of the right to strike, and comes in response to industrial action by the Histadrut union federation against the privatization of the publicly owned monopoly, the Israel Electric Corporation (IEC).

The IEC employs 12,500 workers. For the past three years, the government has instituted a so-called market reform programme to end the state monopoly on electricity generation. The privatization plan means the company will stop generating electricity and sell its power stations to the private sector.

The so-called reforms have already cost 800 jobs. The Histadrut expects the privatization to result in between 5,000 and 6,000 job losses. Workers at IEC took part in industrial action in June and July, including refusing to issue electric bills.

In May 2017, the High Court upheld early judgements by regional and national labour courts in support of the right to strike. However, the government appealed the ruling, claiming that because the strikers oppose government policy, the strike is political and therefore illegal under Israeli labour law.

The government was supported by private electric corporations, who argued that strikes should not be allowed to influence, harm or cause financial loss.

The Histadrut argued in court that the strike is economic, and therefore legal, and not political. It is a legitimate defense of workers’ terms and conditions, and the right of the union to be consulted before the so-called reforms are implemented.

The ruling is seen as an attempt to fundamentally challenge the position of labour in Israeli society. The court signaled that the right to strike undermined anti-trust and competition law, preventing the government from making pro-market reforms.

The outcome of this case will have ramifications on other essential public services and on the legal status of the right to strike. In previous cases, the right to strike was recognized by Israeli High Court of Justice as a fundamental and constitutional right derived from the right to freedom of association, including in cases when the strike was against the government's decisions.

Historically, there was a very close relationship between the Histadrut federation of labour and the public sector, with the federation also owning a number of enterprises. This relationship has been successively undermined by economic liberalization and changes to the law since the 1980s.

In a letter of solidarity to the Histadrut, IndustriALL general secretary Valter Sanches wrote:

“The Court’s decision would seriously impinge on fundamental workers' rights, including the right to employment stability. It is obvious that one of the main tasks of the Israeli High Court is to protect human rights, and the right to strike is one of them.
“IndustriALL Global Union is very concerned about the possibility of imposing serious restrictions on the right to strike. We believe such an outcome would be against the International Covenant on Economic, Social and cultural Rights, as well as against ILO's Convention 87 concerning freedom of association and protection of the right to organize, and ILO's Convention 98 concerning the application of the principles of the right to organize and to bargain collectively.”