3,500 Mexican workers strike against Arcelor Mittal

IndustriALL extends its total support to some 3,500 workers who began the strike on 4 March in response to dismissals and violations of their collective agreement by the company.

The workers scheduled the strike to begin at midday on 4 March. However, one hour before midday, the Federal Conciliation and Arbitration Board (JFCA) informed them it had ruled the strike to be inadmissible. This opened up the possibility that the JFCA might declare the strike to be null and void.

Jorge Almeida, IndustriALL Regional Secretary, wrote to the president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, on the same day to ask him to intervene immediately to ensure respect for the workers’ right to strike and to strongly condemn violations of the collective agreement by Arcelor Mittal México Hierro.

“The ILO says the right to strike is one of the fundamental legitimate means open to workers and their organizations to promote and defend their economic and social interests,” said Almeida.

The workers organized a march along the city’s main street to the offices of Arcelor Mittal to denounce more than 300 unfair dismissals since 2015 and violations of the collective agreement. They are still picketing the company’s offices.

The Labour and Social Welfare Department through the JFCA, described the protest as “the occupation of Arcelor Mittal premises by the workers” and urged the Los Mineros to prioritize dialogue. In an official statement, the company described the protest as “an illegal blockade” and said it was open to talks with the union and in direct contact with the authorities about resuming operations.

The union released a statement in which it said it had attempted conciliation several times but it had decided to strike as the company had not responded in a satisfactory manner:

“The strike is not the dispute, it is a procedure to seek a solution to the dispute. Otherwise, workers would have no way of defending themselves against the company’s failure to comply with the official collective agreement,” it explained.

The union wrote to the government asking it to ensure respect for the national and universal right to strike, reject reprisals against the striking workers and facilitate conciliation and dialogue in order to find a solution to the dispute. It is still awaiting a reply.

IndustriALL women seize the day

Women trade unionists seized the day to demand better maternity rights, equal pay, and an end to violence and discrimination against women and girls among several issues.

A Women’s Day event by IndustriALL Sri Lankan Council adopted a resolution to improve maternity leave legislation and undertook to campaign until their demands are passed in parliament. The Council also resolved to set up a women’s wing.  

Living wages, social protection and better child care were key issues for textile and garment affiliates in Bangladesh. The country’s dominant garment industry is 80 to 90 per cent women workers.

Exploitation and extremism were outlined as the main hurdles in women’s liberation at large rally in Hyderabad in Pakistan bringing together several trade unions. Nasir Mansoor of IndustriALL Pakistani affiliate, NTUF, told the crowd that women have always played a fundamental role in the worker movement.

Unions at the rally called for all discriminatory laws against women in Pakistan to be abolished. Other demands included legal recognition and rights for home-based women workers, equal pay, an end to underage marriages and trafficking of women and girls, and the criminalization of discrimination against women on the basis of ignorant customs and traditions.

In Cambodia, women from all ten IndustriALL affiliates held simultaneous workplace mobilizations in front of factories in the run up to March 8 with maternity protection as the main banner.

IndustriALL affiliates in South Korea, including FKMTU, FKCU and KNEWU, joined a convention of more than 1,000 participants organized by the Federation of Korean Trade Unions. The women then rallied in support of rights for working women.

In Thailand, IndustriALL affiliates joined a mobilization of hundreds of trade union members. Key themes for 8 March were to stop sexual harassment in the workplace and to end violations against pregnant women.

In the Dominican Republic, IndustriALL affiliates said enough was enough and marched with a call to end violence against women, precarious work, discrimination and impunity.

Elsewhere in Latin America, Guatemalan affiliate FESTRAS marched for a woman’s right to decent work, while in Brazil a month-long programme of activities to empower women trade unionists was launched by FEQUIMFAR.

IndustriALL also supported union action on International Women’s Day in Morocco calling for an end to discrimination against women, as well as activities in Tunisia and Egypt on 8 March.

IndustriALL assistant general secretary and director for Women, Monika Kemperle, was in the United States for the United Steelworkers women’s conference which urged women to step up for their union. An evening march saw more than a thousand conference participants take to the streets of Pittsburgh to demand women’s rights and equal pay.

“It is truly inspiring to see how IndustriALL affiliates are leading the way in pushing for women’s rights in so many countries. IndustriALL campaigns all year long on issues affecting women and women’s rights are becoming mainstreamed into all our activities,” said Kemperle.

“Maternity protection and violence against women have been recurrent themes on International Women’s Day. We have to push for more governments to sign ILO Convention 183 on Maternity Protection, and we must call for zero tolerance to violence. To achieve this we need more women in leadership and decision-making positions.”

Workers not slaves: Turkish unions oppose labour broker system

The draft bill would allow companies to use agency workers as a percentage of the total workforce in particular circumstances. However, Turkish unions are very worried that this will lead to the excessive use of agency work due to “an unforeseen increase in the business volume of the enterprise” or “periodical business increases”, which employers could argue exist at any time in a production system.
 
A parliamentary commission has endorsed the draft bill allowing a labour broker system, and the bill is expected to come up for consideration at the Grand National Assembly (TBMM). If enacted, millions of workers will end up with agency work contracts rather than permanent ones.
 
Turkish trade unions, including IndustriALL Global Union’s affiliates, oppose the draft, and are mobilizing their members through different campaigns.
 
Widespread use of agency work undermines international labour standards and limits the scope of collective agreements. Unions’ capacity to bargain effectively is crippled.
 
In his letter to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmed Davudoğlu, IndustriALL Global Union general secretary Jyrki Raina says that the current draft is unacceptable and risks creating a slave labour market in Turkey:

“Together with our affiliated unions in the country we are deeply concerned and outraged about the potential severe consequences on the labour market and trade union activities of this bill.”
 
“We call on the Turkish Government to pull back the draft bill allowing a labour broker system, and to establish proper dialogue with all the union organizations to develop policies and instruments towards permanent, direct and secure employment based on fundamental human and trade union rights.”
 
In 2009, the previous Turkish government attempted to pass a similar bill without direct input from the country’s main labour organizations. The president at the time eventually vetoed the bill.

We believe in women!

Today IndustriALL Global Union affiliates around the world are celebrating International Women’s Day by highlighting key issues affecting women.

This landmark day is rooted in the struggles of garment workers in the United States, who in March 1908 took to the streets of New York City in their thousands to demand better pay, shorter working hours and voting rights.  IndustriALL is proud to represent millions of garment workers, and women workers, around the world. 

While voting rights for women have been achieved in most countries, the struggle for equal pay and equal representation continues. 

The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is gender parity. It follows predictions by the World Economic Forum that it will take 117 years to close the gender gap.

While gender parity is enshrined in law in many nations, the reality for women is drastically different. In virtually every society in the world, women are underrepresented in positions of leadership and power, and wage levels for women are all too often lower than their male counterparts.

Trade unions have a responsibility to address these issues, to promote women, to engage women. Women themselves need to take action and above all must be encouraged and given the opportunity to participate in union activities. We must be at the forefront in promoting policies that really represent women’s needs.

IndustriALL affiliates in the Philippines, Myanmar and Cambodia are marking 8 March by demanding improved maternity protection for all women.

They are calling for safe and healthy pregnancies; longer breastfeeding periods; increased maternity leave; protection from work discrimination; and job security.

Like many of our affiliates they are also calling on their countries to ratify the International Labour Organization’s Maternity Protection Convention (No. 183).

We are proud too of the women at our Indonesian affiliate FSPMI who have successfully campaigned for 40 per cent representation of women in the union’s leadership structures. It is a victory we will take forward to Congress in October to push for the same ruling in IndustriALL’s own structures.

Gender equality is at the heart of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals for 2030. Goal number 5 of 17 is to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. In addition to calling for an end to discrimination, the goal also underlines the urgent need to stop all forms of violence against women and girls.

Women working in IndustriALL sectors are sometimes subject to deadly violence, as witnessed in South African mines. Unions cannot shy away from the fact that sexual, physical and domestic abuse is a far too frequent reality for many women, which is why IndustriALL campaigns to stop violence against all women.

However, International Women’s Day is a celebration of everything women have achieved, economically, socially and politically. We see the energy our women members bring. We see their potential. We see what they have achieved.

Just as trade unions paved the way for improvements in working hours, wages, and health and safety, they must now put women’s rights and equal representation at the heart of the union agenda.

Workers assaulted and threatened at Fresnillo PLC after winning labour court case

Eight years ago, the mining company Fresnillo PLC dismissed Javier Canales, Ramón Juárez and Noel Méndez. After taking legal action, the workers finally won their case and, in February 2016, the court ordered the company to reinstate them. The union’s lawyer, Óscar Alzaga, said the workers were hit, insulted and threatened by some of Fresnillo’s 100 employees when they returned to work after their reinstatement

Fresnillo is the world’s largest producer of primary silver and is owned by the business tycoon Alberto Bailleres González, who was awarded the Belisario Dominguez medal by the Mexican Senate in November 2015. It is interesting to note that, in principle, this medal is awarded to “Mexican men and women with a distinguished lifetime career who contributed most toward the welfare of the Nation and mankind”

Alzaga said that the assault at Fresnillo was organized by David Navarro and Gustavo Barrios, on the instructions of the leader of the pro-company Minero Metalúrgico Frente union, Carlos Pavón Campos, better known as “la Marrana” (The Pig), who follows the company’s orders.

Fresnillo PLC managers are behaving like gangsters, allowing company employees on company premises to harass, threaten and assault union members who oppose the dismantling of the collective agreement,

said Alzaga.

Fernando Lopes, IndustriALL assistant general secretary said:

This deplorable case again highlights the challenges facing our affiliate, the Miners, and all other independent unions. It also underlines the need to take urgent action to put an end to protecting contracts and reform labour relations.

Honda India workers face police violence in struggle for union rights

More than 2,000 workers at the Honda plant in Tapukara in Rajasthan are protesting after a workplace assault triggered a sequence of events that resulted in arrests and police violence against workers.

Government authorities have denied permission to protest, and the workers are in search of a space to hold a peaceful demonstration to demand the release of jailed workers, the withdrawal of false charges and the right to form a union.

On 16 February 2016, a contract worker was attacked by his supervisor for refusing to work overtime. The contract worker refused as he had been working overtime continuously and was not well. Management denied this version of events in a statement to the media.

Protesting against the attack on their co-worker, Honda workers staged a sit-in protest demonstration inside the factory premises the same afternoon. Union office bearers called in for negotiation with the management did not return and workers could not contact them. By this time, another 1,000 workers reporting for B and C shift started gathering in front of the factory gates.

Management called the police who entered the factory and asked workers to vacate the premises, but workers demanded the return of their union colleagues. Police resorted to the use of what management calls “mild force” to drive them out of the factory, in the process injuring several workers.

Police detained and arrested hundreds of workers. While some have subsequently been released, 44 workers, including the union president Naresh Kumar Mehta, were in jail.

After the lower court denied bail for the arrested workers, the High Court of Rajasthan granted bail to all workers. Cases were also filed against many workers including union members. About 100 workers were suspended by the management on charges of sabotage.  Many workers received warning letters calling upon them to report to the duty or face consequences.

These developments are a consequence of workers’ initiatives to form a trade union. The company employs about 3,000 workers, out of which only 466 are permanent while the rest are precarious. Workers say management does not follow an established process of regularization of precarious workers: they have to undergo a complex process of written tests and interviews, and getting permanency depends enormously on the discretion of the management.

Similarly, the wage structure is designed to control workers. The intensification of work and granting of leave are also other major issues faced by workers.

In August 2015, workers formed a union – Honda Motorcycle and Scooter 2f Kamgar Union Tapukara – with the help of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), and applied for formal registration. Regularization of precarious workers is one of the key demands of the union.

However, a court case has been filed against the union registration, and the union has not received the registration yet. Since then, four regular workers and about 800 contract workers have been terminated.

Workers are currently subjected to severe repression by the police. Police are searching workers’ houses on order to arrest them, terrorizing their families in the process.

In a major show of solidarity support by about fifty unions in the Gurgaon and Manesar region, on 19th February, Honda workers organized a protest in front of Honda head office in Gurgaon. Workers from Maruti-Suzuki, Rico and Honda’s Manesar plant also participated in the protest demonstration. Now they are not even allowed to organize their protest rally or demonstration by the police.

A 13 member committee, including union representatives from central trade unions, Honda Manesar plant and Maruti Suzuki, has been formed to take forward workers’ activities.

These are the major demands expressed by the workers at their recent demonstrations:

  1. Release all workers who are in Jail
  2. Withdraw all false cases against workers
  3. All suspended and dismissed workers should be reinstated.
  4. Conduct an impartial inquiry into the police attack on workers who were holding a peaceful protest on 16 February, and punish the guilty. All injured workers should be provided compensation.
  5. Workers should not be subject to victimization because of their involvement in union activities. 

Russian union fights for mining jobs

With 6,500 workers, the Kachkanar Mining and Ore-Processing Plant (EVRAZ KGOK) is the major employer in Kachkanar, Russia. The town, which has a population of 40,000 people, was founded in 1957 to handle mining operations.

The management of the plant intends to reduce the headcount by 500 workers, and the salary by 15 percent. The majority of local families are dependent on employment at the plant, and they are concerned about the coming changes.

The rally was organized by the local union of the Miners' and Metallurgical Workers' Union of Russia (MMWU), an affiliate of IndustriALL. 

According to Anatoly Pyankov, the local MMWU leader, the plant's production output and profit are rising. In 2015, the plant produced a record output: 59.3 million tonnes of products. However, management claims that they need to cut expenses due to the crisis in the industry, primarily the cost of staff. 

The local union leader said that the plant management has failed to abide by the collective agreement, as they did not consult the union on the plans to reduce the headcount and payroll. 

Pyankov said that 150 workers had already quit their jobs after compensation was offered by management. Some workers have been forced to take unpaid leave, which they do because they are scared to lose their job and not to find anything else in the small town.

The production plan remains high, but the workers are not paid extra to do the work of dismissed workers and those who had to take unpaid leave. 

If the management fails to withdraw from the plan to reduce the headcount and the salary, the union is ready to launch a work-to-rule campaign, also known as "Italian strike".

EVRAZ KGOK is an iron ore and vanadium producer. The plant belongs to EVRAZ, a steel and mining company with operations in the Russian Federation, Ukraine, USA, Canada, Czech Republic, Italy, Kazakhstan and South Africa, that employs approximately 100,000 people.

Canadian unions campaign for anti-scab law

The NDP is a union-friendly opposition political party in the Canadian parliament. The party presented a private member’s bill in the House of Commons to amend the Canada Labour Code to stop the use of replacement workers during strikes and lockouts.

The USW is urging its members and supporters to lobby their political representatives to support the bill. They intend to put pressure on Prime Minister Trudeau’s Liberal Party to adopt a more progressive labour code.

“The Steelworkers union welcomes these changes to the Canada Labour Code. If passed, this law will stop the unfairness of employers using replacement workers during strikes and lockouts. Thanks to the NDP for once again introducing this bill that will benefit workers and employers and contribute to our nation’s productivity,” said Ken Neumann, USW National Director.

Similar legislation exists at provincial level, in Quebec and British Columbia. It has led to fewer, shorter and less violent work disputes. The USW believes that amending the Labour Code to ban replacement workers at a national level will set an important precedent for industrial relations, and will:

The Steelworkers have bitter experience of the toxic environment created by drawn out disputes. USW members in Toronto were on the picket line for 22 months against attempts by multinational canning company Crown Holdings to force through contract changes, including a large pay cut. The dispute was prolonged by the company’s attempt to break the union by using replacement labour, and turned it into a bitter war of attrition.

Brian Kohler, IndustriALL’s contact person for North America, said “Although a private member’s bill, we hope and expect that the Trudeau government will take this opportunity to usher in a new and more progressive era of industrial relations in Canada, and we support the unions in Canada fighting for this change.”

Colombia: IndustriALL backs Sintracarbon’s fight for a fair deal

On 28 December, IndustriALL Global Union’s Colombian affiliate, Sintracarbon, began negotiating a collective agreement with Cerrejon Limited, a mining company owned by Anglo American, BHP Billiton and Glencore, which all have equal shares. As there has so far been no agreement the union is considering going on strike or referring the case to arbitration.

Negotiations stalled when the company announced that it wants to keep costs at the same level as last year and that it will only agree to a pay rise in line with the increase in the consumer price Index.

Cerrejon is also using the international crisis as a pretext to challenge acquired employment rights.

In a letter to the company’s president, Roberto Junguito Pombo, Jyrki Raina, IndustriALL feneral secretary, said:

IndustriALL Global Union is very aware of the seriousness of the crisis in the mining sector. The workers are not to blame for this crisis, but they are the ones who are suffering most from its impact.

I urge the company to avoid a strike and return to the negotiating table to seek a mutually  acceptable solution.

Sintracarbon says it has always been ready to ensure both workers’ interests and the company’s profitability. The union wants productive negotiations and a fair deal for both parties. However, given the company’s refusal to continue negotiating, the union this week decided to ballot its members for action.

“Between 26 February and 3 March, the workers must focus their energy, maintain solidarity and remain resolute in the democratic process of deciding between the legal options of going to arbitration or taking strike action”, said the union.

The union’s list of demands covers pay, education and health, such as the right to health care and recognition of occupational ill-health. The union also wants decent working conditions for the high percentage of outsourced workers employed at the mining complex.

Ivory Coast: oil workers’ union in clash with Petroci

Fifty of Petroci’s 600 workers were laid off illegally in January when the company failed to follow the necessary procedures in the case of terminations for economic reasons.

The company should have consulted with the union, staff representatives and relevant authorities about the redundancies and given clear reasons to justify the lay-offs, among other measures.

Following a series of 72-hour strikes last month, the union succeeded in reinstating a pregnant worker and a staff representative who were protected under the country’s labour laws.

However, Petroci is again failing to meet legal requirements in providing proper compensation for the remaining 48 workers. The company has offered damages and compensation that are below the levels required under the labour code .

Jeremie Wondje, general secretary of SYNTEPCI, said:

“The director general of Petroci has recognized that the company did not respect the law and therefore must pay damages. However, once again Petroci is failing to comply with the law by offering levels of compensation that are unacceptable.”

“The silence from the authorities is worrying, especially because the law is very clear in what it demands from each party, but we are more worried that the director general of Petroci has refused our offer of a social plan for the retrenched workers,” he added.

“We are waiting for a meeting with the ministry of labour hoping that things will develop positively. Further strike action has been suspended but the fight continues,” said Wondje.

Jyrki Raina, general secretary of IndustriALL, said:

“Petroci is not above the law. We call on Petroci to respect national legislation and, above all, workers who have a right to be fairly compensated for losing their jobs. This is not the behaviour to be expected from a state-owned company.”