IndustriALL affiliates fight redundancies at Whirlpool in Italy

The protests included a general industrial strike of the sector on 22 May in the region of Caserta and a three-hour strike across the Indesit Group on 25 May.

The workers answered with protests to the announcement of layoffs made by Whirlpool in the group’s press release issued on 20 May. Through the release the company announced an additional 480 redundancies among administrative staff at Indesit factories in Fabriano, (200 jobs), Varese (200) and Milan (80).

The North American corporation, Whirlpool, acquired a majority of the shares of the Italian house appliance giant Indesit in July 2014. With the acquisition the company doubled its scale in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Since the acquisition and the consequent restructuring, the company made it clear that redundancies were inevitable.

However, the unions believe that the announced redundancies were unilaterally decided since the company earlier promised it would not proceed with redundancies until 2018. The layoffs will add up to 940 dismissals already earlier foreseen by Indesit itself and some 400 other jobs announced by Whirlpool on 16 April.

The total number according to the unions will reach 2,060 dismissals across Italy. This would represent one third of the company’s production workforce in Italy currently at 6,740 in total.

The decision of the company was a big shock for the Italian government who was involved in the negotiations, including Minister of Economic Development Federica Guidi, who was part of one month of fruitless negotiations. She called the communication of the company “an unspeakable plan”.

Following the organized strikes FIM-CISL, FIOM-CGIL and UILM announced a national demonstration planned in Varese on 12 June 2015.

Bangladesh Accord announces first factories to complete safety recommendations

On 20 May 2015, Accord engineers verified the successful completion of all remediation requirements stemming from initial inspections at two garment factories – Concord Fashion Export Ltd. and Jeacon.

Both the Accord-listed factories are located in the same building at South Shalna in Gazipur, Dhaka.

A statement from the Accord on the milestone, said:

“Nearly two years to the date after the signing of the Accord, completion and Accord verification of all initial remediation at these two inspected factories is a powerful indicator that the Accord is making a difference and that ready-made garment factories producing for Accord company and retailer signatories are becoming safe.”

The Accord was set up following the Rana Plaza factory building collapse in Dhaka, which killed over 1,100 people and injured 2,000 more. It is a groundbreaking legally binding agreement between global brands and retailers and trade unions, designed to build a safe and healthy Bangladeshi ready-made garment industry.

Accord inspectors have since inspected and made recommendations on more than 1,600 factories in Bangladesh, producing for 200 Accord signatories.

Accord chief safety inspector, Brad Loewen, said:

“I am very proud of the hard work our staff are doing to encourage factories, and to verify compliance. The remediation work is done by the factories and they are the ones who deserve the greatest acknowledgment. The end result is that garment workers are safe. That is what motivates us each and every day.

I hope that we will see dozens of these verified factories every month as we continue to follow up and verify.

IndustriALL and UNI Global Union were the key drivers in establishing the Accord. IndustriALL’s general secretary, Jyrki Raina, said:

This significant achievement is proof that cooperation between unions, factory owners and brands does lead to change. Staff at the Accord and factory owners must be congratulated in their determination to make real improvements in safety for garment workers.

Since Rana Plaza, organizing efforts by IndustriALL and its partners have led to 65,000 new trade union members in Bangladesh.

However, the burning issue of poverty wages still blights the Bangladeshi garment industry where the minimum wage is set at US$68 a month – one of the lowest in the world.

Increasing wages in Bangladesh as a priority for IndustriALL, and it is currently pushing for a living wage for garment workers through industry level bargaining agreements.

Two week strike looms for Kone, United Kingdom

The tracker system, known as VAMS, is used for measuring workloads. Unite says VAMS should not be used to verify time sheets or site arrival and leaving times as it is unreliable – for example, one driver was alleged have driven 1,000 miles in one day without refueling.

Unite is now appealing to company management in Finland after talks in the UK broke down after ten hours. The strike action by 300 engineering service workers is due to start on 27 May and end on 9 June. This will run in tandem with a ban on overtime, night call ban and on-call ban, which has been in force since 27 March.

Unite national officer Linda McCulloch said:

“Unite is calling on the top executives of this Finnish-owned company to intervene. Our members are furious at the way they have been treated and their legitimate concerns about VAMS ignored. They have no confidence in the UK management.

“Evidence has shown the mileage recorded by VAMS for business or private use is not accurate and exaggerates the amount of mileage being completed. This will lead to employees being wrongly assessed for private mileage and could lead to wrong deductions from wages and ultimately disciplinary situations.”

Unite is calling for a new framework document to iron out the problems with VAMS which management is currently refusing. There is already a framework agreement for handheld devices – and Unite is looking for a similar agreement for VAMS.

In November 2014 the IndustriALL lifts and escalators sector adopted a demand for the abstention from monitoring systems, called the Vienna declaration.

IndustriALL director of mechanical engineering, Matthias Hartwich, says that imposing this kind of pressure on the employees is unacceptable:

In November last year, the lifts and escalators network told the big four operators, including Kone, not to use this kind of tracking system. Instead of using unreliable tracking systems, Kone should provide the staff with proper health and safety means and training.

The main Kone sites are at Chertsey in Surrey, Gateshead, Glasgow, Keighley in Yorkshire and Warrington.

Turkish women form trade union platform network

The unions all have varying levels of women’s activities. Most say they have tried to educate men about gender equality, but the success of these initiatives has been limited.

The women identified weaknesses like no continuity in participation, being too passive and invisible. Many unions have paper policies for women, and their committees are paper tigers. Men often stall women, and the women give up waiting for their demands to be met. Moreover, many women still have to ask permission from husbands or fathers to participate in trade unions.

Women’s main demand at work is childcare. Too often women leave paid employment because they have to look after children. Women demand from unions that more women have to be given access to collective bargaining processes. In this way it is hoped that it would no longer be women’s concerns that are dropped first from union bargaining agendas. Unions should hire and promote more women organizers. And unions need to fight bullying and harassment.

Monika Kemperle presented IndustriALL’s five goals and what they mean for women. In connection with Turkey it is vital to organize more women in trade unions to overcome women’s low presence. Women at the meeting agreed that trade unions have to change in order to make women feel a part of them.

The women agreed to work on women’s health and safety as one topic to encompass all trade unions above and beyond ideological borders. In spite of disagreements among unions on certain issues, the women are confident that they can work together in an IndustriALL women’s platform, and that this work will help them make progress.

Women’s health and safety is one area where gender inequality is the most glaring – more resources are spent on men, and not enough research is done on women’s health issues. In Turkey almost no work is done on women’s health, which is why the women felt that their work could make a difference.

The workshop was followed on 8 May by a symposium supported by FES to launch the publication called Women with Unions and Unions Without Women. The publication asked the question: are trade unions men’s business, or can we have them with women? The answer to this question will be found in the fight to overcome millennium-old prejudices and stereotypes.

Climate change is union business

Climate justice will require government commitments to sustainable industrial policies and sound social programs. The labour movement will put pressure on national leaders to deliver a fair, ambitious and binding global climate policy in the public interest. This is about preventing climate catastrophe, but also about the greening of millions of existing jobs and the creation of millions of new, sustainable, jobs while managing the transition period fairly.

Governments are discussing early drafts of a climate deal to be adopted in December at the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21). It is crucial to start a path towards de-carbonising the economy in 2015 if global warming is to be limited to 2 Cº above pre-industrial levels.

Working closely with the ITUC, IndustriALL affiliates are asked to put their weight behind a week of action, during the first week of June, to lobby governments to commit to a deal in Paris at COP21

At its recent meeting, 19-21 May in Stockholm, Sweden, IndustriALL Global Union's Executive Committee members re-affirmed IndustriALL's committment to fighting for climate justice.

IndustriALL general secretary Jyrki Raina says:

Climate change threatens everything the labour movement stands for: fairness; social justice; decent work. The science is unequivocal. The need for action to limit climate disruption – no longer prevent, but limit – is clear, and urgent.

Jyrki Raina reports from IndustriALL's Executive Committee in Stockholm

IndustriALL backs British steelworkers

IndustriALL affiliates Community the union, Unite and GMB are currently balloting members within Tata Steel UK on possible industrial action following managements’ refusal to negotiate over plans to close the British Steel pension scheme.

It means employees would lose on average 25 per cent of their pension unless they retire at 65-years-old, and not 60 as they had planned.

If members approve industrial action, it will be the UK’s first national steel strike for 30 years.

Proposing the resolution, Executive Committee member Rob Johnston from Community, said:

“Tata Steel prides itself on being one of the world’s most ethical companies. However, it has started to undermine and walk away from its own values…Tata refuses to have dialogue.”

Community member Rob Middlemas has worked for 39 years at Tata’s Skinningrove steel plant in the North East of England, which was previously owned by Corus and British Steel. He told the Executive Committee:

“We have offered a financial solution to cope with the deficit but they have chosen not to accept that solution. They have left us with no other option to ballot our members for industrial action. If we just stand back and allow them to take our biggest prize in our terms and conditions, what next?

Middlemas added that steelworkers work long and hard 12-hour shifts:

“Previously my colleagues have been allowed to retire at the age of 60 in the steel industry, which as you know is a very labour intensive.

“I’ll have to work over fifty years in the industry before I can access a full pension or I’ll lose 30 per cent if I retire at 60. We followed the government advice and paid into the pension scheme for our retirement.”

Tata Steel plans to close the existing pension scheme in April next year.

The resolution, which is part of a strategy to bring Tata back to the bargaining table, received endorsement from steelworkers in India and the USA.

In a separate statement, Unite national officer for steel Paul Reuter said:

"Following five months of intensive negotiations where the trade unions offered savings to the company of £850 million, Tata Steel UK has decided that it is ideologically wrong for employees, who have worked hard in an extremely strenuous and physically demanding environment, to be able to retire with the pensions that they were originally promised."

Earlier this month, IndustriALL raised the plight of the British steelworkers at an OECD Steel Committee meeting in Paris.

IndustriALL also plans to use its network meetings to bring unions together worldwide in support of the steelworkers.

Second anniversary of the Accord

In May 2013, IndustriALL Global Union, Uni Global Union and global garment brands signed an unprecedented agreement to make garment factories safe in Bangladesh, following the Rana Plaza tragedy.

With more than 200 company signatories and 1,500 factories covered by the agreement, the Accord has embarked on a large-scale effort to identify and resolve all major safety risks in these factories.

The Accord has acted immediately in cases where inspections found safety problems posing imminent danger to workers’ lives. In all factories, the signatories and factories are developing and implementing Corrective Action Plans to remediate all identified safety hazards.

The enormous task of actually fixing the safety concerns at all inspected factories and building effective worker-management safety committees in all Accord supplier factories is now under way.

Brad Loewen, chief safety inspector of the Accord says:

“Fixing all these hazards is a massive amount of work for the RMG industry, but safety remediation work at the inspected factories is underway. There has been especially good progress on electrical remediation which is positive as most factory fires are caused by electrical hazards. As a result, we have helped prevent fires in factories covered by the Accord.

“We are pleased to also report that we have verified the first fully remediated factories where all fire, electrical, and structural safety corrective actions from the initial inspections are complete.”

The initial inspections by the Accord have brought the urgency to improve workplace safety in the Bangladeshi RMG to the fore.

Rob Wayss, executive director of the Accord, says:

“Identifying the issues and developing plans to correct them is the first step. In the three remaining years of the Accord we will work with our signatories and suppliers to complete the remediation at all factories and ensure that a functioning safety and health committee capable of maintaining and monitoring safety issues on a day-to day basis is in place at every Accord listed factory.

“This requires a concerted effort from the factories with support from the Accord signatory companies and Accord union colleagues. The Accord team stands ready to support all parties if we hit obstacles in this road ahead.”

IndustriALL general secretary Jyrki Raina was one of the architects behind the Accord and says:

Two years on, the Accord has made important progress towards making the factories safe. But if the Bangladeshi garment industry is to be truly sustainable, we also need strong unions that are not constantly under attack. IndustriALL is relentless in pursuing our goal to organize the garment industry in Bangladesh and to fight for a living wage for all garment workers.

Swaziland: labour federation finally registered

When the two main trade union centres, the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions and the Swaziland Federation of Labour, as well as the independent Swaziland National Association of Teachers came together to form Tucoswa, the merger was widely welcomed.

However, shortly after the founding congress in March 2012, TUCOSWA was informed that the registration granted was invalid as the labour law did not cater fort the registration of federations. As a result the two main employers’ federations were also subsequently deregistered.

Initially the accusation from some government officials was that the new federation had political aspirations after the Tucoswa congress decided to boycott upcoming national elections if political parties remained banned in Swaziland. There has been building pressure for the registration of Tucoswa. At the International Labour Conference (ILC) of the ILO in 2014, the Swaziland government brushed aside accusation of repression centred on the unresolved issue of Tucoswa’s registration, in real terms constituting a ban on the labour federation.

The deadline of 15 May 2014 had passed for the five benchmarks that needed to be met for Swaziland to continue to benefit from preferential trade access to the US under the African Growth and Opportunity (AGOA). One of the five benchmarks was, “Full passage of the amendment to the Industrial Relations Act allowing for the registration of trade union and employer federations.” So shortly after the ILC, the US announced the withdrawal of Swaziland’s AGOA eligibility effective from 1 January 2015.

The situation worsened when in July 2014 international concerns for the freedom of expression and association and the rule of law in Swaziland peaked at the conviction of a human rights lawyer Thulani Maseko and a journalist Bheki Makhubu for contempt of court and they were handed down two year jail sentences after a drawn out trial.

But pressure has continued in 2015 after several thousands of jobs have been lost as a result of the withdrawal of AGOA eligibility and mounting support for campaigns to release Maseko and Makhubu. At the end of March 2015, the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information in Africa and the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders in Africa called for the immediate and unconditional release of Maseko and Makhubu.

The registration was granted without much fanfare but before the 2015 ILC. However this may come too late, as the focus has moved from calls for the unbanning of Tucoswa onto the imprisonment of Maseko and Makhubu, which has highlighted the plight of other political prisoners in Swaziland jails.

On 21 May 2015, the European Parliament will debate on cases of breaches of human rights, democracy and the rule of law with regard to Maseko and Makhubu and a motion for resolution on Swaziland has been put forward.

It is hoped that widespread international condemnation will result ultimately in condemnation from African governments as well as concrete actions to get Swaziland to comply with international standards on human and labour rights.

General Secretary of ATUSWA, Wander Mkhonza says that whilst the registration of the federation is a victory to be celebrated, this is only the beginning:

I think what we managed to do, is that we were able under the circumstances to remain in the minds of the people in general and workers in particular. Our immediate task now is to win back the confidence of the workers.

Dialogue needed to save diamond polishing jobs in Botswana

Two companies, Teemane Manufacturing Company and Diamond Manufacturing Botswana, are toclose their operations and shedding about 300 jobs. This follows recent layoffs in two other companies, Leo Schachter and Eorostar Botswana.

The companies have operated in Botswana for years but now claim to be unable to compete with lower costs of cutting and polishing diamonds in Asia. One of BDWU’s major concerns is that cutting and polishing companies in Botswana are obligated to buy only from DeBeers in order to retain their licences, meaning that DeBeers can set the price. As most of these companies have operations in other parts of the world they can easily shift production when supply price in Botswana exceeds what they can source elsewhere.

The BDWU is petitioning the government to set up an industrial bargaining council. The government has so far refused and there is a lack of support from the employers.

The BDWU says in a press statement that the governement is both regulator and businessman: “Government has active and major interests right from the mining of diamonds, through to the sorting and valuing of diamonds. By virtue of its business involvement in the industry, government is severely constrained to exercises its regulatory role.”

BDWU says that they are excluded from discussions between employers and government and are only informed once the decision to retrench has been taken. The union is calling for the setup of a social dialogue forum for the sector.

“A lot of problems could have been avoided if the industry partners were open to social dialogue and sharing important information pertaining to the industry,” says the BDWU.

Government should have long played a leading role in this arrangement by creating a forum at which labour, business, and government come together to address issues pertaining to the sector.

The union also wants the Botswana government to develop an empowerment policy for local diamond entrepreneurs with the hope that local participation in the industry may engender greater commitment than that of multinational companies to the sustainability of the sector.