IndustriALL Global Union stands in solidarity with our French affiliates and the people in France in upholding peace, democracy and freedom of expression.
We lend our voice to those who live under the constant threat of violence for exercising their fundamental human rights. As a global organization uniting workers across the world, IndustriALL's core mission is to strengthen bonds between all cultures and all faiths.
Last month, a locally elected president from IndustriALL Global Union affiliate, the FTUWKC garment union, was brutally attacked with a metal bar by two unidentified men after she had been threatened by management to stop organizing at the factory where she works.
However, violence and intimidation did not deter unions and garment workers from taking to the streets again and again in 2014 to demand higher wages and better working conditions.
Thanks to their bravery, international solidarity and high-level negotiations between IndustriALL, the government, factory owners and local union leaders, the minimum wage for the garment industry increased from US$ 100 to US$ 128 in November 2014.
Despite this significant gain, the figure is below unions’ goal of US$ 177 per month and well below the living wage, estimated to be above US$ 200.
Prior to the government increase in the minimum wage, IndustriALL secured a commitment from eight global brands, including the H&M and the world’s biggest fashion retailer, Inditex, to pay factory owners more for clothes from Cambodia.
Now it is up to every global brand sourcing from the country to agree to factor in higher wage costs into their pricing structures. This could be as little as a few cents on the price of a t-shirt.
The International Labour Organization has also joined IndustriALL in urging all brands to pay more to factory owners to take into account the increase in the minimum wage.
IndustriALL is currently working with global fashion brands to establish an industry-wide mechanism to achieve living wages across the garment industry in Asia, which would also help to stop brands pulling out of countries to find cheaper labour elsewhere in the region.
The strike action was jointly called by national coal unions affiliated to five national trade union centers – AITUC, BMS, CITU, HMS and INTUC – that together represent over 90 per cent of the 550,000 Coal India employees. All operations are halted at Coal India, its seven subsidiaries and at the Singareni Collieries Company Ltd.
The strike runs from this morning’s first shift to the end of the third shift on 10 January. However, more strikes will follow until the privatization agenda is reversed.
“If the government fails to respond positively to the unions’ demands, we will launch an indefinite strike very soon,” said IndustriALL Executive Committee member, Sanjeeva Reddy, who is President of INTUC, India’s largest national union.
Coal India accounts for 80 per cent of domestic coal output and 60 per cent of the country’s energy needs. Other core sectors like steel, cement and iron will be affected by the strike, as well as energy.
India’s Supreme Court blocked repeated government efforts to open coal contracts to private companies between 1993 and 2010. The current Government in October 2014 declared the Coal Ordinance (Special Provisions) Bill, 2014, which will allow production contracts to be reallocated through a tender process.
The five national centres boycotted a meeting called by the Coal and Power Minister Piyush Goyal for 3 January, insisting that the privatization policy be repealed before negotiations can restart.
India is the third-largest coal producing country after China and the United States.
Strike demands include:
Hundreds of workers in Adelaide and Perth marched through the streets in December, protesting at the conservative Abbott Government’s move to outsource future building of warships and submarines overseas.
The rallies of Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU) members also demanded the Defence Minister be sacked or resign for failing to ensure continuing work domestically on the current build of three Air Warfare Destroyers (AWD).
The Government also refused to bring forward plans to build eight new navy frigates or even guarantee they will be built in Australia, leaving BAE Systems and Forgacs with a gap in contracts known as “the valley of death”.
AMWU Assistant National Secretary Glenn Thompson slammed Defence Minister David Johnston's “bumbling inaction” on the AWD project.
“He must resign unless he takes immediate action on what his own expert report, the AMWU and the shipbuilding industry keep telling him, we need a rolling build of naval combat ships in Adelaide and other Australian shipyards and we need commitment now,” Mr Thompson said.
The biggest contract issue facing Australian shipbuilding is whether the nation’s future submarine fleet will be built in Australia, as promised by the Abbott Government before it was elected in 2013. The Government has now backtracked and is considering outsourcing the work. That would devastate Australia’s shipbuilding industry.
But AMWU union action has won powerful political support, even from Senators in the ruling Abbott Government, that there should be a transparent tender process on the project and whichever bidder wins; the submarines must be built in Australia.
In November, Mr Thompson attended IndustriALL’s World Conference on Shipbuilding and Shipbreaking in Japan, where unions at BAE Systems operations in Britain, the US and Australia agreed to set up a global network.
“We will be working in a collaborative way to share information and build global solidarity,” Mr Thompson said.
Our Living Wage campaign has really gained speed this year. In Cambodia we worked together with unions on the ground, and organized a global action day with our affiliates around the world. We worked together with UNI Global Union, the International Trade Union Confederation and NGO’s, we managed to put pressure on the Cambodian brands, the government and the employers and finally in November the workers won a 30 per cent wage increase. It’s just a first step towards a living wage but an important one.
This year the World Day for Decent Work on 7 October IndustriALL affiliates around the world in more than 50 countries took action to STOP Precarious Work and our Rio Tinto Global Network took the occasion to highlight their action.
In Indonesia, the three national trade union centers, KSPI, KSBSI and KSPSI, mobilized a million workers on 10 December against, notably, the use of precarious work in state-owned companies.
Despite a recommendation issued in October 2013 by the Indonesian parliament to ‘stop outsourcing’ in state-owned companies, massive use of outsourced workers is still ongoing in public companies.
The union-led Joint Movement for Workers of the State Own Companies (GEBER BUMN) is currently spearheading a campaign to ban outsourcing in the public sector and to change the status of approximately 280,000 outsourced workers.
Several of IndustriALL’s Indonesian affiliates are participating in this campaign including metal unions FSPMI and Lomenik; energy unions FPE and KEP; and mining union CEMWU.
In the public sector they are mobilizing and organizing precarious workers in companies such as the electricity firm PLN and oil & gas business Pertamina.
At the IndustriALL national unity meeting in Jakarta, affiliates reaffirmed their determination to continue this campaign. At the same time, they will keep fighting precarious work in private sector companies.
It has been reported that contract and outsourced workers in the garment, textile and footwear industries could represent 65% of the workforce and 60.7% in the metal and electronic industries in Indonesia. Unions face resistance from employers to enforce the November 2012 Ministry of Manpower’s decree stating that private sector companies could use agency workers in only five job categories: security, cleaning, catering, mining sector support services, and transport services.
In Malaysia, the fight against precarious work is closely linked to the issue of migrant workers. Companies operating in the country have been using labour brokers to bring in cheap workers from countries such as Nepal and Myanmar and employing them indirectly on fixed-term contracts.
The Malaysian Trade Union Congress (MTUC), with the support of IndustriALL, has been a critical actor in fighting against outsourcing in Malaysia. Thanks to its ongoing protest the government has been obliged to limit the use of outsourcing in the agriculture sector.
Certain confusion, maintained by employers, still surrounds this legislation. At the national unity meeting in Kuala Lumpur, affiliates reported that the use of outsourced local or migrant workers is still generally a problem in Malaysia. Affiliates made an action plan to organize precarious workers, in particular migrant workers, despite all the challenges this entails.
Migrant workers are often scared to participate in trade union activities and are routinely threatened with being sent back to their countries. Despite these threats, IndustriALL affiliates reported that fixed term migrant workers have started to develop a strategy to overcome the obstacles imposed on them by their employers to participate in secret ballots in manufacturing companies.
IndustriALL will continue to support its affiliates in both countries to continue to actively enforce the existing legislation and ensure that this puts effective controls on the use of precarious work by employers.
Over a three-day vote from 15 to 17 December, AST workers voted by an 80 per cent majority to approve the agreement negotiated by their union representatives and the company management.
The extraordinary mobilizations and series of protests held by AST workers and their unions, IndustriALL Global Union affiliates FIM-CISL, FIOM-CGIL, and UILM have been critical in resolving the dispute.
A 40-day strike by AST workers had a huge impact on the negotiations and resulted in the company revising its plans to considerably reduce stainless steel production at its Terni facility where 2,398 workers are employed.
The plan would have led to the stoppage of one of two furnaces and at least 575 workers could have been made redundant, with many more affected indirectly.
As part of the agreement, the company will keep both furnaces running for at least four years with the guarantee to maintain current production volume of one million tons per year. The company also foresees substantial investment in the AST facility.
Although some staff will be released strictly on voluntary basis, the fundamental clause about safeguarding workplaces is resolved in the interests of workers.
The unions are continuing to negotiate on behalf of workers employed though third-party companies.
Fernando Lopes, IndustriALL Global Union assistant general secretary praised the results of the vote by AST workers, “We salute determination and militancy of our Italian brothers and sisters, this victory is another proof that that unity and decisiveness are the most important parts of our union strength and success."
Relatives of five workers who perished in the Ali Enterprises fire in Baldia Town, Karachi have sent the legal notice to Germany’s biggest discount textile chain through a German lawyer. KiK was the factory’s only known customer.
In January 2013, KiK signed a compensation agreement with the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research to make an initial compensation of US$1 million to victims but the company has continuously delayed the payments under various pretexts.
KiK claims to take to control of the enforcement of labour laws and security standards of its suppliers. However, according to reports doors were locked and windows barred at the Ali Enterprises factory with victims unable to escape the fire.
At a Karachi rally organized by IndustriALL Global Union affiliate, the National Trade Union Federation (NTUF), and the Baldia Factory Fire Affectees Association on 14 December, speakers called on KIK to pay compensation as per International Labour Organization (ILO) standards.
Organizers also urged Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, to fulfill his pre-election promise to pay government compensation to the families of victims.
Addressing the rally, which included the children of the victims, NTUF deputy general secretary Nasir Mansoor said that the safety situation in Pakistan’s garment factories had not improved despite the Baldia tragedy:
“Our factories and industries are still sweatshops and torture places for workers, and resultantly industrial mishaps are happening continuously. Due to non-functional labour inspection the occupational health and safety arrangements in factories are almost non-existent. Local industrialists and their international companies feel it their right to violate local and international labour laws and standards. They suppress the right of workers to form their own unions and earn huge profit by making quality products through cheap labour and selling them in American and European markets on huge profit margin.”
Rally participants demanded that KiK pay Rs 500,000 (US$ 5,000) per family as interim relief and pay the final compensation according to ILO standards without delay.
The protestors also demanded that compensation of Rs 300,000 (US$ 3,000) promised by Prime Minister Sharif when he was opposition leader should also be paid immediately otherwise a hunger strike protest camp would be established in January.
The Lima COP was never expected to be a deal-maker; but it was expected to generate the outlines of a deal to be finalized in Paris, a year from now, at COP21. What the world got is only a very weak framework with many blanks to be filled in if anything meaningful is to be signed in Paris next year.
The biggest divide remains between developed nations and developing nations. Some non-EU developed countries, led by the USA, are trying to trash a previously agreed-upon principle known as "common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capacities" which recognizes that developed countries should take the lead, since they have a historical responsibility for most of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and have the greatest capacity to act. On finance, developed countries want to dictate what projects are supported by the Green Climate Fund rather than allow developing countries to decide their priorities. Also, there is a general backing away from the aim of a binding agreement towards "Intended Nationally Determined Contributions" – basically voluntary, non-binding national commitments that will be non-transparent and impossible to audit.
In the midst of these complicated talks, the trade union delegates attempted to maintain at least some focus on the social dimension of sustainability, but a pattern has developed over the last several COP meetings. At each COP, with intense effort, trade unions have generally succeeded in getting a paragraph or two on decent work, greener jobs, and Just Transition in the text. Then, when the next Conference of the Parties arrives, our text has been deleted and we must fight for it to be re-inserted. Leaving aside the complex reasons for this, the Lima talks have been no exception to this pattern.
As the talks close, we have mention of our social demands in only one place, a document called Response Measures. This is better than nothing, but a small victory indeed. That is because there is some opposition to the entire Response Measures text and there is no guarantee that it will survive the run-up to Paris and COP-21. We need social standards, decent work and Just Transition recognized in the main negotiating text to have a little confidence that they will not simply be tossed aside.
COP-21 in Paris near the end of 2015 will be a crucial moment for the world. Although the warnings of dangerous global warming have been sounded since at least the late 1980s, the world has done very little and now time has effectively run out. Absent a meaningful deal in 2015, preventing catastrophic climate change will not realistically be possible with existing technologies. The fate of our world will then depend on technologies that do not exist yet, or are unproven.
As IndustriALL Global Union’s general secretary, Jyrki Raina has stated, climate change threatens everything the labour movement stands for. There are two possible disaster scenarios, not one.
The first, most often discussed, is that catastrophic climate change wreaks havoc with the world's species and spaces, and renders large areas of the planet uninhabitable.
The second, less discussed, is that in a last-minute panic to avert the first scenario we are forced to accept draconian measures that bulldoze human rights, workers' rights, and indeed basic human dignity. In this scenario we may save the ecosystem but end up enslaved to the few trillionaires that have devised safe havens for their wealth.
The only way to avoid either of these becoming our future reality is to build a Just Transition – a bridge to a sustainable future that respects and protects today’s workers, creates opportunities for tomorrow's, and insists on human rights, social standards, and human dignity. It will not be given to us. We will have to fight for it – fight against powerful entrenched forces and ideologies.
2015 will be a year of struggle to win a decent future for today's and tomorrow's citizens of planet earth.
The lockout happened after 90 per cent of the workers at OTIS voted down a non-union agreement that would slash their pay and conditions. Following unprecedented international support for the locked out Otis workers, an agreement was reached on 17 December.
IndustriALL Global Union affiliates ETU (part of CEPU) and AMWU achieved a 3,5 year agreement with a 14 per cent wage increase, increases to daily fares and travel, construction allowances increased to above industry standard, minimum site allowances on all projects, and income protection for the first time.
Allen Hicks, national secretary of ETU says:
“With the great support both internationally and in Australia, our members have stood together and resisted the ideologically driven conservative attack on them.”
IndustriALL had joined Otis workers in New Zealand, the United States, Canada, Denmark and Ireland and condemned the treatment the workers were subjected to.
Matthias Hartwich, IndustriALL director for mechanical engineering says:
“We have stood in firm solidarity with our fellow unionists. We welcome the agreement which shows what difference international support can make.”
IndustriALL also supported the demand that Otis sit down with IndustriALL affiliate AMWU and ETU members to negotiate a fair agreement, covering decent and well-deserved conditions and benefits for workers and their families.
Otis Elevators is one of largest manufacturer and installer of vertical transportation systems in the world.
