IndustriALL Women’s committee formed in Malaysia

The aim of the committee is to examine the economic, social and legal issues affecting women workers in Malaysia and to work out a plan of action for the women workers. Specifically the committee will monitor the implementation of resolutions concerning integration of women into trade unions and the promotion of equality in employment.

Kumari from the Electrical Industries Workers Unions was elected chairperson. She will sit on the IndustriALL Malaysian Council to ensure that women’s issues are discussed and incorporated into the Council’s priorities.

Upon her election, Kumari said:

“The committee is important to advance the cause of women for better working conditions, improved maternity protection and equality in the workplace. We would also want to be involved in national campaign for the ratification of ILO 183 on maternity protection.”

USW ratifies master agreement with RockTenn

"Our members in the paper sector, one of our union's largest, have made significant progress in developing a more efficient and effective process to negotiate improved contracts at RockTenn and throughout the industry," says USW International President Leo W. Gerard.

USW International Vice President Jon Geenen, who oversees the union's paper sector negotiations, said that the new, six-year contract with RockTenn will provide security for workers and their families.

"This agreement will provide increased earnings and economic peace of mind for workers at RockTenn," Geenen said. "Imagine the confidence that could be brought to the entire economy if all working families could predict their prosperity for a half-decade while seeing their living standards improve each year."

IndustriALL Pulp and Paper Director Anatoly Surin said:

We know how difficult it was to find the way to sign the first Master agreement with RockTenn, and we congratulate our American colleagues with this very important victory.

Our work continues to STOP Precarious Work

More than 100 IndustriALL Global Union affiliates from over 50 countries took action through mass rallies, seminars, human chains and awareness campaigns in order to give more visibility to the issue of precarious work. Our Rio Tinto network took the occasion to highlight their issues by planning actions in more than a dozen countries on 7 October.

The day of action is over but the STOP Precarious Work campaign continues throughout the year. If you want some inspiration, then check out "Negotiating Security", it will give you great examples of collective bargaining victories by our affiliates.

Time for Rio Tinto to end dead silence on Grasberg fatalities

IndustriALL’s Indonesian affiliate CEMWU has announced it will begin a one-month strike at the mine on 6 November due to mine management not being held responsible for the fatalities. Five miners died at the copper and gold mine in September. This brings the total number of workers killed at the mine over the last two years to a staggering 38.

Rio Tinto has invested over a billion dollars in the Grasberg mine and serves on its operating, technical and sustainable development committees. The mine is majority-owned by Freeport.

“Rio Tinto made no public statement following two recent fatal incidents at Grasberg. This is unacceptable for a company that says safety of its workers is core to everything it does,” says IndustriALL Assistant General Secretary Kemal Özkan.

It appears the company’s public silence is part of an attempt to keep its name out of press reports on the fatalities. But it’s time for Rio Tinto to own up to its failure and speak openly about what the company will do to ensure these disasters never happen again.

IndustriALL has raised workplace safety concerns with Rio Tinto on a number of times since a tunnel collapse killed 28 workers at Grasberg in May 2013.

“Rio Tinto has claimed to us in private that Freeport, not Rio Tinto, manages Grasberg, but that they are now helping Freeport to improve safety performance. However, given Rio Tinto’s huge stake in the mine it’s simply not credible to deny any responsibility for the deaths,” states Özkan.

“And why should we believe Rio Tinto will all of a sudden help make the mine safe, given they’ve invested in the mine for nearly 20 years? It’s no wonder that Rio Tinto has avoided public discussion of worker deaths at Grasberg.”

IndustriALL is not the first organization to hold Rio Tinto accountable for irresponsible practices at Grasberg. Norway’s state-owned pension fund sold its entire $850 million stake in Rio Tinto in 2008 because Grasberg discharges huge amounts of tailings directly into a natural river system. In 2006 the fund sold its stake in Freeport for the same reason.

Özkan says:

With bodies piling up and a strike imminent, Rio Tinto needs to stop hiding behind Freeport and take a more active and public role in making Grasberg a safe place to work.

Brave struggle of Iraqi energy unions inspires the movement

Public sector trade unions have been illegal in Iraq since 1987. The unions still form but have no protection from the judiciary, including when the authorities have seized their offices and finances. Government attacks on the public sector unions has included punitive court cases and forced transfers of activists to work sites miles away from their home.

Through interviews and questionnaires with a sample of electricity sector workers and trade unionists, the Solidarity Center study tracks the history of trade union development before and after the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. The findings are that although labour laws have not changed, both new and pre-existing unions have grown significantly since 2003.

Key gains won by the electricity unions, as highlighted in the report, include the 2003 increase of 30% negotiated with the US Military Ruler; the 2007 new risk allowance of 75% salary after a confrontational campaign; the 2008 changes to job scales in the industry that made promotions more widely accessible; 2008 permanent employment for hundreds of contract workers, and payment of owed holiday allowances.

Following strong union campaigning in June 2010 a crack down came in July 2010 with harsh new laws including expanding the anti-terrorism legislation to be expanded to trade union activities. The study strongly found that the harsh crackdown by the Ministry of Electricity over the last four years was primarily meted out because unions were calling attention on serious corruption inside the ministry.

There has been a long-standing campaign for reforms to the Iraqi labour law, including with international campaigning and lobbying by IndustriALL Global Union and the ITUC.

IndustriALL Assistant General Secretary Kemal Özkan stated:

Our Iraqi sisters and brothers time and again inspire all IndustriALL with their brave struggles. Leaders of IndustriALL affiliates in Iraq have received death threats against them and their families, sham trials and reprisal dismissals. But they continue to organize and we will always stand by them in their struggle to build union power.

Belarusian unions prepare to struggle against short-term contracts

The workshop was the result of the decision of the IndustriALL Executive Committee based on the recommendations made by the Mission to Belarus held in March 2014. Some thirty trade union leaders and activists from all four affiliates were present at the workshop.

Ivan Mohnachuk, member of IndustriALL Executive Committee and chairman of the Russian Independent Coal Employees’ Union – ROSUGLEPROF, shared Russian unions’ experience about the threat that upcoming privatization of enterprises represents to the workers and trade unions in Belarus. He said that one of the first steps of the new owners will likely become a so-called "production’s optimization", in reality meaning a massive reduction in employment. In Belarus workers remain particularly vulnerable because of the widely spread short-term employment contracts.

Vadim Borisov, IndustriALL representative in CIS countries, reported about the actions taken by the global trade union movement aimed at restraining precarious forms of employment. He described in detail various forms of precarious employment extensively used in the countries of the region.

Svetlana Klochok, chair of the Belarusian Trade Union of Chemical, Mining and Oil Industries Workers (BELKHIMPROFSOYUZ), spoke about the actions of her organization to limit the negative effects of the massive use of short-term contracts in Belarus.

Nikolai Zimin, chairman of the Belarusian Independent Trade Union, called for resolute measures in the fight for abolition of the President Lukashenko Decree No. 29, 1999, which shifted almost entire working population to short-term contracts in Belarus.

Alexander Bukhvostau, chairman of the Free Trade Union of Metalworkers, SPM noted that the system of short-term contracts in the first place victimizes the most active citizens, many of whom are activists of free trade unions not affiliated with the Federation of Trade Unions of Belarus.

Leader of the Radio and Electronic Industry Workers’ Union (REP) Gennadi Fedynich, presented an initiative aimed to collect signatures for a collective letter demanding to amend the Labour Code of the Republic of Belarus. Fedynich hopes that the changes will help increase the security of workers employed on short-term contracts and neutralize the Presidential Decree № 29 "On additional measures to improve labour relations, strengthen labour and executive discipline."

SPM supported the proposal and is now preparing to take part in the campaign to collect signatures in support of the initiative together with REP. The aim of the campaign will be to collect 50,000 signatures, then the initiative will be passed through the Central Electoral Committee for consideration by the Parliament.

“IndustriALL Global Union is happy that our Belarusian affiliates work and struggle together against their common challenge which is short-term contract system,” said Kemal Özkan, Assistant General Secretary. “The campaign in Belarus will continue to get our support within our global campaign against precarious work”.

Unions fight against violence against women

In Sub-Saharan Africa between 36 and 71 per cent of women have experienced physical or sexual violence at the hands of a husband or intimate partner. In North America  domestic violence causes more death and disability among women aged 16 to 44 than cancer or traffic accidents. On average 92 women are raped every day in India. 35 per cent of women worldwide have experienced violence whether physical and/or sexual. Between 40 and 50 per cent of women experience unwanted sexual advances, physical contact or other forms of sexual harassment at work.

Sexual harassment is particularly prevalent in the garment industry. At the first IndustriALL women’s workshop in Ethiopia in 2013, sexual harassment at a particular factory was highlighted and action was taken accordingly. Awareness raising and training were carried out and the reported cases of sexual harassment has significanty gone down. In Jordan’s garment industry the Better Work Program has contributed to factories having zero tolerance for sexual harassment. Managers are on notice, and it has become a business risk.

In the light of the escalating violence against women trade unions have adopted the fight against violence as a union issue. IndustriALL Global Union affiliate United Steel Workers (USW) states:

There is no place for violence against women at work or anywhere else.

And North American affiliate Unifor has an anti-violence oath:

I swear never to commit, excuse or remain silent about violence against women. This is my oath.

Trade unions are calling upon the ILO to start the discussions on a new international standard on gender-based violence. An ILO standard would be helpful for collective bargaining agreements on violence and for making the most of social dialogue to prevent it. Employers should have an interest in creating a workplace free of violence.

For this purpose trade unions need to lobby their governments to support such an international standard.

These and other initiatives will be the focus this year on marking 25 November, the global day to combat violence against women. Please share with IndustriALL your work on eliminating violence against women on that and other days.

Ukrainian unions develop strategies to fight precarious work

Vadim Borisov, IndustriALL Global Union regional representative in Moscow, spoke about the worldwide trade union struggle against precarious work and shared the experience of limiting precarious work during the collective bargaining at the enterprise level.

Gennady Mikhailyuk, the chief expert for industrial relations at the Nuclear Power and Industry Workers’ Union of Ukraine, emphasized the importance of the workshop topic, "Workers outsourced from the enterprise are not subject to our collective agreement anymore. They lose their social protection and benefits normally provided trough the collective agreement. Even if they succeed to reach a collective agreement with the contractor, usually it is less advantageous than the one at the main enterprise… Recruiting workers as independent contractors instead of regular employees is a new reality for us. It happens at the enterprises servicing nuclear power plants".

Workshop participants learned the difference between different types of precarious work including outsourcing, staff leasing and contracting out labour force to a third party (also known as ‘outstaffing’). They mapped the situation the unionists are dealing with, outlined the problems and developed the strategic approach to solve them, as well as some recommendations to prevent the expansion of precarious work. The following solutions were considered in order to make different forms of precarious work less attractive to the employer:

Vadim Borisov spoke about the idea of the IndustriALL Global Union Regional Office to conduct the first ever global flash mob for decent labour on 7 October 2015. Workshop participants supported this idea and organized a "STOP Precarious Work" mini-flash mob.

Alexander Davidenko, the deputy chairman of the Unіоn оf Еnеrgу аnd Elеctrotechnical Industry Workers of Ukraine, mentioned that this was the second workshop dedicated to the issue of precarious work: "We planned them in advance and we hope that we will be able to submit our best practices to the conference in November, which will then make suggestions to the Supreme Council of Ukraine and to the government in order to legally limit atypical forms of employment. We already use many of these practices at our privately owned enterprises".

Building strong unions in Myanmar

Until 2011, any kind of trade union activity was strictly forbidden in Myanmar. In October that year, a bill on trade union entities was passed. It came into force in March 2012, allowing trade unions to be organized at the work place. Trade union leaders who had fled Myanmar began returning to the country.

In September 2012, following decades of exile, the Federation of Trade Unions – Burma (FTUB), now Federation of Trade Unions – Myanmar (FTUM), and its leaders were allowed to return to the country and to continue their trade union activity. Now, barely two years on, FTUM general secretary Maung Maung counts 622 affiliated unions with 43,500 members – 50 per cent of the 1,225 unions registered in total in Myanmar.

Founded at the congress on 18 and 19 October this year, the Industrial Workers Federation comes under the umbrella of the Federation of Unions in Myanmar. The 30 congress delegates were from the 37 basic labor organizations with 6,500 paying members. Myo Myint from Shwe Mi Plastic Factory Workers Union was elected as the Federation President.

The delegates ratified the statutes of their federation and experienced the joy of electing their leadership through secret balloting. The action plan prioritized organizing, capacity building on dispute settlement, minimum wage campaign, building good industrial relations, and improving working conditions. They will also use resources to address women, youth issues and migrant workers.

Paving the way for collective bargaining

IndustriALL’s training on collective bargaining held in December 2013 led to the conclusion of an agreement with Yes Garment. It is the first in the sector to guarantee increased wages, improved industrial relations and better working conditions.

The campaign for a minimum wage continues. The current average daily wage is a meager USD2. Campaigners are fighting for a raise to USD4. The government has announced that it will undertake a survey on the cost of living for workers at the end of 2014.

IndustriALL Global Union regional secretary Annie Adviento says:

“The unions are optimistic, but a lot of international pressure will be needed for the government to translate their commitment to real work.

We welcome the organizing activities of unions in Myanmar and will continue to support their fight for good working conditions and a decent minimum wage.

“No more mine deaths. Turkish Government must ratify ILO C176, now, without delay”, says IndustriALL Global Union

Twenty workers have either been rescued or escaped on their own from the flooded coalmine, but hopes are fading for the remaining 18 trapped underground. Although water is being pumped out, the risk grows as time passes with the men still underground. There has been no contact established with the trapped eighteen.

The cause has not yet been established of the water surging into the mine. But it is the strong belief and argument of IndustriALL Global Union that every mine accident is preventable.

Over 3,000 people have been killed and over 100,000 have received various injuries since 1941 to the present day in mining accidents in Turkey. There are 740 coalmines and 48,706 miners in in the country.

It is less than six months since the industrial homicide at Soma that killed 301 Turkish mineworkers on 13 May; now eighteen miners are trapped in the flooded Has Sekerler coalmine.

Just recently, the Turkish Cabinet sent a draft bill to the Parliament to ratify ILO Convention 176 on Safety in Mines after effective struggle and lobbying by global and national unions together with strong public opinion. However it is still pending on the agenda of the Parliament.

The International Labour Organization earlier this month organized a National Tripartite Meeting on Improving Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) in Mining in Turkey. Government, workers’ and employers’ representatives and other relevant stakeholders concluded with agreement on the main elements of a roadmap on how to improve occupational safety and health in the industry.

Furthermore, the Turkish Parliament in September passed a bill that brings some new rights for miners on working hours, severance payments, retirement age, lowest wage to be double the legal minimum wage, as well as some legal entitlements for Soma victims and their families. However a comprehensive approach for health and safety issues in mines is still missing.

IndustriALL Global Union Assistant General Secretary Kemal Özkan stated:

The attention of the world’s media is once again turned to the senseless danger that Turkey’s mineworkers are put under by an unregulated industry. Now it is simply not an option for Turkey’s government to ignore the calls for action on safety and health in mines. The urgent first step must be the ratification and implementation of the International Labour Organization’s Convention 176 that will bring the industry in line with international standards. Workers lives are not a commodity to be traded off against expenditure on safety.

IndustriALL Global Union is sending letters to the Turkish Parliament Speaker, Prime Minister, leaders of opposition parties with factions at the Parliament, and individual members of Parliament to accelerate the process of ratification.