Strategizing on advancing union power of white-collar workers in Ghana

The issues discussed at the meeting, which was organized by the IndustriALL Global Union Sub Saharan Africa regional office, included on how to close the gender pay gay, inclusion of women as part of the collective bargaining negotiation teams, inclusive union representation of women as shop stewards and union organizers, increasing maternity leave from the current three to four months, rewarding long service through promotions, giving permanent contracts to workers on short-term contracts, and unionising more white-collar workers.

The meeting resolved to continue campaigning for the ratification of Convention 190 to stop violence and harassment in the world of work, and for the inclusion of clauses from the convention into human resources policies.
 
The meeting emphasized the importance of national labour laws and international labour standards on fundamental rights at work including health and safety as well as leveraging industry standards on human rights due diligence. Building solidarity, workers unity, and using managerial experience and skills to strengthen union recruitment and organizing capacity are some of the actions that the white-collar workers committed to do. The workers who attended the meeting included engineers, environmental coordinators, fire and rescue workers, managers, and energy workers.
 
Information and knowledge sharing using social media and digital platforms by the union on issues of interest to white collar workers were identified as key to organizing especially some non-unionized workers who were reluctant to join the union.
 
Paule France Ndessomin, IndustriALL regional secretary for Sub Saharan Africa said:

“Union leaders must make conscious decisions to include white collar women workers in collective bargaining negotiations. Women must be part of the team and not only be included as observers. This is one of the key strategies that can be used to end the gender pay gap as women can articulate their demands better.”

“Ghanaian trade unions are engaging at various workplaces to end gender discrimination, and in the union through gender committees. We are also campaigning for the ratification of Convention 190,”

said Joyce Maku Appiah, IndustriALL gender equality task force member and Public Utilities Workers Union (PUWU) gender coordinator.

Through a project supported by Industri-Energi, Norway, PUWU is campaigning for the inclusion of clauses on gender-based violence and sexual harassment in collective bargaining agreements at the enterprise level.

The Ghanaian unions affiliated to IndustriALL Global Union that participated in the meeting are the Ghana Mine Workers Union, Ghana Transport Petroleum and Chemicals Workers Union, and Public Utilities Workers Union.
 

28 April – world day for safety and health at work

It is estimated that more than 3 million workers die every year because of their work, and tens of millions are injured. 28 April is International Workers’ Memorial Day, a day to remind us that health and safety at work is neither a perk to be bargained for nor a favour to be asked. It is our right. In the workplace.

While fatal accidents have fallen, the fatal frequency rate — the number of fatalities per million hours worked, is not evenly distributed across sectors and regions, with mining, shipbuilding and ship breaking, textiles, electronics, chemicals, showing disproportionate impacts. On the other hand, occupational diseases continue to kill more workers across sectors, also at disproportionate sector and country level, more than the fatality frequency rate.

In June last year, the International Labour Conference in Geneva added health and safety to the ILO Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. This means that ILO member states commit to respect and promote the fundamental right to a safe and health working environment, whether or not they have ratified the relevant ILO Conventions.

Shipbreaking is considered to be one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. This year is crucial for improving safety, because Bangladesh has committed to ratifying the Hong Kong Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships (HKC). When the Convention enters into force, it will create a health and safety baseline that will drive up conditions and transform the lives of shipbreaking workers on the subcontinent and elsewhere.

When the floating tonnage of the world’s fleet reaches the end of its useful life, ships – and other ocean-based vessels, including oil rigs – need to be broken and recycled.

Most ships are broken in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, by migrant workers on precarious contracts with minimal training and safety equipment. The work is extremely tough, very dangerous, and with the partial exception of India, generally done by hand.

Ships are beached, and then dragged with chains by labourers to the breaking area. They are manually cut into blocks with torches and dismantled with sledgehammers. Fatal accidents are frequent: a common cause of death is falling from height with a recently cut sheet of steel. In Gadani in Pakistan in 2016, work commenced before fuel was removed from a ship, leading to an explosion that killed 28 workers.

Workers are exposed to carcinogens and other toxic substances, as well as environmental contamination. Housing and medical care are inadequate, as is access to clean water.

Alang shipyard, India

Alang shipyard, India

In India, the situation for shipbreaking workers is changing: the combination of a strong union, ASSRGWA, part of IndustriALL affiliate SMEFI, and the ratification by India of the HKC has meant that safety has dramatically improved. Instead of breaking ships on beaches, most yards now use impermeable floors. Blocks are moved by crane, and some yards have joint union-management health and safety committees and the right to refuse unsafe work.

And yet even in India, the accident rate remains unacceptably high, with eight fatal accidents in 2022. IndustriALL believes that only a joint health and safety committee that covers the whole port area that falls under the jurisdiction of the Gujarat Maritime Board will be sufficient to stamp out dangerous practices.

In Bangladesh and Pakistan, shipbreaking is still done by hand. And while India has ratified the HKC, it has not yet entered into force, meaning unscrupulous shipowners can recycle their ships cheaply in dangerous yards. All eyes are on Bangladesh, and the opportunity to use the HKC to transform the industry.

Pakistan's dangerous mines

A joint contender for most dangerous job in the world is coal mining in Pakistan, where miners die every week in primitive coal mines. In 2021-2022, more than 300 mining deaths were reported. Unions believe many deaths go unreported.

The deaths present a colossal failure on many levels: by mine owners and operators, by the state, and by a society that has come to accept the death toll as inevitable. Despite well-established mining safety protocols, preventable accidents happen almost every day. Pakistan’s Mines Act is 100 years old – and yet many mines fail to adhere to it. Pakistan lacks the ability and the will to enforce its laws, with inadequate safety and labour inspectorates.

Many mines are operated illegally, in tribal areas outside the effective jurisdiction of the government. Owners are often based offshore, paying local contractors to extract coal for use in the domestic industry. Workers – many of them migrants from Afghanistan – are employed as day labourers, with no rights and no safety equipment. Local militias provide security. When accidents happen, there is seldom an emergency response, and workers have to dig their colleagues out themselves. Unable to change the situation, local unions focus on reporting the growing death toll like a litany of destruction.

To change the situation, the fatalism that paralyses the government and society must be challenged. The government of Pakistan must ratify and implement ILO Convention 176 on Safety and Health in Mines. The government must develop – with the support of the ILO, IndustriALL, and other willing actors – a safety inspectorate that can tackle the crisis. And the government must assert its authority to close down and seize mines operate illegally or in contravention of safety standards.

Amcor workers unite to demand international dialogue

The union alliance meets regularly, and one key priority of the group is to establish coordinated dialogue with the global management. The group has repeatedly approached management over several years, always being told that global management will not engage.

Now the Alliance showed it will not accept this company refusal. In a powerful showing of global solidarity and unity, 32 union representatives and union delegates at Amcor from 17 countries sent the company the same letter in their respective languages on the same day this month.

The letter reads:

“All trade unions through Amcor’s operations at national level around the world are affiliated with one or both global trade unions UNI and IndustriALL. These global unions have over 100 well-functioning Global Framework Agreements with leading multinational companies. Through these agreements unions and management agree to work together to ensure minimum standards throughout the business, in a spirit of dialogue and consultation.

We seek a similar working relationship with you and your team.”

The Alliance has waited two weeks for a response, and now goes public with its criticism of the company’s refusal to recognize its global industrial relations partner.

President of the Amcor global trade union alliance, Lorraine Cassin says:

“How can this management refuse the opportunity to engage with our Alliance. Several industry leading multinational companies in this industry engage with our global unions in dialogue that benefits workers and the company. Amcor workers everywhere have the right to be respected, recognized, and listened to by management. We will not stop demanding this basic right.”

The Amcor Global Trade Union Alliance brings together Amcor worker representatives from around the company’s operations in all regions. This body works together to strengthen the rights and conditions of all working women and men throughout the company’s operations.

Management’s justification for refusing engagement with the Alliance is to not confuse local level dialogue that occurs throughout the group. The Alliance does not seek to disrupt this local level dialogue and believes international dialogue can successfully engage on key issues such as health and safety, core labour rights, and problem cases that are not solved locally. This is the model that works at other companies in the industry and what is demanded by Amcor workers internationally.

Due diligence legislation must be strong to protect workers – the EU can help make this happen

Accompanied by IndustriALL Global Union and industriAll Europe, Nazma Akter, president of Bangladesh Sommilito Garments Sramik Federation, Athit Kong, president of the Cambodian Apparel Workers’ Democratic Union, Habib Hazami, general secretary of Tunisian Textile, Clothing, Shoes and Leather Federation, and Khaing Zar Aung, president of the Industrial Workers Federation of Myanmar, attended a meeting hosted by MEPs Heidi Hautala and Agnes Jongerius on 27 April in the European Parliament.

Athit Kong emphasised that the EU has leverage. Workers and their unions in garment producing countries are looking to the EU to pass strong mandatory due diligence legislation with access to effective remedies. Trade relations can be used to improve the situation of workers in production countries.

The union leaders came with three key demands that rely on European action and support

Khaing Zar Aung, told MEPs that the EU’s MADE in Myanmar project, while well intentioned to promote decent work, legitimises the military and provides a front for workers’ rights violations and that income from the project helps fund the military. The EU must end it.

The Accord has made a huge difference to garment workers in Bangladesh by improving building and fire safety, but health and safety efforts must now also focus on occupational diseases, Nazma Akter stressed. She reiterated the need for all brands sourcing from Bangladesh to sign the International Accord.

Habib Hazami, IndustriALL Global co-chair of the textile and garment sector, also stressed the importance of the Accord and the need to extend it to the MENA region.

Christina Hajagos-Clausen said:

“Trade union voices from the production countries need to be heard and taken into account when it comes to the debate around the why mandatory due diligence is needed.” 

Judith Kirton-Darling, deputy general secretary industriAll Europe, said:

“It is depressing that despite undeniable progress, we still hear harrowing stories of unsafe and precarious working conditions, poverty wages, child labour and forced labour. Europe certainly has a role to play. We need a jigsaw of measures at EU level, including mandatory due diligence and an EU textiles strategy that bans unfair trade practice.”

IndustriAll Europe and IndustriALL Global Union are committed to continuing their joint efforts to hold companies accountable throughout their value chains.

The meeting in Brussels was part of a European advocacy tour calling for mandatory due diligence in the sector and the need for safe factories, which also took the union leaders to the ILO in Geneva, a conference hosted by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development in Berlin

Oil and gas workers in Iran on strike

Workers employed by sub-contractors in various projects in refineries and petrochemical complexes in the oil and gas fields of Southern Iran went on strike on 21 April, calling for a 79 per cent wage increase. The striking workers are also demanding better living conditions and an improved shift cycle, where they work 20 days and have ten paid days off. Workers travel far for work and want to have enough time off with their families.

The striking workers represent a variety of trades, like electricians, pipe fitters, scaffolders etc. and most of them are employed on precarious contacts.

The strikes have now spread to more than 80 workplaces and the workers vow to continue until their demands are met.

An offer from the government of 27 per cent was rejected, as prices on goods and services went up by 40 per cent in January alone, according to the Iranian Labor News Agency.

The workers’ demands are formulated by a Coordinating Committee, which IndustriALL affiliate Union of Metalworkers and Mechanics in Iran (UMMI) and other organizations contribute to. UMMI is part of the Coordinating Committee and supports the workers’ demands, but are not organizing the strike.

Says Kemal Özkan, IndustriALL assistant general secretary:

“IndustriALL Global Union stands in solidarity with the striking contract workers in Iran and their demands for increased wages as the cost of living is skyrocketing in the country. We commend your courage and determination to improve your working conditions.”

Photo credit: Iranwire

Fighting for decent work in the global minerals industry

The demand for these minerals has created a scramble by governments and multi-national companies to acquire deposits, mine and process them – with Chile, Australia and Democratic Republic of Congo important among the sources.

This scramble for minerals, and the mining involved, poses a wide range of environmental and labour rights issues for supply chains. The race to source these minerals comes with potentially severe environmental impacts, an increase in small-scale artisanal mining and outsourcing by multinationals to local contractors who may not be familiar with the OECD and other international environmental and safety standards, or respect workers’ rights.

Australian mining giant BHP declared 7,700 full time employees and 17,083 subcontractors in its South American operations. A fragmented workforce involving thousands of sub-contractors for mine-related activities like blasting, crushing, and transportation makes it much more difficult for workers to organize unions and collectively bargain for decent pay and safe working conditions.

Even after the collapse of the dam at the Brumadinho mine in Brazil that killed 270 people in 2019, BHP, which has a 50 per cent stake in the mine, ignored the recommendation of the National Contact Point in Brazil to provide evidence of a due diligence agreement with trade unions. 

But mining companies cannot ignore trade unions and the growing calls for responsible and sustainable mining forever. More and more countries are adopting due diligence legislation making large companies accountable for employment and environmental standards throughout their supply chain. This impacts not only the companies involved in mining but also the financial firms that invest in them, and the companies that make products using the minerals.

These pressures were reflected in the meeting of OECD governments on responsible business conduct earlier this year which agreed

“the indispensable role of minerals in achieving the transition to a low-carbon economy, and that responsible business conduct will be paramount in enabling a sustainable, diversified, and reliable supply in light of the increasing global demand.’’

Judith Kirton-Darling, Kemal Özkan, Liz Umlas and Blake Harwell.

Judith Kirton-Darling, Kemal Özkan, Liz Umlas and Blake Harwell

Against this backdrop, TUAC and IndustriALL Global Union organized a meeting for government officials and business representatives, kicking off the OECD Forum on Responsible Mineral Supply Chains.

“Meaningful dialogue with trade unions is how the OECD defines effective due diligence. Trade unions are here at the OECD to insist mining companies respect the OECD standards and ensure safe and decently paid work for everyone,”

said TUAC’s Blake Harwell.

“While the mineral intensity of the low carbon energy transition heralds another super cycle commodities boom, this is an opportunity to change the race to the bottom narrative that has characterized early boom cycles, to a race to the top narrative for workers and communities. The OECD due diligence standards offer a critical pathway towards the race to the top,”

said Kemal Özkan, IndustriALL assistant general secretary.

Judith Kirton-Darling, industriAll Europe deputy general secretary, said:

“IndustriAll Europe has long been calling for an active European industrial policy, of which critical raw materials are central in the green and digital transitions. Social conditionalities and mandatory human rights due diligence are fundamental – ensuring decent work is respected along global value chains! Legislative proposals are now on the table in Europe, but they must be strengthened to ensure responsible mining, processing, and recycling is promoted, as well as research and materials innovation. Workers must be at the heart of the Just Transition and must have a seat at every table. There should be nothing about us, without us.”

KMWU announce national strikes against anti-labour policies

“This is a declaration of war against unions. Government agencies are painting unions as corrupt and violent thugs, trade unionists are red-tagged," 

Said Yoon Jang Hyeok in his address to workers at the mass protest.

KMWU member at 19 April protest in Seoul

Over 10,000 KMWU members met in downtown Seoul where the KMWU president, Yoon Jang Hyeok, urged shopfloor activists to organize a warning strike on 31 May, followed by a national strike in July, in protest to the anti-labour policies passed by the Yoon Suk-Yeol regime.

“The government is pushing a law allowing 69 weekly working hours and derogation of the wage structure, including the minimum wage while giving Chaebols (family-controlled conglomerates) tax cuts and deregulation. The president is blocking the labour law reform needed to protect constitutional trade union rights,”

Jang Hyeok continued.

The KMWU is also calling on the government to reform article 2 and 3 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations Adjustment Act (TULRAA), as a necessary step after Korea ratified the ILO Convention 87 and 98 in April 2021.

KMWU insists that the amendment is crucial to expand the definition of a worker and protect subcontracted workers' rights to bargaining with primary employers. Existing provisions providing weak protection for striking workers must also be revised. 

Members of parliament have prepared a bill with a watered-down version of the revised articles 2 and 3 of TULRAA. The bill is now passed to a National Assembly committee dominated by the ruling party members. Even if the committee passes the bill, the Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol has announced that he will veto the bill if it is enacted.

KMWU says that although the bill expands the definition of employer, it doesn’t address important aspects like the disruption of the right to strike. The union says fundamental workers’ rights are still not fully adressed, but the bill is a step in the right direction, the fight for the revision of TULRAA will continue.

“IndustriALL Global Union stands in solidarity with Korean unions in the fight against the anti-labour policies and fully supports the general strike. We urge the government to honour its international obligations relating to the right to strike and collective bargaining after the ratification of the two ILO conventions.”

Said Kemal Özkan, IndustriALL assistant general secretary. 

More brands must sign the Accord – say global unions on 10th anniversary of Rana Plaza disaster

More than a thousand workers were killed and over 2,500 injured when the eight-storey Rana Plaza building on the outskirts of the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka collapsed on 24 April 2013. Deep structural cracks were discovered in the building, which housed factories making clothes for global brands, the day before the tragedy. However, garment workers were told to enter the factory complex the next morning or lose their jobs, despite their concerns over the building’s stability.

Ten years on, workers in Accord factories in Bangladesh are undeniably safer. The legally binding  Accord, orchestrated by IndustriALL and UNI in 2013 and signed with global brands and retailers, has since transformed factory safety in Bangladesh’s garment industry, given workers the right to refuse unsafe work, saved lives, supported freedom of association and increased collective bargaining.

Currently 194 brands and retailers are signed on to the Accord, covering around 2.4 million workers in Bangladesh, and 46 brands and retailers – and counting – have so far signed the Pakistan Accord, which will include 750,000 workers in that country once the inspection programme is implemented.

However, there are notable exceptions of brands who must take greater responsibility for worker safety in their supply chain – particularly U.S. companies like Levi’s, Gap, Walmart and Amazon who have refused to sign the Accord. The sign-on of brands like these will protect more garment and textile workers from dangerous conditions and will strengthen the push for the Accord’s renewal as it is set to expire in October 2023.

“Although significant progress in Bangladesh’s garment industry has been made, safe factories still need to be fought for,”

says Atle Høie, IndustriALL general secretary.

“Workers who produce the clothes that we wear deserve a workplace that provides them with a living wage and decent working conditions, not a workplace that threatens to take their lives. More brands need to join the Accord, especially in North America, to gain the leverage we need to extend it to more countries and make it a truly global Accord.”

Says Christy Hoffman, UNI Global Union general secretary:

“On this solemn anniversary, we mourn for the lives lost and forever changed by the Rana Plaza tragedy, and we honour them by making sure that another disaster like this never happens again. The best way to do that is to expand the Accord’s work and number of brand signatories.

“The Accord has a proven track record of making work safer, which is more than we can say for corporate-backed audits. In fact, some brands like Walt Disney demand that their factories meet Accord standards, and yet they have not committed to supporting its implementation by signing the agreement.”

To date, there have been nearly 56,000 inspections safety inspections across over 2,400 garment factories in Bangladesh. More than 140,000 safety instances corrected, and the total remediation progress rate across the factories currently covered Accord is 91 per cent. 

Labour needs a stronger position in UN binding treaty

Global unions are pushing for a legally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises.

In a written submission, the global unions argue for a clearer role of labour rights in the Treaty, particularly clarifying the type of liability applicable to negligence. The global unions believe that there is a risk of losing much-needed detail to truly achieve accountability for corporate human rights harms.

“Negotiations this year are crucial. There was a strong effort last year to negotiate a watered-down text, where the idea of a framework convention was introduced, which attempts to dilute the substance of the Treaty. We stand against this,”

says IndustriALL assistant general secretary Kemal Özkan.

In response to the discussion from some countries to re-open the debate on the scope, excluding state-owned enterprises, the global unions are clear that any deviation that would weaken the transnational coverage represents a major
setback.
 
Say the global unions:

“Fundamentally, we believe that the approach taken in the third revised draft of focusing the operational provisions of the LBI on crossborder activities of business enterprises while maintaining a broad scope, which includes transnational and other enterprises, responds to the mandate given by Human Rights Council Resolution 26/9 of 2014.”

“In this context, the coming EU directive on human rights due diligence will play an important role, as it gives the EU a clear mandate and direction in the negotiations,”

says Kemal Özkan.

“Our next step is to reach out to our affiliates to approach their governments and we will take joint action with industriAll Europe to address EU authorities about their position.”

 
 
 

Record wage increase for Japanese metal workers

In Japan, spring wage negotiations between unions and management take place on an annual basis. The Japan Council of Metalworkers’ Unions (JCM), representing two million metalworkers from more than 3,000 affiliated unions, set the standard of a unified demand on wages and working conditions for the annual rounds of industry-wide collective bargaining.
 
This year, the big companies in the metal sector released their decisions on the wage negotiations very quickly, with many agreeing to fully meet the union demands, considering the rising inflation and labour shortages in the industry.
 
JCM president Akihiro Kaneko said:

“We were able to achieve great synergy during the annual spring negotiations. Unions quickly received responses that matched their demands. Not only does this contribute to stability and security in the daily lives of the union members, it also raises the workplaces and competitiveness in the metal industry.”

JCM president Akihiro Kaneko

For many years, wages in Japan were stagnant due to deflation. But from 2014 and onwards, when additional wage increases were achieved for the first time in ten years, it reached YEN2,801 (US$21) in 2015 and this year’s raise is the highest since 2020.
 
In addition to the wage increase, JCM emphasizing the following outcome of the spring negotiations: