A mass strike in Peru has proven successful, despite government efforts to downplay the effect the strike has had on a number of mining enterprises. The strike was called by ICEM affiliate National Federation of Mining, Metallurgy, and Steel Workers Union (FNTMMSP) on 30 April and, by all accounts, over 40 copper, nickel, zinc, iron, gold, and silver mining operations have lost high levels of production since last week.

The strike can easily be said to be a success, with the government already guaranteeing higher social benefits for contract and agency workers at the outset of the strike. After the union’s return to tri-partite bargaining on 4 May, and following cessation of the strike, FNTMMSP is now pushing for further regularisation of the contract labour status, which needs to include the right to unionisation for contract workers.

The strike by the 28,000-member FNTMMSP saw roughly half of Peru’s 110,000 miners participating. This included a good number of the mining sector’s 50,000 contract or agency workers.

Peru’s Labour Minister Susanna Pinilla, however, has taken to the airwaves and has been quoted in the business press playing down the success of the strike. Throughout last week’s strike, she kept providing a regular narrative of mining operations in Peru that continued production.

The mining union federation, FNTMMSP, covering some 75 individual site-level unions, has complained bitterly to the government for some time that the Labour Ministry and other monitors have failed to keep pace with the burgeoning number of agencies or contract labour providers doing business in Peru’s booming mining industry. Many of these agencies and service providers operate in the black.

“The over-exploitation of these workers has been going on for too long,” said FNTMMSP Sec. Gen. Luis Castillo Carlos, who himself has participated in ICEM conferences on Contract and Agency Labour. “The miners’ strike was called because the authorities lack the political will to enforce labour rights,” he added.

FNTMMSP and its affiliated mining unions are seeking strict regularisation of mining employment agencies; enhanced profit-sharing arrangements for its members and newly-established profit-sharing for contract and agency workers; shorter work days; and improved pension benefits.

The 30 April strike actually started two days earlier when miners from two sites of Grupo Mexico-connected Southern Peru Copper Co. blocked roads around Ilo, Peru. Southern Peru’s mines in Toquepala and Cuajone suffered deep production losses during the strike. FNTMMSP held marches in several regions on 1 May, and also conducted rallies on 2 May and 4 May at the Labour Ministry in Lima.

A sampling of mining operations in Peru affected by the strike includes: Southern Peru Copper Co.; US-operated Doe Run’s La Oroya copper and lead smelting operations; several of Volcan Cia Minera SA’s zinc smelters; BHP Billiton’s Tintaya copper operations in Cusco; Chinese state-run Shougang Hierroperu’s iron ore mines in the country’s south; Glencore International AG’s Los Quenuales zinc operation; Cia. De Minas Buenaventura; and zinc producers Cia. Minera Santa Luisa SA and Cia. Minera Raura SA.

At US-based Newmont Mining’s Yanacocha SRL’s gold mine and smelter, South America’s largest gold operation, miners conducted a march and protest in support of FNTMMSP’s strike.

One already achieved result of the strike is that the government did commit to increase the number of labour inspectors in Peru from 100 to 250 by the end of the year. That should help in monitoring and in getting agency labour agencies to comply with Peruvian law.

Despite Labour Minister Pinilla downplaying the effect of the strike, one cabinet minister did publicly confirm the significance of the strike. “The demands voiced by these workers are fair,” stated Energy and Mines Minister Juan Valdivia in a published report.

Referring to the vast proliferation of service-providing entities inside Peru’s mining sector, he added, “There are companies that comply and others that don’t. The ones that do not respect labour rights should be punished,” said Valdiva.

Some three months after miners of AVVS de Moederbond trade union in Suriname staged a strike at a Canadian-based gold-mining enterprise, called IAM Gold, they know their rewards. A new collective agreement was formally signed 25 April 2007, giving 900 miners their first collective agreement.

It was the second strike within a year at the two-year-old gold pits – both against Canadian mining houses. IAM Gold bought the central Suriname site from Ciambor Inc. late in 2006. AVVS de Moederbond hit already that Canadian company with a strike that lasted four days in May 2006.

This first labour accord serves as a strong precedent in the resource-rich South American country, since new mining development is occurring and IAM Gold is keenly interested in moving into eastern Suriname.

In this initial three-year collective agreement, miners will receive a 24% increase, retroactive to 1 January 2007. They will also receive a 10% raise in 2008. In 2009, the union and management will negotiate a further raise.

In addition, the union won improved medical care and child benefits, while the vacation scheme was enhanced. In signing the agreement on 25 April, IAM Gold, a company with assets in Botswana, Ghana, Mali, Peru, and other South American countries, expressed public conviction to AVVS de Moederbond President Errol Snijders that it will build a trusting, cooperative relationship with the mining union.

President Errol Snijders

IAM Gold, founded in 1996, holds joint venture stakes with AngloGold Ashanti in Mali, Goldfields in Ghana, and owns the Mupane gold mine in Botswana. Mupane is a shared enterprise with the state, and the ten-year lease with civil society comes due in the year 2013.

IAM Gold was a takeover target of Goldfields in the recent past, but the deal failed when shareholders of Goldfields rejected it. IAM Gold, in 2006, acquired Gallery Gold, and has several shared investments with Battle Mountain Gold. It also has mining interests in Senegal and Tanzania in Africa, and in Argentina, Brazil, and Ecuador in South America.

The Toronto-based company also holds mining interests in Canada and collects mining royalties on Canadian precious-metal mining.

As an election nears for workers at the Firestone Rubber Plantation in Harbel, Liberia, violence broke out during a three-day strike. Riot police stormed a picket line on 27 April, clubbing and tear gassing strikers. Some two-dozen workers were hospitalised, at least two seriously.

The police violence came one month before some 6,000 agriculture workers will vote on their choice of union representative. An insurgent union, called the Firestone Agriculture Workers Union (FAWU), has strong support among workers tapping rubber at this million-acre rubber plantation owned by Bridgestone Corporation of Japan.

The FAWU succeeded on 9 April in getting Liberia’s Labor Ministry to conduct the election against the General Agriculture and Allied Workers’ Union (GAAWUL), the recognised union that FAWU activists accuse of malfeasance and providing little or no representation.

The police force, which included electric shocks from batons, occurred after strikers had questioned contract workers who were unloading rubber from trucks. The three-day strike was nearing an end at the time, with Firestone managers and workers nearly in agreement on issues related to the strike.

Government and local officials denied calling out the police, and indications are that Firestone Rubber Plantation managers called for the forceful police raid. NGO and trade unions, who have been monitoring the longstanding trouble surrounding this rubber plantation, videotaped some of this police violence.

While plantation workers count down to a union election, scheduled by the government for the last week of May, Bridgestone is defending itself in a US court against charges of longstanding child labour practices, other slave-like employment practices, and environmental degradation at the Firestone plantation. The Alien Tort Claims Act lawsuit in a US federal courtroom has been brought by the International Labor Rights Fund and 35 plaintiffs, including ICEM affiliate United Steelworkers.

The ICEM teamed with the International Transport Workers´ Federation (ITF) in applying pressure on President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The ICEM also lodged strong protest to Kabila over the dispute by workers at the Société Minière de Bakwanga (MIBA), a diamond extraction company.

The transport matter concerned the unfair and arbitrary arrest of trade unionist Leon Ngoy Bululu, vice-president of ITF-affiliated Solidarité Syndicale des Travailleurs et Cadres du Congo (SOLIDARITE).

He was arrested on 20 April 2007, following an appearance on a 14 March television programme on the Molière channel. In the broadcast, he reportedly spoke out against ongoing mismanagement of the national transport company, Office National des Transports (ONATRA). Mr. Bululu was arrested at his office by agents of the Brigade Criminelle du parquet de la Gombe and detained, following a complaint by the management of the transport company.

ONATRA employs 17,800 workers throughout DRC’s five provinces: Kinshasa, Bas-Congo, Bandungu, Equateur and the Province Orientale. Among the issues raised by Comrade Bululu was the fact that the company keeps hiring new workers, over 1,200 recently, even though wages for current workers are delayed by four months.

Bululu was first imprisoned at the "Parquet de Grande Instance de la Gombe." Later, he was transferred to the notorious Makala prison, where he finds himself incarcerated without due and diligent legal processes. Efforts to find out more about his current condition have, so far, been without result.

Both ICEM and ITF call for his immediate release, which they say is clear and calculated trade union repression.

The diamond mining dispute at state-run Société Minière de Bakwanga (MIBA), a diamond extraction operation near Mbuji-Mayi, in south-central Kasai-Oriental Province, has forced a strike by workers also over non-payment of wages. The strike began 23 April.

MIBA is some seven months behind in paying wages.

A joint trade union delegation is furthermore demanding a return of social benefits that the government has taken away from diamond miners and others, and calls on the company to provide adequate equipment to guarantee health and safety.

Participating unions in the strike are FENAMICO, SYTRAME, CTP, GST, SYGEMI, SLC, FGTK, FTF, all of which are ICEM affiliates, and FOSYCO, which is affiliated to the International Energy & Mines Organisation (IEMO).

A gem-polishing dispute that saw intense ICEM involvement in 2001 has flared again at Almond Jewellery in Bangkok. The New York-based jewellery exporter locked out 254 workers on 9 April.

Workers are in protest over the firing of two key leaders of the plant-level union, which occurred in September 2006, and management’s refusal to enter into to obligatory social talks over renewed labour terms. Workers began picketing the factory on 17 April. On 19 April, 200 of Almond’s workers marched to the Government House in Bangkok and presented a petition. They were joined by trade union leaders from ICEM’s Thai-affiliated unions.

Almond unionists marched to Govt House on 19 April

A government representative met with leaders of the workers at Almond, and pledged to investigate the lockout within seven days. That is now in progress.

Almond is continuing to operate the gem-polishing factory with a small number of regular workers and some 400-500 agency workers.

The contract dispute started in late January, after the union requested the re-opening of contract talks. Managers responded by demanding benefits back from workers that had previously been obtained during negotiations. Managers then made threats of dismissal to workers if they engaged in union activity, and they have forced some workers to sign petitions indicating their withdrawal from the union.

The ICEM obtained bargaining rights for workers at Almond’s factory in Bangkok in late 2001. Then, Almond had sacked over 50 workers, including the entire leadership of the plant-level committee. The ICEM pressured Almond’s owners to reinstate the workers, begin negotiations with the union, and to drop lawsuits the company brought against leaders for legitimate trade union activity.

Almond’s New York-based leader Jonathan Mandelbaum agreed to a four-point charter, which included the above. Since 2001, gem-polishing workers made positive gains in negotiations with managers. Almond’s managers now seek to dismantle those gains.

But workers have been tested before, and the 19 April march and protest at the Government House signals renewed resistance. Workers are demanding the re-hiring of plant-level President Patoom Kamdeewan and Committee Member Akom Thongdeewan, and are insisting on backpay for both, as well as for all locked-out workers.

Former ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs talking to
Thai Almond workers in 2001

The united workforce is seeking a 5% wage increase, plus a bonus payment. Workers seek a monthly-wage pattern, instead of daily wages, and demand that Almond pay them a transportation allowance.

They also are demanding inclusion of contract and agency workers under terms of the collective bargaining agreement.

The ICEM supports these demands as fair and just.

ICEM affiliate Argentine Federation of Private Oil and Workers Union (FASPyGP) launched a series of rolling strikes to oil and gas production on 3 May across several provinces of the South American nation. The dispute is over a continued wage impasse between the union and several companies, covering 35,000 workers.

The companies have balked at paying 2007 wage increases of 20%, an amount FASPyGP claims is only 45 minutes of combined production in oil and gas fields. The strikes have occurred at gas deposits near Mendoza and Salta, and other energy extraction in the provinces of Tierra del Fuego, Chubut, and Neuquén y Santa Cruz.

The companies being targeted include Repsol YPF, Argentine-British Pan American Energy, Apache, Argentina’s PlusPetrol, as well as units of major energy producers, such as Petrobras and ExxonMobil. The industry has offered only 15% increases.

Oil and gas companies doing exploratory and extraction work in Argentina have increased gas output by 5.2% in the first quarter of 2007, while oil production has jumped 4.9%. The companies export some 65% of all production and with oil and gas prices remaining high, multinationals have prospered from the country’s natural resources.

The government of Nestor Kirchner has called on oil and gas companies to expand their investment efforts in Argentina’s energy sector, as well as to compensate oil and gas workers fairly as a means to curbing consumer price inflation.

More than 300 rubber workers mobilised to direct action recently in Callao, Argentina, seeking a negotiated settlement already agreed to with major rubber companies. The workers marched to the office of the Work Ministry behind the banner of ICEM affiliate Sindicato Unico Trabajores del Neumático Argentina (SUTNA), demanding the negotiated package that is already in place at the major tyre producers, Bridgestone, Pirelli, and FATE.

The labour dispute is currently before a government conciliation process.

Earlier this year, SUTNA won 38% wage increases for 4,000 workers at the major firms. SUTNA Gen. Sec. Pedro Wasiejko also has pledged that, in this round of national rubber bargaining, no worker would earn less than 2,741 pesos (€ 600) per month.

The 300 rubber workers in Callao have placed this minimum monthly salary demand as a priority. They also seek the pay packages earned at the tyre factories.

Wasiejko said that across the entire Argentine rubber sector, labour costs are but a small fraction of total production costs. According to the Argentine labour leader, rubber companies can afford the pay raises. Such labour cost increases will not affect the customer or the consumer.

Spanish and Portuguese workers of Compagnie Saint-Gobain will join French workers in strike action on 11 May, as called by four unions at all French plants of the major global glass and materials producer.

The strike has the united support of the CGT, CFDT, FO, and CFTC, and the four unions have called 60,000 Saint-Gobain workers to strike in protest to the Paris-based company’s industrial decisions.

Central among issues is Saint-Gobain’s uncertainty over its Desjonquères glass business. Saint-Gobain is exploring either a sale or a spin-off of this business.

The workers’ representatives in France, which called for the 11 May action, say the company has made strategic choices that have adversely affected employment. They cite the acquisition of British Plasterboard as one example of a non-strategic business decision.

Trade union representatives from France met with Spanish and Portuguese glass-union leaders in Lisbon on 17 April to plan next week’s action.

The one-hour strike this coming Friday is just another in a series of escalating protests to Paris managers of Saint-Gobain. In February, the four unions already brought hundreds of workers from four factories to a manifestation outside the company’s headquarters at La Défense near Paris.

Saint-Gobain workers demonstrating early 2007

Saint-Gobain faces labour turmoil in other sectors in France as well. On 6 March, 100 workers took strike action at an abrasives factory in Nazelles-Négron. The CGT called that strike over stalled wage negotiations. Another recent strike at a Saint-Gobain plant in Châteaubernard tells the level of discontent inside the company. A spontaneous monetary collection by workers at another operation netted €7,788 for the Châteaubernard strikers.

Italy’s three major unions came together on 23 April for an eight-hour strike against Pfizer pharmaceutical. The unions protested Pfizer’s destructive job losses at a time in which the US-based company is posting record earnings.

Italian unions FILCEM-CGIL, FEMCA-CISL, and UILCEM-UIL rallied 2,400 workers at a manifestation in Rome at the offices of the Labour Ministry and the Economic Development Ministry.

Inside a mass worldwide restructuring plan, Pfizer has targeted the sacking of 440 research and development staff in Italy, as well as curtailment of antibiotic production in Varese, Italy. The unions also object to the February sale of a business in Nerviano, and cite some 2,200 staff that have been discharged since 2003.

Workers at the Rome manifestation included staff from four Pfizer worksites – Latina, Ascoli, Pisticci, and Nerviano – which are affected under the giant drug-maker’s restructuring plan.

Pfizer earlier this year announced that 10,000 jobs would be cut worldwide. The company announced this in the face of quarterly profit returns of US$9.45 billion. Pfizer cited competition from generic drug-makers as a reason for the 2007 restructuring.

An eleventh hour wage settlement by petroleum companies and workers has averted a scheduled strike by 5,500 members of Belgian trade unions. Sectoral bargaining in Belgium’s energy sector had hit a standstill and was heading to a 10 May strike, before trade unions and industry representations reached accord late last week.

Workers are now studying the proposal and are expected to vote on the offer soon.

ExxonMobil and Total refineries near Antwerp would have been severely affected, and the industry association predicted a crippling supply and transport problem of 700,000 barrels per day if the strike had happened. It predicted fuel pump increases and shortages.

Other oil and petro-chemical operations attached to Belgium’s employers’ association also would have been affected.

The major oil refiners and some others had begun decreasing production in late April to order to guarantee safe and secure shutdowns in the event of a strike.

Union members of the United Steelworkers (USW) in eastern Canada ended a seven-week strike at the Iron Ore Co. of Canada (IOC) two weeks ago. USW members, numbering some 1,300 at two Canadian locations, approved five-year labour agreements, on 25 April and 26 April.

IOC is 59% owned by Australian mining company Rio Tinto. It is Canada’s largest producer and exporter of iron ore.

The new accord gives workers wage increases over the five-year term, as well as a ratification bonus of C$4,000 per worker. It also gives workers increases in pension benefits, lifts the ceiling on medical benefits, and grants travel allowance increases.

More importantly, the strike blocked IOC’s attempt to gain unlimited right to contract out work, and miners and dockworkers preserved their seniority language.

The successful strike counted some 1,050 miners and iron ore processing plant workers in Labrador City, province Newfoundland. That strike began on 8 March. On 19 March, 250 port and dock workers at Sept-Iles, province Quebec, strengthened the strike by their walk-out.

IOC is a major exporter of iron ore pellets and concentrates to steelmakers in Europe and Asia. Besides Rio Tinto’s majority stake, publicly-traded Labrador Iron Ore Income Fund has an ownership stake. That holding, admitted in a 3 May posting, that the strike affected the timing of cargo shipments, which will affect IOC’s first quarter 2007 sales and earnings.

Union members of ICEM affiliate Engineering Printing & Manufacturing Union (EPMU) in New Zealand were back to work on 4 May, following a three-day lockout imposed by Australian-based Amcor paper and packaging company.

Fifty EPMU members were locked off their jobs at a paper converting facility in Auckland on 1 May. The workers were resisting staffing cuts that would have reduced the factory to unsafe manning levels.

“These workers were prepared to stick this out as long as it took,” stated EPMU National Secretary Andrew Little. “They are relieved this dispute has come to a close so quickly.”

Amcor lock-out in New-Zealand

Added Little, “Our members tried to negotiate in good faith and were met with the most extreme and militant response an employer can make. It’s good to see common sense has prevailed and they can now get back to doing their jobs under fair and equitable circumstances.”

The negotiated end of the lockout consisted of maintaining staffing levels without redundancies, an extra week’s service and shift leave, the industry standard pay raise, and a day’s pay to cover part of the lockout period.

Amcor, a major global producer of flexible packaging, last week announced a European restructuring plan that could cut 900 of the company’s 7,600-member workforce in Europe. The plan focuses on shifting work to Eastern and Southern Europe. The company triggered this restructuring in February, by announcing construction of a plastic extrusion facility in Poland.

The ICEM has expressed shock and anger at the mid-April killing of General Federation of Iraq Workers (GFIW) Vice-President Moaaid Hamid and his wife. The two were killed in the province of Nineveh during a clash between forces of the Iraqi army and terrorist elements inside the province.

Hamid was a contributor to the founding of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions in 2003, before that trade union centre evolved into the GFIW. He had been a victim of Saddam’s regime against free and independent trade unions, and after the invasion, had been abducted and tortured by terrorists before he was freed by Iraqi security forces.

In a letter to the GFIW, the ICEM wrote, “This appalling violence, coming as it does so soon after the abduction, torture, and subsequent murder of Najim Abd-Jasem, the General Secretary of the Mechanic Workers’ Union of your Federation, strengthens our view that there is a systematic campaign to eliminate the leadership of the newly formed independent and democratic unions that strongly oppose sectarianism.”

The letter was sent by ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda on 29 April 2007.

ICEM affiliate Petroleum, Mining, Chemical Workers’ in Palestine (GUPMCWP) undertook a two-day course in Ramallah on trade union education and committee building. The workshops took place 27-28 April.

The training for 25 workers is a continuation of programmes and practices that the union is engaged in to build a democratic trade union movement.

In February, some 60 Palestinian labour activists took part in a similar seminar, also in the Palestinian West Bank city of Ramallah.

Workers in Palestine have suffered immeasurably due to restrictions by the Israeli military on freedom of movement to and from jobs. The production of goods from Palestine and the providing of services have also stricken the country’s economy, in what the ICEM has stated is “collective punishment of a people.”

Viable and democratic trade unions hold the future for growth and a measure of prosperity for millions of Palestinians, the ICEM believes. To help achieve that, the ICEM has established a programme with GUPMCWP that includes training for women workers inside Birzeit Pharmaceutical, a factory that has experienced shortages of raw products due to delays caused by the Israeli authorities.

GUPMCWP President Mohammad Mousa Jadallah

GUPMCWP President Mohammad Mousa Jadallah said that the Palestinians that are hurt the most by Israel’s blockade on movement, trade, and revenues are women, children, and the elderly.

Jadallah said the union’s workers’ training programmes will heighten awareness to potential gains that can be made for all Palestinian workers.

Nabeel Mahmmoud, GUPMCWP’s International Director, said the training serves as basic organising, and that building of democratic committee structures inside workplaces – particularly Birzeit Pharmaceutical – is a necessity in Palestine to alleviate poverty.