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Press

Ecuadorian management of Swiss-based cement producer Holcim Group fired 90 workers for attempting to form a union in the South American country. The sacked workers are seeking international help in asserting their right to organize, both with government officials and with the company. ICEM is coordinating action with Swiss affiliate Syndicat Industrie &amp; B&acirc;timent (SIB).

Cement Giant Holcim Sacks Workers in Ecuador

ICEM sent condolences to Pakistan affiliate WAPDA Labour Union over a gas explosion 25 May that killed 17 miners at the Sunjidi coal mine in Balachistian province. The area is rich in coal reserves, but the mines have notoriously poor safety records. A private company which leases land from the government operates the Sunjidi mine. ICEM is calling on the Pakistani government to put in place more stringent health and safety controls.

Gas Blast in Pakistan Coal Mine Kills 17

Trade union leaders from ten sub-Saharan African nations met at the NUM&rsquo;s Elijah Barayi Training Center outside Johannesburg in May to discuss forming a Workers&rsquo; Network of Eskom employees. Utility union leaders from Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe&mdash;along with representatives of the electricity provider&mdash;were present. Agreement was reached to launch a study tour to the countries to determine actual working terms and conditions of Eskom workers in each nation.

African Unions Formulate Plans for Eskom Utility Network

German IGBCE, French FCE CFDT and EMCEF, the European workers&rsquo; federation in chemical, energy and mining sectors, met in Paris 4 May and issued a declaration on the impending Sanofi-Synthelabo and Aventis pharmaceutical merger. The combined firm&rsquo;s two biggest unions vowed to prevent site closures and job loss, maintain existing rights and obligations, and asks that the new management team be innovative inside the framework of existing social dialogue.

German, French Unions Meet over Aventis, Sanofi Merger

The Uribe government and the Colombian oil firm Ecopetrol has escalated a 19-day strike by Union Sindical Obrera (USO) by sacking another 40 workers. The government has ruled the strike illegal on the &ldquo;essential service&rdquo; theory of oil refining. The ICEM argues that ILO jurisprudence regarding that definition proves differently. The government has now sacked 60.

Colombian Government Declares War on Oil Union

The Ukrainian government has transferred some new funds to the country's cash-starved nuclear power stations. However, the sums involved are far from enough to resolve the ongoing crisis over the non-payment of nuclear workers' wages. 
Information on the payments and other government moves has just been received by the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM) from the Ukrainian nuclear workers' union ATU, which is an ICEM affiliate. 
 
Workers at Chernobyl and Ukraine's four other nuclear power stations will launch an indefinite strike on 22 March unless the wage backlog of more than 15 million US dollars is paid off by then. 
 
A decree to provide new credits for the power stations, specifically in order to pay off the wage debt, was signed into force yesterday. But the total earmarked in the decree is 120 million hryvnia - and the sector's total debt has now risen to 150 billion hryvnia. Credits actually transferred to the power stations' bank accounts between 1 March and 9 March amounted to 4,319,000 hryvnia. 
 
Prime Minister Valery Pustovoitenko met the directors of the nuclear power stations yesterday, and a further meeting between the Prime Minister and the unions was scheduled for today. 
 
The ATU Presidium will meet on 17 March to examine the government's measures to date. 
 
Meanwhile, the commission established last week to tackle the problem of Ukraine's massive unpaid electricity, heating, gas and coal bills has started work under the personal supervision of Deputy Prime Minister V. Kurachenko. The commission is empowered to cut off all supplies to major defaulters. 
 
According to information received by the ATU, the commission has already decided to cut off some 18,000 Ukrainian enterprises.

Ukrainian Nuclear Crisis - Government Transfers Some Wage Funds - But Not Enough

ICEM affiliates in Colombia are on course to a unified strategy on how best to organize and face the many obstacles of building free and democratic trade unions in the war-torn country. After three weeks of meetings through April, leaders of the affiliates working with ICEM resource people have identified a number of hurdles including contract labour as major threats to organizing.

Colombia Affiliates Dialogue Under ICEM Education Project

Global tyremaker Continental faced coordinated protests on both sides of the Atlantic over the past 24 hours by union leaders from 16 countries. 
 
Demonstrations took place in Akron, Ohio - a centre of the US rubber industry - and in London, England, where the tyre industry is holding a major European trade exhibition. Coordinating the campaign is the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), which represents tyre workers worldwide. 
 
The current protests centre on Continental's treatment of striking (and locked-out) workers at its General Tire plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. But union leaders have also voiced concern over the company's declared worldwide strategy of shifting production to &quot;low-cost&quot; areas. 
 
The core issue in the American dispute is that &quot;Conti&quot; is refusing to pay the going rate among leading employers of US tyre workers, even though the plant is now profitable. The American workers accuse Conti of failing to bargain in good faith and of trying to break the Charlotte local of their union, the USWA. After provoking a strike, the company drafted in &quot;permanent replacement&quot; workers last September, thus effectively locking out and dismissing the strikers. 
 
In 1995, after Continental bought General Tire, the workers bailed out the Charlotte plant by &quot;giving back&quot; about 90 million dollars in pay and benefits cuts. Charlotte is now showing a healthy profit, but the company is still refusing to bring its pay and conditions up to standard. 
 
Taking part in the Akron protests yesterday were tyre workers' leaders from ICEM-affiliated unions in Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Germany, Guatemala, Japan, Malaysia, Morocco, Slovenia, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the USA and Venezuela. Their demo was held in front of a retail outlet that sells Conti tyres. 
 
And in London this morning, protesters from ICEM-affiliated British unions rolled bald tyres up and down outside the TYREXPO Europe 99 exhibition. Time To Run Continental's Greed Off The Road proclaimed one placard at the London demo, while another said Reinstate 1,450 Sacked Continental Workers In North Carolina USA. 
 
&quot;We will take our campaign against Continental to wherever they do business, here or abroad,&quot; John Sellers pledged in Akron yesterday. Sellers is Executive Vice-President of the USWA and heads the union's Rubber And Plastics Industry Conference. &quot;German multinational corporations would not be allowed to abuse workers this way in Germany,&quot; Sellers declared, &quot;and we're not going to tolerate such behaviour in the United States, either.&quot; 
 
&quot;We are proud to join forces with our American brothers and sisters in protesting against Continental's actions in Charlotte,&quot; said British union leader Bert Hill. He is from British ICEM affiliate the GMB, which organises workers at Continental's Newbridge tyre plant in Scotland. Hill is currently in Akron. 
 
&quot;Continental has been systematically trying to wrest concessions from our members in Scotland,&quot; he stated, &quot;and we know we have to stand together in solidarity with other Continental workers in other countries against our common employer.&quot; 
 
 
UNIONS DRAW UP GLOBAL STRATEGY 
 
Hill and union leaders from Germany, France, Turkey, South Africa and the US met yesterday to plan a common strategy to support the Charlotte strikers. 
 
&quot;Continental's actions in the United States are a disgrace,&quot; said Jacques Caltot, who heads the rubber division of the ICEM-affiliated French union FCE-CFDT. &quot;We will continue to press Continental to adhere to international labour standards wherever it does business, and we will support the USWA strike in Charlotte until a fair and just agreement can be reached.&quot; 
 
&quot;The situation at Continental is typical of a problem that we are going to have to tackle globally,&quot; commented ICEM Vice-President Fred Higgs just after the London demo. &quot;Companies that pride themselves on being respectable employers in Europe often act very differently in contexts like the United States. We are going to be exerting the fullest possible pressure to secure the reinstatement of all the 1,450 Charlotte workers who have been so unjustly and ungratefully treated by Continental.&quot; 
 
Also heading up the London demo was Earl Pabst, President of the union local in Charlotte. 
 
&quot;The support over here is even stronger than I had imagined,&quot; Pabst said. &quot;Today's event has taken our message to another level.&quot; 
 
Asked what he wanted as a next step, Pabst replied: &quot;I want the scabs [strikebreakers] out and us back in.&quot; 
 
Meanwhile, he said, the union would be expanding an &quot;informational campaign&quot; of leafletting customers outside US retailers that sell Continental tyres. &quot;We're now contacting retailers across the USA,&quot; Pabst added. &quot;We're telling them who we are and what we want, and we're explaining that we're with them, not against them.&quot; 
 
In Akron, ICEM General Secretary Vic Thorpe pledged continuing global union support for the American workers' campaign. 
 
&quot;Our affiliated unions around the world are behind the USWA,&quot; Thorpe said. &quot;We will show Continental there are serious consequences for its violation of workers' rights.&quot;

Continental Tyres Faces Intercontinental Trouble

Workers at Chernobyl and Ukraine's four other nuclear power stations will launch an indefinite strike on 22 March over unpaid wages. 
 
Their union, the ATU, confirmed this in a message received today by the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM). The ATU is an ICEM affiliate. 
 
The nuclear workers are now owed more than 15 million US dollars' worth of back pay. They have repeatedly warned that serious underfunding of the sector poses a threat to nuclear safety. 
 
The strike decision was taken after an arbitration board ruled that the nuclear power utility Energoatom is in breach of its collective agreement with the workers. Subsequent attempts at conciliation failed. 
 
The number of protesting workers in the &quot;tent villages&quot; around the power stations has now grown to more than 2,000. They launched a hunger strike on 6 March, and workers in various other Ukrainian sectors have demonstrated in support. 
 
Strikes and underground sit-ins are also continuing in Ukraine's coalmines, where miners are owed pay totalling more than 700 million US dollars. The ICEM-affiliated miners' union MITU has said the strikes will continue indefinitely. 
 
Cash-flow has slowed to a trickle in most parts of the Ukrainian economy. In consequence, most bills go unpaid - or are part-settled with bartered produce. This also applies to the energy bills run up by industrial and other consumers. 
 
After repeated appeals from the nuclear workers' leaders, a meeting with Ukrainian Prime Minister Valery Pustovoitenko finally took place on 5 March. He was informed about the escalation of the union action, and was told that the campaign had gained international support through the ICEM. 
 
It was agreed to set up a special commission, which was due to begin work today. The commission will examine the non-payment of electricity, heating, coal and gas bills and has the authority to cut off supplies to major defaulters. 
 
Further talks are scheduled for tomorrow. 
 
The Ukrainian miners and nuclear workers can count on full international union support, ICEM General Secretary Vic Thorpe repeated today. 
 
&quot;The situation in Ukraine gives cause for real concern by the world community as a whole,&quot; Thorpe said. &quot;The world must insist that these wage debts be paid off without further delay. Major international funding has been pledged for the modernisation of the Ukrainian nuclear sector and the restructuring of Ukrainian mining. As large a proportion of that funding as is necessary must now be earmarked for settling the wage debts in those industries. The workers' wages must have first call on the finances available. Natural justice - and international safety - demands this.&quot;

Chernobyl Strike Starts 22 March

An ICEM Nuclear Power Union Network is out of the starting blocks after 14-15 April meetings in Brussels. The network will be formalized at a conference tentatively set for 27-30 August in Romania. Unionists from affiliates in Belgium, Canada, Romania, UK and US attended the Brussels meetings.

Nuclear Power Network Forms with ICEM Assistance

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