The supermarket giant, ASDA, has been ordered to pay £850,000 ($1.48 million) in compensation to employees for unlawfully offering them a financial inducement to give up their union rights. An Employment Tribunal on Feb. 10 found that ASDA’s anti-union activities was in breach of Section 1458 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations Consolidation Act of 1992.

The Tribunal ruled that ASDA had illegally tried to induce 340 trade union members to give up the collective agreement negotiated by their union, GMB. It ordered the company to pay each of the workers the sum of £2,500 ($4,355).

Paul Kenny, GMB’s acting general secretary, said: "The ASDA management needs to take a message from this — GMB is not going away and the union will fight on every front to protect our members¹ rights.”

Finland’s Unions Introduce Electronic Voting

Electronic voting via the Internet will be used in the upcoming election for council members of Finland’s Trade Union of Education (OAJ). Union members can vote in advance by logging in with a user name and a password on the membership site.

In the OAJ elections, 150 representatives will be chosen from the 377 candidates by the 90,000 voters. “If a member does not use the right to vote in advance, it is also possible to vote using the ballot boxes found in workplaces, i.e. schools and institutes,” said Pekka Silkosuo, an OAJ representative.

SysOpen Digia’s voting application has been widely used for several years in trade union elections, from the setting of candidates to the calculation of the results. The Internet voting system offers a cost-effective and speedy way of arranging different kinds of elections.

U.S. Teamsters Demand Release of Jailed Iranian Bus Drivers

Dozens of Teamsters participated in an International Day of Action at the Iranian offices in Washington to demand the release of hundreds of imprisoned bus drivers. The drivers were arrested after police brutally cracked down on a planned Jan. 28 strike.

“We call on the Iranian government to recognize the bus drivers’ right to form a union,” said Jim Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT). “We demand that the Iranian government release imprisoned union members and return all fired drivers to work immediately and unconditionally.”

The drivers, who belong to the 17,000-member Union of Workers of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, called the Jan. 28 strike to protest the detention of their union president, Mansour Osanloo. They are also demanding that the government recognize their union.

Korean Rail Workers to Strike in March

The Korean Railway Workers Union has decided to go on strike on March 1. The union said it would organize a large-scale outdoor rally with the three transportation-related unions: the Seoul Railroad Workers’ Union, the Truckers’ Union and the Taxi Drivers’ Union.

A major demand of the union is the early implementation of the five-day workweek system. It is also asking Korall, the employing company, to scrap its restructuring plan to reduce the size of its work force, reinstate some 70 laid-off workers and end discrimination of non-regular employees.

“Unless the company shows a sincere attitude at the negotiation tables and accepts our demands, we have no other choice but to strike, even if it would inconvenience train passengers,” a union representative said.

1,000 Textile Workers In Shandong Strike Against Low Pay

More than 1,000 workers at the cloth-weaving section of the Heze Cotton Textile Factory, formerly a state-owned enterprise in Shandong, have been staging a strike against low-pay since Feb. 10. Most of the striking workers are women and the strikers’ actions are said to have affected production in the company’s other factories.

The strike broke out because of low pay: each worker was given a little more than 300 yuan ($37) each month. A message posted on a mainland-based forum said that the workers in the Heze factory could not earn less than 5,000 yuan ($621) a year, but that each of the eight factory managers earned 500,000 ($62,120) yuan a year.

A security supervisor at the factory said that the strikers had been issued a form for them to fill out, asking them to sign it to agree to go back to work. If they did not sign it within 15 days, they would be considered resigning voluntarily.

Poland’s Steel Unions Hail Takeover By India's Billionaire

Three years after greeting the Mittal Group, owned by Indian billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, with suspicion and fear when it bought up Poland’s four biggest steelworks, Poland’s trade unions have been won over by the company and hailed it as their industry’s white knight. “Before privatization, the Polish steelworks stood on the edge of a financial precipice. Without a strategic investor, they were headed straight for bankruptcy,” said Wladyslaw Kielian, president of the Solidarity trade union at Mittal’s steelworks in the southern Polish city of Krakow.

After buying Poland’s four state-owned steelworks in 2004, Mittal took over their debts and poured huge amounts of cash into its Polish venture. And after several months of negotiations with unions, Mittal promised not to lay off a single worker against his will until 2009. At the same time, the company announced pay increases and a “privatization bonus” of up to 3,000 zlotys ($95) per worker.

Under plans agreed to between Poland and the European Union, Mittal is to cut back its Polish work force from 15,000 in 2004 to 10,500 by the end of 2006. But rather than casting off superfluous manpower, the steel giant has offered tempting severance packages, promising the equivalent of up to 32 months’ pay. Around 2,000 employees have accepted the offer.

Our weekly “LaborTalk” and “World of Labor” columns, as well as our labor materials, can be viewed at www.laboreducator.org.

Harry Kelber’s e-mail address is hkelber@igc.org.