Unions on April 28 Memorialize the Dead and Vow to Help the Living

In dozens of countries around the world, trade unions are observing April 28, the day they traditionally honor workers who died or were injured in accidents at their workplaces. There will be candlelight vigils, prayers, marches, meetings and many resolutions calling for strengthening the protective features of health and safety laws. There will be banners proclaiming; the popular motto: “Remember the dead and fight for the living.”

April 28 became an international day in 1996 at the United Nations in New York City when a global union delegation lit a commemoration Candle and Incense to highlight the plight of workers who die, are injured or become ill because of poor safety conditions in their workplaces. Since then, the international labor movement has promoted April 28 as a global observance day.

In the United States, a new bill, the Protecting America’s Workers Act was introduced in Congress on April 22 that would strengthen and modernize the protective features of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA). Under the eight years of the Bush administration, enforcement was lax; employers who violated the health and safety laws were often allowed to rectify the violations on their own, without penalty.

Royal Mail Imposes Wage Freeze on Its 181,000 Staff

Royal Mail risked a showdown with trade unions on April 24 by imposing a wage freeze on its 181,000 staff, the biggest workforce to have been penalized so far in the recession. The British Transport Police (BT) has already frozen the pay of its 100,000 workers, and UNITE, the union, has agreed to a temporary pay freeze for 13,500 cabin crew members at British Airways. A large number of carmakers have introduced either pay freezes or cuts in income, as they have reduced working hours.

This is the first time that the postal group has decided to freeze staff pay. Unions warned that it would lead to “strife” and inevitable industrial conflict. Two years ago, Royal Mail faced its first national strike in 11 years, when a dispute over pay and working conditions spiraled into the worst industrial action at the group in more than 20 years.

Dave Ward, deputy general secretary of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), said: “The people who run Royal Mail have again misjudged an important decision. For Britain’s highest-paid civil servant to impose a pay freeze on workers who earn less than the average U.K. wage is outrageous. This inequality will lead to strife.” Ward called on Royal Mail to withdraw its pay freeze order.

Nestlé Brazil Union Beats Attack on New Retirees’ Medical Care

Swift action by the Federation of Food Industry Workers of Sao Paulo has beaten back an attempt by Nestle Brazil to make new retirees pay for global cost-cutting through their reduced medical benefits. Currently, medical coverage for all retired Nestle Brazil employees includes health care services and the cost of medicines. In late March, Nestle management, without consulting the union, began pressuring workers with more than 25 years at the company to retire immediately or forfeit medicine benefit coverage once they retired.

The union responded by asking all Nestle workers in the country not to sign any document forcing them to retire (although many had already done so.) Union president Masquerades de Araujo, who denounced the company move as “extortion,” called a meeting with Nestle management to demand an explanation. Nestle’s explanation was that it had to begin cutting back one limiting expenses in response to the global financial crisis.

According to de Araujo, there are currently 1,500 retired Nestle workers and 150 with more than 25 years in the company. “Cutting payment for medicine for these 150 wouldn’t go very far toward cutting company expenses, but for these workers, it would have been a cruel blow,” de Arturo said. The Nestle management backtracked. The benefit cuts were suspended. An agreement declared void any document workers may have signed.

Indonesia Suffers 44,000 layoffs from November through March

Indonesia’s Manpower Ministry announced on April 22 that the number of layoffs across the country hit a new level and that 44,000 people had lost their jobs between November and March. And there were no signs that the country’s employment situation would improve this year. The ministry said that more than 24,000 workers had permanently lost their jobs in January alone.

To complicate the country’s employment problems, 300,000 migrant workers would be returning to Indonesia after their contracts ran out later this year, according to Thamnn Mosii, president of the Indonesian Labor Union Confederation. He said the figure might be even higher as other host countries, besides Malaysia, were also feeling the impact of the global crisis. On the domestic front, he said that outsourced and contract employment in the textile industries were the most severely affected by the crisis.

However, Thamnn was confident that the government’s fiscal stimulus would help cushion the impact of the crisis if it were aimed at “creating infrastructure in rural areas.” He said that companies needed to find alternative ways to reduce labor costs without losing their skilled workers.

Spanish Workers Block Shipyard over Foreign Labor

Around 200 workers blocked the entrance to a shipyard in Spain’s Basque country on April 24 to protest at what they said was the use of cheap foreign labor to replace more expensive local contracts. In a sign of rising industrial unrest, as statistics showed unemployment had almost doubled in a year, the workers blocked the entrance to the yard from early morning, an official of Spain’s largest union, Comisiones Obreros, said.

The picketers say the company, La Naval, is laying off some of their 1,100 subcontracted workers in order to hire cheaper, non-Spanish replacements, who were reported by the Spanish media to include Romanians and Portuguese. “This is not a complaint over whether workers are foreign or not, but rather a call for equal wages across the board,” the union source said.

In February, British oil workers staged an unofficial strike at the Total-owned Lindsay plant in Eastern England over the use of foreign labor. Official data shows Spain’s soaring unemployment rate, almost double the European average in the first quarter, is at 17.4 percent. The number of workers with permanent contracts rose by 63,400, while the number of workers holding temporary contracts fell by over a half-million.

Grupo Mexico Offers Pay to Striking Miners to Quit

Striking miners were offered severance packages by Mexico Grupo, the country’s largest copper mine, on April 22, following a labor tribunal ruling allowing the company to fire the workers. Group Mexico said it was offering the 1,500 striking workers at the massive Cananea copper pit three months’ pay plus some compensation for each year worked. The company announced it would create jobs to rebuild the mine. The workers have been on strike for 21 months.

The labor board ruling also concluded that Grupo Mexico could no longer operate the Cananea deposit near the U.S. border because machinery, left idle for months, had been looted and was damaged beyond repair. Union officials issued a statement that the government should cancel the mining company’s concession.

The miners began their strike in July 2007 in a dispute that began over health and safety standards, but has since been complicated by a personal feud between company officials and union leaders. Two smaller Grupo Mexico mines have been on strike for the same period as those at Cananea, and the company has decided to close those worksites as well.

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