Displaying items by tag: IndustriAll

US: 100 Workers at Continental Cement's Hannibal cement plant in Missouri are on strike against alleged unfair labour practices. IndustriALL Global Union has accused the producer of restricting employees' say in schedules, overtime and cross training requirements at the plant, as well as of withholding information necessary for bargaining. The union additionally alleged that the company was discriminatory in its termination of contracts. The workers have continued to work amid on-going contract renegotiations following the expiry of a collective agreement between them and the producer in May 2022.

IndustriALL Global Union said "Continental Cement’s actions have left workers no other options but to make their voices heard by striking against unfair labour practices. We are determined to fight for the fair contract. It's time for Continental Cement to follow the law and negotiate in good faith for a fair contract.”

Switzerland: The IndustriALL Global Union and Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI) have expressed their dismay at LafargeHolcim’s failure to sign a global framework agreement intended to support industrial relations. The company signed a memorandum of understanding committing to sign the agreement in July 2017. However, the unions’ say that LafargeHolcim backed out of the deal in late December 2017, saying that its current internal arrangements were sufficient.

The unions, together with other international and national partners, have called on LafargeHolcim to sign the agreement, stop poor treatment of sub-contracted and third party workers by the company and to prioritise the health and safety of all of its workers.

“This recent decision to break the agreement on building a social dialogue further damages the credibility of the company. We strongly believe that the shareholders, board of directors and all decision makers in LafargeHolcim must think carefully what the future will hold for LafargeHolcim if this destructive approach prevails,” said Valter Sanches, the General Secretary of IndustriALL.

Germany: Union delegates representing workers at HeidelbergCement have created a trade union network. Forty delegates from Europe, Middle East and North Africa, North America, Asia-Pacific and South Asia met in early November 2017 in Bremen. The meeting was organized by IndustriALL Global Union with support of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, also involving IndustriALL‘s sister organisation Building and Wood Workers’ International.

“With the creation of the HeidelbergCement union network, we open the door to social dialogue if management is willing, and we hope union activists will contribute seriously to the promotion of workers’ rights and interests in the company. To this end, the steering committee will be in close interaction with the national unions. Finally, we strongly believe that HeidelbergCement will only win through workers’ active participation and engagement,” said Matthias Hartwich, director for materials industry at IndustriALL.

The meeting discussed recent developments in the cement sector and sustainability issues. The experience of global and national unions interacting with management at another big cement giant company, LafargeHolcim, was also raised. At the end of the meeting, delegates unanimously adopted a Bremen declaration and elected a steering committee for the network, which will coordinate the work in between its global meetings. No representative of the group’s global management attended the event despite being sent invitations.

World: Workers at LafargeHolcim are holding a ‘global day of action’ in advance of International Human Rights Day on 10 December 2016 to draw attention to the world’s largest cement maker’s alleged widespread violations of workers’ rights, according to the IndustriAll Global Union federation. Workers in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas will ‘mobilise, take actions and demand’ that LafargeHolcim respect workers’ rights.

The union action intends to highlight alleged worker rights violations including an increase in workplace fatalities in 2015, an increasing use of precarious employment, illegal replacement of striking workers in Canada, use of child labour and targeting of union members for dismissal in Uganda, unfair treatment of displaced families due to the development of a plant in Ambuja in India and a ‘poor’ response to workplace accidents in Indonesia.

Unions in the federation are demanding that LafargeHolcim use less precarious work, cooperate better with trade unions on health and safety and restructuring, and enter into ‘meaningful’ negotiations with them about the future of labour relations and social dialogue.

“We expect that the world number one in the cement sector is not only number one in figures and cement sales, but also in labour standards and workers’ rights,” said general secretary of the European Federation of Building and Woodworkers (EFBWW) Sam Hägglund.