LEADERS of Indonesian FSP-KEP (SPSI), the trade union of Chemical, Energy, and Mine Workers (CEMWU), have officially extended a 30-day strike at the world’s largest gold and third largest copper mine for one more month – until November 15.
Community leaders also formed a committee and visited different locations of the vast mining complex in order to assess the number of outside workers recruited to break the strike.
The committee visits were fired upon, with reports that one protester was shot dead.
The Grasberg mine in Papua Province, New Guinea Island, is 91 per cent owned by US-based Freeport-McMoRan.
The PT Freeport Indonesia Workers’ Union of CEMWU is in dispute with its subsidiary, PT Freeport Indonesia, over unwillingness to meet the salary demands of 10,000 miners.
They are seeking a 65 per cent increase above the current US$1.50-an-hour wage rate.
A two-year labour agreement expired on October 1.
The company is offering only an 11 per cent increase in each year of a new two-year agreement, below that recommended by Indonesian government mediation last month.
Last week, government officials of West Papua Province, leaders of the province’s parliament, the Papua Peoples’ Council of seven indigenous groups, a human rights committee, and the PT Freeport Indonesia Workers’ Union of CEMWU, waited patiently for mine managers to show up to address issues. None did.
This came a week after the ICEM intervened with Freeport-McMoRan’s chairman, asking him to personally step in to resolve the dispute, which threatens global copper and gold supplies.
The ICEM received a response from a senior vice-president of Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, stating the executive had full confidence in managers of PT Freeport Indonesia.
The response stated: ‘The union maintains its unrealistic demands for compensation, which are grossly inconsistent with Indonesian wage levels and substantially in excess of the wages of mining workers in other countries performing similar duties.’
In the mediation last month, the union reduced its wage demands from a doubling of the US$1.50-per-hour salary to 65 per cent.
Freeport-McMoRan posted a net profit of US$1.37 billion in the second quarter of 2011 and the person ICEM and the CEMWU is trying to engage to resolve the dispute, James Moffet, took in a total compensation package in 2010 of US$21.5 million.
The community forum meeting in West Papua took a decision to write to PT Freeport Indonesia managers to halt the threats and intimidation of workers in attempting to get them to quit the strike.
They also sent a statement to the US embassy in Jakarta, encouraging a diplomatic initiative to get Moffet to resolve the bitter strike.
PT Freeport Indonesia managers have broken global labour norms by pressuring strikers to sign statements that they will quit the strike.
And they have also removed the job duties of 138 shop stewards, as well as isolating union leaders from workers by posting security guards around them.
The ICEM declares it will continue to support the PT Freeport Indonesia Workers’ Union of CEMWU in the union’s fight for justice, dignity, and a fair 2011-2012 wage package.
The ICEM has also rebutted the Georgian Business Ombudsman for remarks over a steel mill dispute.
International pressure – both inside and outside of Georgia – caused a change of course by police and political authorities in the aftermath of the belligerent September 15 strike-breaking actions at Euroasian Steels in Kutaisi.
Not only were over 30 sacked workers offered their jobs back, but police questioned the Indian managing director and two aides at Euroasian, also known as Hercules Steel, on September 29.
The next day the top boss was sacked.
An ongoing police investigation is now underway over his conduct inside the steel mill.
In the midst of this positive reversal, the ICEM, however, took deep exception to remarks made last week by the Georgian business ombudsman, George Pertaia.
On October 6, Pertaia said the September strike by workers was manipulated and instigated by ICEM affiliate the Metallurgical, Mining, and Chemical Workers’ Trade Union ‘to justify its existence’.
Pertaia said that workers at Hercules have individual contracts and had no right to strike.
‘If the contract is signed, and you have already agreed with certain conditions, then you have no right to refuse those conditions,’ he said.
The ICEM reminds Pertaia that global labour standards do exist, including the right to join a union and to bargain collectively.
Considering that Euroasian Steels, or Hercules, has no wage schedule in place, no health and safety plan, it pays no overtime, and workers are forced to work mandatory and long work days, industrial action was justified.
The ICEM also invites Mr. Pertaia to examine the working conditions of 130 Indian workers employed at Hercules.
They live eight to a room in a dormitory adjacent to the mill, their passports were being held, their salaries are sent back to India, and they are given a miniscule stipend to support themselves off the job.
On September 18, three strike leaders – Emilo Gumberidze, Irakli Iobidze, and Malkhaz Gogiava – were rounded up and jailed by police on bogus charges.
They were given ten-day jail sentences.
Upon release from the Kutaisi jail on September 28, the three immediately called Metallurgical,
Mining, and Chemical Workers’ Union President Tamazi Dolaberidze and pledged their continued support to the union.
On September 30, the new acting managing director of Hercules personally called each of the three to offer them their jobs back.
The reversal gave Hercules metalworkers renewed momentum following the strike’s crushing, and that registered both with Georgian workers and with Indian workers.
Several points of global and internal civil pressure caused deep embarrassment to the Georgian government.
There was high-level diplomatic pressure involved, especially after an international delegation that included the ICEM and top leaders from Poland’s Solidarnosc union exposed the fact that the Indian workers at Hercules might just be treated worse than Georgian workers.
The strike last month by 200 Hercules metalworkers was sparked after the Metallurgical, Mining, Chemical Union gained written support from a majority of the Georgian workers and then requested labour-management dialogue.
After several weeks, the request was ignored and the strike started, including hunger strikes by four workers in front of the mill.
