Workers Rights
Labor is the biggest cost in bauxite mining and the second biggest cost,
after energy, in aluminum smelters. Most of the large producers have tried
to quell efforts by their workers to organize and raise benefits.
In North America, aluminum smelter operators are at war with unionized
workers, represented by the United Steelworkers of America and the Canadian
Auto Workers. Aluminum corporations’ battles with its workers have
frequented other facilities across the globe. In 1999 and 2000, workers
were locked out at smelters operated by Kaiser, Southwire in the U.S.
Unrest also struck smelters in Germany, France, Australia, Romania,
Venezuela, and South Africa. (Stephen Johnston, “Aluminium,” Mining Annual
Review, March 2000)
Alba
In October 1974, according to Human Rights Watch, strikes at the Aluminium
Bahrain plant led the country’s leader, Amir Isa, to impose a state
security law that would allow the government to arrest and imprison for up
to three years without trial any person suspected of having ‘perpetrated
acts, delivered statements, exercised activities or… been involved in
contacts inside or outside the country, which are of a nature considered to
be in violation of the internal or external security of the country.'”
(Human Rights Watch/Middle East, “Routine Abuse, Routine Denial Civil
Rights and the Political Crisis in Bahrain,” June 1997)
More recently, human rights groups have sought protections for a 30 year
old Alba employee, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Hubail al-Kattab. On July 1, 1996,
Bahrain’s State Security Court sentenced him and two other men to death.
The men had pled not guilty to setting a fire that killed seven Bangladeshi
workers at a restaurant earlier in the year. Their attorneys produced more
than 50 witnesses who asserted that the men were innocent
Amnesty International issued an urgent appeal to the government. Amnesty
said the trial “fell far short of international standards for fair trial”
and feared “that their execution is imminent.” It said that prosecutors
relied “solely on written confessions they had made during the
interrogation. The organization fears that the defendants may have been
convicted on the basis of confessions extracted under torture.” (“Security
forces kill a women, the people of Bahrain practice their right of peaceful
civil resistance,” Voice of Bahrain homepage,
www.vob.org/english/news7.htm, July 1996; Amnesty International, press
release, July 23, 1996)
Billiton
Billiton, wrote Leon Pretorius of the International Labour Resource and
Information Group, “has a history of conflict with worker organizations.”
(Leon Pretorius, “Regional integration and development in Southern Africa:
A case study of the MOZAL Project and its implications for workers,”
International Labour Resource and Information Group, March 2000)
In Nov. 1999, Billiton announced plans to lay off 5,000 workers from its
aluminum smelters in Richards Bay, South Africa. A month earlier, the
company successfully petitioned a court to ban a strike by the National
Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA). The union previously struck
in August 1999 after wage negotiations disintegrated. NUMSA threatened a
“massive strike” against Billiton’s “unilateral wage policy implementation”
(“Numsa plans strike over Billiton layoffs,” Business Day, Sept. 13, 2000;.
Mining Annual Review, March 2000)
Several times in 1998, workers at the Billiton-run Mozal smelter in
neighboring Mozambique staged strikes.(“Background on South African company
Billiton,” Midwest Treaty Network website)
“Although multinational corporations such as Billiton and Mitsubishi are
investing in other developing countries they keep their technology and
knowledge intensive activities in the more industrialized countries,” wrote
Pretorius, referring to the two corporate owners of the Mozal project.
“Very few if any of the skills and technology of producing Aluminium will
be transferred to Mozambicans. It appears that (these) companies have been
merely using Mozambique as a way of gaining access to tax benefits, cheap
infrastructure and low cost labor.”
The chairman of Mozal, Bob Barbour, claims that the consortium awarded 67
of its 110 contracts to Mozambican companies. Pretorius and others have
asserted that other companies are securing the most lucrative contracts,
including almost all of the infrastructure projects.
“Mozambique offers more flexible labor markets than South Africa,” observed
Pretorius. “There are less labor regulations, weaker and less militant
trade unions, as well as much lower wages. The promise for Mozal is that it
will lead to industrial development and create jobs in Mozambique. But many
people have asked what type of industrial development and for whose
benefit? An important part of development concerns the ownership and power
to access resources. How do the unemployed and women agricultural workers
who comprise the majority of the Mozambican workforce benefit from this
project?”
Pretorius noted that “the birth pangs of the … Mozal project have been
accompanied by worker strikes and protest action by indigenous women
entrepreneurs prevented from benefiting from the project.”
About 800 workers building the smelter went on strike from Sept. 28 to Oct.
1, 1998, demanding a 600 percent pay hike. They were earning about 24 U.S.
cents per hour. After the strike ended, the company agreed to only a
two-step, 20 percent raise for unskilled workers. (Pretorius)
Kaiser
Kaiser workers, members of the Steelworkers, walked out at the Alpart
bauxite facility in Jamaica and five U.S. locations for five days in 1996.
In Sept. 1998, 3,000 workers on strike again. The Steelworkers union
offered to return to work in Jan. 1999; however, Kaiser locked them out.
(Maxxam, Amendment No. 2 to Form S-3 filed with SEC, April 12, 1996; Mining
Annual Review, March 2000)
The union and the company finally reached a settlement in September 2000.
The new labor contract cut 540 jobs (out of 2,800) at five Kaiser
facilities. Shortly thereafter, Kaiser opted to keep its Washington state
smelters closed and profited from selling its power allocation on the open
market. (Kaiser press release, Feb. 7, 2001; Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical
Corp., Form 10-Q, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Nov.
9, 2000)
Your article is an excellent showing of writing skills. You have captured readers with your compelling and interesting views. After reading this article i get to know that more about aluminum companies
I usually think of informative content as dull but necessary for learning. Interesting informational articles like this are rare. After reading this article i get to know more about aluminum companies