Secretariat Report 2011 (pdf) - International Metalworkers' Federation

Secretariat Report for the Central Committee of the IMF
Rio Tinto
IMF and ICEM affiliates protest outside of Rio Tinto’s AGM in London in support of
locked-out miners fighting for fair a contract at the company’s Boron, California mine.
Photo: ICEM / 2010
In May 2010, braving a 15-week lock-out, scabs, and attacks by Rio Tinto's unionbusting
firm, with global support from IMF, ICEM and ITF, 570 Boron workers at Rio
Tinto borate mine in the USA secured a new contract that resists job outsourcing
and attacks on union rights. The fight inspired solidarity from around the globe, from
picketing at the Rio Tinto shareholders’ meeting to intense intervention from
affiliates and the Rio Tinto European Works Council. The victory is a positive
example of how global coordination can work and has contributed to positive
developments with other affiliates’ struggles with the notoriously anti-union
company.
4. Precarious Work
The trade union struggle against precarious work continues across the globe. The
precarious work pandemic has spread faster and further as a direct result of the
financial crisis and increasingly workers are finding that their only possible access to
paid employment is in jobs that are temporary, contingent or offered through an
employment agency. IMF action on precarious work has focused on arresting the
spread of temporary and agency work, and demanding that precarious workers have
the right to join a union and bargain collectively with the company that they work for
and to receive equal pay and conditions for equal work. Following the 2009
Congress Action Plan, the organising of precarious workers has been fully
integrated into IMF external projects world wide, with particular emphasis on the
mining sectors in Peru and Chile, in steel and shipbreaking in India, in metal unions
in Maghreb and in EPZs in Indonesia.
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