International Employment Relations Network List
(IERN-L)
A Miscellany of International Employment Relations News
Miscellany 11, 12 April 2012
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Contents
Main Stories
Australia: Bargain in good faith or beware, firms told
China/UK: Suppliers in China shouldn’t be out of sight, out of mind
China’s workers emboldened: Strikes escalate in March
Italy's jobs minister fears for life as labour market shaken up
Nigeria: Lagos government alleges sabotage as doctors begin a strike
In Brief
Benin: Return to work or face sanction, striking hospital workers warned
Guinea: trade union leaders targets of armed attacks and intimidation
Ireland: Congress Calls for Postponement of Pension Changes
Italy: Camusso, well on Article 18 of insecurity and hurt growth
New Zealand: CTU Contacts Talley’s Customers over Lockout
Singapore: Onus on bosses to ensure safety of maids
Swaziland: Statement by the Trade Unions Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA) on its purported de-registration
UK: Tanker drivers vote for strike over terms and conditions
UK: Baggage handlers at Stansted Airport vote to strike
USA: Panera Workers Vote for Representation by Bakery Workers Union
USA: Trumka Calls for NLRB’s Flynn to Resign Immediately
USA: Branson Promotes Anti-Union Vote in Virgin America Video
Publications
Calls for Papers, Conferences , Seminars, Symposia
Other Sites
Awards
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Main Stories
Australia: Bargain in good faith or beware, firms told
IR/Australia/Enterprise Bargaining/Good Faith
The Australian, 23 March 2012 at http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/industrial-relations/bargain-in-good-faith-or-beware-firms-told/story-fn59noo3-1226307678519
COMPANIES that do not want to deal with unions have been dealt a significant blow after a landmark ruling that a BHP subsidiary was not complying with Labor's workplace laws because it was not genuinely considering union proposals.
Union leaders last night hailed the Fair Work Australia ruling, saying it was a major setback to employers unwilling to engage in proper negotiations with unions representing employees.
Workplace experts said the decision was significant as it was the first time a tribunal full bench had addressed at length what it meant for employers and unions to bargain in good faith under Labor's Fair Work Act.
The ruling confirmed that Endeavour Coal had not bargained in good faith with employees at the Appin mine in NSW. An estimated 70 supervisory, administrative and technical employees were represented by the Association of Professional Engineers Scientists and Managers Australia
Catherine Bolger, the director of APESMA's collieries division, said the union originally sought to negotiate an enterprise agreement with the Appin mine in April 2010.
Three months later, the tribunal made a majority support determination that acknowledged that Appin employees wanted to bargain collectively. Under the act, once a majority support determination is made the employer is required to bargain in good faith.
After 12 meetings, an impasse was reached and the union subsequently succeeded in having Fair Work Australia rule that the company must adhere to bargaining orders. The company appealed to a full bench.
Where a majority support determination is made, the full bench said, there is an expectation that the employer will recognise the wishes of its employees to bargain collectively for an agreement, and enter into negotiations in an endeavour to reach an agreement.
Where this does not happen, a bargaining order may be sought to ensure that the obligation to bargain is fulfilled.
The full bench found that in many respects the company complied with its formal requirements by participating in meetings and responding to union proposals.
But it said it was open to the tribunal to find that the company was not showing a genuine endeavour to negotiate an agreement with the union.
It said the company had not had a collective agreement and would prefer not to have a deal. While participating in the bargaining process, it did not make any substantive contribution to the possible content of an enterprise agreement, or put up proposals.
"In these circumstances it was open to the commissioner, and appropriate on the evidence, to conclude that the good faith bargaining requirements envisioned by (the act) were not being met by the company, in that it was not giving genuine consideration to the proposals being put by APESMA," the full bench said.
Ms Bolger said the ruling was a "major blow for companies who think it is OK to simply go through the motions, with little interest in proper negotiations".
"This is a win for the idea of the fair go and will give millions of Australians reassurance that when they need to have a conversation with their employer about their pay and conditions, it will be in good faith," she said. Ms Bolger said the ruling recognised that companies needed to give genuine consideration to proposals, be clear about their position and conduct bargaining fairly.
A BHP spokeswoman said the company was examining the ruling and was not prepared to comment last night.
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Australia: Unions, bosses opt for super overhaul
IR/Australia/ER/Unions/ Superannuation
The Australian 12 April 2012 at http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/industrial-relations/unions-bosses
UNION and employer groups have backed an ambitious overhaul of the superannuation system that could increase savings for millions of workers by putting more pressure on funds to lift their performance.
The ACTU and the Australian Industry Group endorsed the approach yesterday, adding momentum to proposals that could exclude poor-performing funds from the system that sets the default savings for about 1.7 million workers under industrial awards.
The reform plan is being resisted by some funds and unions that question whether a super fund's past returns can be used to predict its future performance.
The emerging proposals set the scene for a policy tussle when Financial Services Minister Bill Shorten considers the recommendations of a Productivity Commission inquiry currently taking public submissions.
The Australian revealed yesterday that Industry Super Network, which represents industry funds holding about $250 billion, was proposing a sweeping change to choose default funds by their performance.
Coalition superannuation spokesman Mathias Cormann welcomed the ISN proposal, but cautioned that there was a shortage of reliable data to decide the benchmarks.
The Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees, NGS Super and Legal Super have argued for performance benchmarks to be applied to funds that want to be named in industrial awards.
AI Group's submission released yesterday urged the commission to adopt a new approach to weed out the lowest quarter of funds in the system when ranked by performance over five years.
The ACTU argued that industrial awards should only set default funds from among the 100 top performers over an extended period such as 10 years.
The peak union group warned that more than 90 per cent of workers used only the default fund and made no decision over where their savings were held, heightening the need for a fair system to decide which funds deserved to collect contributions.
But there are strong objections from big retail funds, represented by the Financial Services Council, to the idea of adding more in the workplace relations regime. The FSC is urging Canberra to allow all funds to apply to be default options provided they meet the government's new My Super standard, which is meant to simplify the system and reduce fees.
The row over the award system is especially heated because funds already in the system fear the removal of barriers that keep retail funds from being added to awards and picking up business.
Some union leaders dislike retail funds for using a commercial model that generates a profit from managing money. "It is incontestable that the large-scale entry of retail, for-profit superannuation products into this sector of the economy will result in the transfer of wealth from workers generally to investors specifically and all those lined up on the way through," said the Community and Public Sector Union.
Others warn against making performance the main criteria for selection, with the Law Council of Australia arguing that Fair Work Australia would be subject to judicial appeal and other challenges over the decisions.
"The viability of a fund may very well depend on whether it is named as a default fund in a modern award," said the council's superannuation committee."
REI Super said past performance was an "imperfect guide" while the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association warned a "lot of energy could be wasted" setting criteria that would not work. Investment performance was a difficult area to measure and explain, it said.
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China/UK: Suppliers in China shouldn’t be out of sight, out of mind
ER/UK/China/Working Conditions/Ethics
CIPD, Claire Churchyard, 2 April 2012 at http://blog.peoplemanagement.co.uk/2012/04/suppliers-in-china-shouldnt-be-out-of-sight-out-of-mind/?wa_src=email&wa_pub=cipd&wa_crt=comment_1&wa_cmp=pmdaily_030412
Why has it taken the best part of two years for Apple to address the mass of damning media reports on working conditions at Foxconn factories in China? The supplier, which churns out iPads and iPods for export, has become notorious for the number of employee suicides and injuries at its factories.
Perhaps employees in a factory in China are just far enough away from consumers and company leaders in the West to worry about. For too long it has been a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’.
Then, last week, it all changed.
An independent report, commissioned by Apple to investigate the allegation that workers were being exploited, confirmed that, yes, workers were being exploited.
Investigators from the Fair Labor Association (FLA), a corporate collective that “aims to protect workers’ rights around the globe”, found that Foxconn employees worked excessive overtime, were underpaid and subjected to health and safety risks.
In fact, the Taiwanese-owned employer was flagrantly breaking Chinese labour laws. The FLA found that in the past 12 months the employer had exceeded China’s working hours limit of 40 hours a week and 36 hours’ maximum overtime a month: during peak production periods, the average number of hours worked each week exceeded 60 hours per worker. There were instances where some employees worked more than seven days in a row without the required 24 hours off.
The FLA also found that 14 per cent of employees “may not receive fair compensation for unscheduled overtime”, ie, they were not being properly paid for all the overtime they were doing. And that’s not to mention the missing safety equipment, inadequate records of employee injuries at work and an explosion at one factory that killed three workers.
We are told that things are now set to improve because, after the report was published and following a visit from Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, Foxconn announced it would address these issues. Pay will increase to above subsistence levels, overtime will be capped and workers compensated for lost earnings, while the serious issue of health and safety will be, well, taken more seriously.
But given that the company was breaking Chinese employment law, why will it take them until July 2013 to comply? To the external observer, it’s hard to see why allegations originally published in 2010 were disregarded for so long, and even harder to see why putting things right will take over a year. Is this an example of a culture of western corporate leaders disassociating themselves from the Chinese workers that make their products?
That may sound like a leap. But I came across this exact attitude recently when attending an HR event. A seemingly charming consultant told me during a discussion about Foxconn’s treatment of workers that I should not judge the way workers in China are treated by western standards. He continued to smile as he explained that the West and East had different cultures (for ‘cultures’, read ‘standards’) and that I obviously didn’t appreciate that. It sounded like an excuse for exploiting cheap labour and potential human rights abuses to me. That can’t be why Apple left it so long to hold their supplier to account, can it?
As an eminent professor of ethics told me recently, when employees and managers disassociate themselves from what they do at work, it is a recipe for major disaster: such attitudes may have contributed to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill or the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.
So, if you’re a company about to outsource work or production to China, or anywhere else in the world, ask yourself how closely you have looked at the way workers are treated? Does it meet the same standards you would apply to British workers? Do you even care? Well, you should, or someone else will eventually highlight those shortcomings for you.
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China’s workers emboldened: Strikes escalate in March
IR/China/Strikes/March2012
China Labour Bulletin, 8 April 2012 at http://www.clb.org.hk/en/node/110033
The number of strikes recorded by China Labour Bulletin in March 2012 reached its highest monthly total since we started monitoring worker protests on a day to day basis 15 months ago. A total of 38 strikes were logged across China, primarily in the manufacturing and transportation sectors. Half of the strikes, 19 in all, were related to pay demands, three concerned factory relocations, three strikes were in protest at merger or restructuring plans, and four were related to the payment of overtime. Reports indicate that police were present at 13 of the protests and detained workers in two of them. Eleven protests led to collective bargaining or negotiations with management and in two of those cases the workers’ demands were fulfilled.
There were 17 strikes in the manufacturing sector, five more than in February. Quite a few of these factory strikes occurred in foreign or Hong Kong or Taiwan-owned manufacturers in the Pearl River Delta, and normally involved at least 1,000 workers blocking factory gates or public roads.
Taxi and bus drivers in at least ten cities went on strike in March, with a spate of strikes between 26 and 27 March primarily due to the government’s 19 March fuel price hike. Surveys estimate that taxi drivers will have to pay an extra 400 yuan every month and bus drivers an extra 1,000 yuan per month as a result of the price rise. The Chinese government has pledged to help transport workers cope with rising oil prices by providing subsidies, promoting collective bargaining in taxi companies and regulating the taxi leasing fees that usually take up nearly one half of drivers’ monthly income.
In the education sector, middle school and kindergarten teachers in three cities demanded pay increases in March by staging one-day or half-day strikes. One junior middle school teacher in Zhongshan, Guangdong, for example, claimed her salary was even lower than that of her school’s security guards.