Don't make workers wait too long for extra holiday, says TUC

Several million of the UK's hard-working employees should soon be enjoying more leisure time with their family and friends thanks to Government plans to increase the legal minimum holiday entitlement for all UK workers, says the TUC today (Wednesday).

But in its submission to a Government consultation on increasing the UK's minimum annual leave entitlement, the TUC is urging ministers not to bow to the business lobby and make employees wait until next autumn before they can get the extra time off work.

Under existing law, it is will be perfectly legal for employees unfortunate enough to work for mean employers to be forced to take this Good Friday and Easter Monday from their four weeks' statutory minimum leave entitlement.

This means that when this weekend's two bank holidays and this year's other six are taken into account, some full time employees could be left with just 12 days holiday, and some part-time staff could find themselves using up almost all their annual leave just on public holidays, says the TUC. The Government's proposals will prevent employers from doing this, by granting employees a minimum of 5.6 weeks leave a year - 28 days for a full-time worker.

In its submission, the TUC says that ministers should ignore the cries from some employers that bringing in the extra leave all in one go will be unaffordable. The TUC argues that UK workers should not have to wait another 18 months before getting the extra holiday as the economy is performing well enough to absorb the full change from this October.

The TUC's submission says that all previous increases in annual leave and any new bank holidays have come into effect with no detrimental effect on the economy, jobs, productivity or competitiveness. And most UK employees would be unaffected by the change because they already enjoy more holiday than the legal minimum (the average being 25 days plus eight bank holidays).

The TUC would also like to see tough proactive enforcement of the new rules to make sure that all employees are able to take all the holiday to which they are entitled.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: 'Over-worked, stressed out, holiday- poor employees are not going to be a firm's best asset. On the other hand, those staff who are able to book time off work, return refreshed with their batteries recharged, and are much more productive.

'The extra leave on offer to employees will make a real difference to the lives of millions of working people. The Government must ignore those carping employers who say that the new holiday leave should not come in all at once. Workers should be able to take the extra holiday from this autumn and not be forced to wait another year to get their holiday in full.'

NOTES TO EDITORS:

- In its manifesto for the 2005 General Election the Labour Party proposed to extend the four weeks' minimum paid holiday guaranteed by the Working Time Regulations (1998). The Government proposes to add 1.6 weeks to the existing minimum statutory annual leave entitlement, thus increasing the entitlement for full-time workers by eight days, with a pro-rata increase for part-time workers.

The DTI intends to implement the increase to leave rights in two parts:

· 1 October 2007 - increase to 4.8 weeks

· 1 October 2008 - increase to 5.6 weeks

- The TUC submission 'Increasing the holiday entitlement: a further consultation' can be found at http://www.tuc.org.uk/extras/holidayentitlement.pdf

- All TUC press releases can be found at www.tuc.org.uk

- Register for the TUC's press extranet : a service exclusive to journalists wanting to access pre-embargo releases and reports from the TUC. Visit www.tuc.org.uk/pressextranet

WTO must assess employment impacts

GENEVA: As the December WTO Ministerial Conference approaches, the IMF joins the trade union movement in reiterating its demand that effects on development and employment must be assessed before further trade liberalisation occurs.

“Promises about the potential of trade liberalisation have failed to materialise in terms of more and better jobs for developing and industrialised countries,” writes IMF general secretary Marcello Malentacchi in his latest opinion column.

“A race to the bottom with cheaper labour and worsening working conditions is undermining decent work for the sake of maximising company profits,” he writes.

Concerns about the direction of the current Doha round of trade negotiations were reinforced by recently released World Bank projections on the gains of the new WTO round. The World Bank projections suggest:

• 70 per cent of the gains would go to developed countries;
• Developing country gains are likely to be less than a penny-a-day per capita; and
• Poverty impacts are very small, with projected reductions of less than one per cent in the number of people living in poverty.

In a recently issued statement on the market access negotiations a group of developing countries called for the continued right to manage adjustment of tariffs in sensitive sectors so as to minimise social disruption caused by job losses and closure of enterprises.

“We demand that any further negotiations on trade liberalisation be dependent on the outcome of an evaluation of their repercussions on sustainable development and employment, especially in developing and least developed countries,” Malentacchi writes.

This demand is also included in the Summary of Trade Union Proposals to WTO trade negotiations, which was prepared by the Global Unions Group and is available at the following web address: http://www.icftu.org/displaydocument.asp?Index=991223003&Language=EN

The more comprehensive Trade Union Statement on the WTO negotiations, prepared earlier in the year by the same group, is available at the following web address: http://www.icftu.org/displaydocument.asp?Index=991221675&Language=EN

A copy of Malentacchi’s opinion column is published on the IMF website.

International Trade Union Bodies Meet With UN Secretary General in Davos

At a meeting with Kofi Annan at the World Economic Forum in Davos on 25 January, ICFTU General Secretary Guy Ryder said the global trade union movement had reached “good understandings” with the United Nations Secretary General on a series of key international issues. The trade union representatives welcomed the signs of growing commitment within the UN system, promoted by the union movement and the International Labour Organization, to tackle the global employment crisis, through the creation of decent jobs for the hundreds of millions of people worldwide who are struggling to survive in conditions of poverty.

The increasing engagement of the UN on the issue of international migration was a major feature of the talks, with a common recognition of the need for a strong UN role in pushing for effective international action on rights for migrant workers and the need for economic development and job creation in so-called “sending countries”, as central planks of a cohesive and balanced global approach on the issue.

In discussions over the situation in Iraq, the Secretary General expressed his deep condolences on being informed by the union delegation of the murder that morning of Alaa Issa Khalaf, a member of the Executive Board of the Baghdad branch of the mechanics union, and underlined the positive role of trade unions in economic, social and political development.

Kofi Annan expressed his satisfaction at the forthcoming unification of the international trade union movement, pointing to the many challenges which the new organization will face in light of developments in the global economy. He also welcomed the new initiatives being taken between the trade union movement and the United Nations Environment Programme, and other areas of joint activity in the UN system. Prospects for moving ahead with the process of UN reform were also addressed during the talks.

“Commitment to the role of the United Nations has been a historical feature of the policies and activities of the international trade union movement, and will no doubt be a central plank of the new international trade union confederation which will be founded in Vienna in November this year”, said Ryder.

China: Facing Reality

On December 6, trade union representatives from 20 countries preparing to travel to Beijing for an OECD meeting on socially responsible investing were informed that their visas had been invalidated and the meeting cancelled. The government gave "inappropriate and inconvenient" timing as the reason for the cancellation. The meeting was to have discussed the application in China of the OECD's Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises.

Trade unionists turned away from the meeting understandably expressed outrage over the abrupt cancellation and its unmistakable political message that international labour standards for Chinese workers are not on the government's current agenda. The incident, however, should be viewed in its larger context. Consider, for example, the following:

On November 16, five former employees of a shoe factory in Guangdong Province owned by the Taiwan-based Stella Corporation were sentenced to up to three years in prison. Their "crime" was participation in protests against low wages, wage arrears and a brutal reduction in overtime pay by over 4,000 workers at the plant. According to China Labour Bulletin, two of the five were below the minimum legal working age when they began work at the factory.

On November 28, fire and an explosion at a coalmine in Shaanxi Province resulted in the death of at least 166 miners. The miners knew there was a fire underground but descended into the pit out of fear that their wages would be docked if they refused to work. Three days later, an explosion in a Guizhou Province coalmine killed another 13 miners. China leads the world in mining accidents and fatalities. Over four thousand miners have died at work in the first nine months of this year. Chinese miners are formally members of the official All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), a state body which is organizationally and constitutionally tied to the ruling Party. Relatives of the Shaanxi miners who approached the ACFTU for help were rebuffed.

On November 22, WalMart China announced that it would not oppose efforts by the ACFTU to represent workers at its 40 Chinese stores "should associates [i.e. workers - ed.] request formation of a union." The following day, an appeals court in Saskatchewan, Canada upheld a ruling by the provincial labour relations board instructing the company to hand over evidence of the union-busting tactics it used to oppose the UFCW's successful effort to organize workers at a WalMart in Weyburn, Saskatchewan. Some weeks earlier, the company publicly threatened to close a store in Ontario where workers had won union representation.

These events are all closely related. China would not account for over three-quarters of global coalmining accidents if workers were represented by genuine trade unions, independent of the Party and the employers. Had there been a union at the Stella plant, changes to overtime would be negotiated, not imposed by decree, and workers would not be imprisoned for the "crime" of demonstrating against a brutal reduction in their already low pay.

WalMart does not have one policy for China (union "recognition") and another for the rest of the world. The company has a single policy of global hostility to unions. In North America they call in the union-busters when workers seek to organize. In China, the ACFTU will get the call if political circumstances require it. The ACFTU is hemorrhaging members as the state sector is sold off, bringing with it a serious loss of control over the workforce and a further erosion of credibility and legitimacy. The ACFTU's move into the private sector should under no circumstances be confused with union organizing and "recognition" by employers. It is essentially a police operation. Union organizing and union recognition by employers are impossible as long as the right of workers to organize is repressed and the ACFTU remains the sole legal "union" in China. Recognition of a union by employers acknowledges the fact that workers have attained a degree of power through organizing themselves into a collective force.

Implementing the OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises in China is impossible for the same reason. The Guidelines call for respecting ILO Conventions on the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively. The ACFTU rejects these Conventions, and refuses to defend working class victims of state repression like the Stella workers. Many things have changed in China; the ACFTU has not. It remains an integral component of the apparatus of power.

The Chinese authorities' crudely transparent cancellation of the OECD meeting should become the occasion for renewed reflection on how the international labour movement can effectively support Chinese workers in their struggle for independent trade unions. A key element in this reflection must be separating marketing hype and the creeping legitimization of the ACFTU from the reality of China's workplaces. A recent New York conference for transnational investors on "How to Make Corporate Responsibility Work in China" promised to instruct corporations on determining "the limits of responsibility". Union busters like WalMart will find this congenial because the ACFTU now gives them a "socially responsible" cover.

The government's refusal to permit international trade unionists to discuss the OECD guidelines on Chinese soil should, at a minimum, also inspire reflection on the continuing scandal of the ACFTU's representation as worker delegates on the ILO Governing Body, a position to which they were elected in June 2002. Ending this farce would be a clear declaration that labour understands that when it talks to the ACFTU, at an OECD seminar or in any other context, it is talking to a representative of state power and not to an organization representing the workers of China. Clarity on this issue is now more crucial than ever, for working people in China are mobilizing on an unprecedented scale and they take great risks in fighting for their rights as workers. As the grim accumulation of mine tragedies shows, they are paying with their lives for the absence of these rights.

Network Rail fined £4m for Paddington crash

Network Rail was today fined £4m for "systemic and unacceptable" safety failures that led to the 1999 Paddington rail disaster.

Thirty-one people died and more than 400 were injured when a local Thames Trains service went through a red signal and collided with a London-bound First Great Western express train.

Network Rail - the firm responsible for maintaining Britain's railways - was fined at Blackfriars crown court, in London.

The company, which had earlier admitted breaches of the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act between January 1 1995 and October 5 1999, was also ordered to pay £225,000 towards prosecution costs.

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Officials from Railtrack, the precursor to Network Rail, were warned at least five years before the collision that a set of signals was badly laid out and so difficult for drivers to interpret that a serious incident was likely to happen, the hearing was told.

The signals had been misinterpreted by drivers at least seven times in the previous five years, and had been the subject of internal inquiries.

The Paddington disaster, which was likened in court to a "senseless and unnecessary terrorist attack", would never have happened had it not been for a string of safety blunders.

Failures spanned several years and flowed from "the culture at the top" of the company, the court heard.

Passing sentence, Mr Justice Bean said Railtrack had admitted that its failure to carry out "adequate root cause analysis" of signals passed at danger (Spads) had been "systemic and unacceptable".

Quoting from his judgment, he added: "It was due, as counsel to the [Lord Cullen] inquiry submitted, to a combination of incompetent management and inadequate process, the latter consisting in the absence of a process at a higher level for identifying whether those who were responsible for convening such committees were or were not doing so.

"If a signal sighting committee had been convened, it would have found that SN [signal] 109 was unacceptable, not merely because of its non-compliance with the relevant group standards, but also of the inferior quality of its visibility."

Chris Newell, the principal Crown Prosecution Service legal adviser, said Railtrack had been held accountable for the "disastrous and inexcusable failures" that caused the tragedy.

Denman and Maureen Groves, who lost their daughter, Juliet, in the crash, said it was "plain from quite early on" who was to blame for the disaster.

"Now we believe the truth has been heard in court," they said. "But still there are those who should have been brought to court today to stand trial for manslaughter.

"They go unpunished for their gross negligence that killed our beloved daughter Juliet and 30 others. The worrying thing is they still work for Network Rail."

The Network Rail chairman, Ian McAllister, said the company was "very sorry for the failings of Railtrack some seven years ago that contributed to the tragedy at Ladbroke Grove".

"Network Rail accepts the fine imposed by the court today," he added. "The events of Ladbroke Grove will always be remembered, and our thoughts must remain with the families and friends of the 31 people who lost their lives on that tragic day and those that were injured."

The court heard that one Railtrack official had gone as far as to assure First Great Western Trains and the rail drivers' union Aslef that he had ordered an expert review into the safety of the controversial signal when he had in fact not done so.

Another official was so concerned he sent a colleague an email warning of "a big one". He asked that it be deleted once read.

At 8.11am on October 5 1999, his fears were realised when the Thames Trains service, leaving Paddington, passed signal SN109 at red and drove into the path of the First Great Western Trains flyer, which was travelling from Cheltenham.

Both drivers belatedly realised they were on a collision path but were unable to stop and crashed at 130mph.

At the hearing, Philip Mott QC said "a catalogue of failures to act over a number of years" had "left one signal in an inadequate state and continually missed by experienced and inexperienced drivers".

Mr McAllister said new systems that would prevent a repeat of the disaster were in place.

"The railways have seen huge change since 1999," he added. "Network Rail took over from Railtrack in 2002 and completed the installation of an automatic train braking system that would have prevented the Ladbroke Grove tragedy.

"This system ... will automatically apply a train's brakes if it passes a signal at red or approaches one too quickly."

EU Socialists call for hedge fund regulation

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Hedge funds and private equity pose risks to financial market stability and should be regulated more tightly, top Socialist MEPs said on Thursday.

The European Union assembly's second-largest group unveiled a report which it said showed the case for mandatory regulation in a sector that has hit the headlines in recent months for its ever-bigger takeovers and sparked labour union concern.

"We are dealing with hedge funds raising questions of systemic risk," Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, president of the group and a former prime minister of Denmark, told reporters.

Hedge fund TCI put Dutch bank ABN AMRO (AAH.AS: Quotazione, Profilo) into play last month by asking for it to be split up to create more value to shareholders.

Private equity firm Texas Pacific Group came under fire when airline catering firm Gate Gourmet, which it has since sold, sacked hundreds of people.

"The first thing we will move on is transparency and disclosure," Rasmussen said.

Parliament has no power to initiate legislation but the Socialists want to launch a debate to persuade the European Commission to make proposals that EU states could adopt.

The EU legislature has joint say along with EU governments on legislation related to financial services.

"After that we will focus on how can we, through national and EU legislation, protect our companies against undermining their international competitiveness," Rasmussen said.

"We are proposing a whole range of regulations, starting from incentives to direct EU and national regulation," he said, adding this could include a European regulator for the sector.

John Monks, leader of pan-EU labour union group ETUC, warned a seminar organised by the Socialist group that hedge funds and private equity groups faced a "long and bitter fight", accusing them of "asset stripping" and "destroying jobs".

But Dan Waters of Britain's Financial Services Authority told the seminar that a study of risk in the hedge fund sector found that "overall, this is not an alarming picture".

"There is no case demonstrated for the regulation of hedge funds in Europe. It would be a serious mistake to do so," he said.

Portuguese Finance Minister Fernando Teixeira dos Santos said EU finance ministers will discuss sector oversight soon.

"Such a European framework could be based on minimum standards, soft law, recommendation or just robust peer pressure mechanism in order to ensure healthy competitiveness," he said.

But dos Santos, whose country becomes EU president in July, said it was too early to say if mandatory rules were needed.

EU Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy, responsible for financial services, has repeatedly said no new rules are needed -- to the increasing anger of many lawmakers.

"McCreevy is the last voice in Europe and the United States saying what we need is deregulation. McCreevy is not that important for the moment," Rasmussen said.

McCreevy responded by saying there are rules in place that govern hedge fund activities and their exposure to banks.

"The case for additional legislation at EU level has not been proven but is being kept under review," his spokesman said.

Javier Echarri of private equity industry lobby EVCA told the seminar the sector invested in 8,000 European companies last year and was properly regulated by national watchdogs.

New GLS Report: UNDUE INFLUENCE: Corporations Gain Ground in Battle over China's New Labor Law

A behind-the-scenes battle is raging worldwide over reforms in China’s labor law. On the one side are U.S.-based and other global corporations who have been aggressively lobbying to limit new rights for Chinese workers. On the other side are pro-worker rights forces in China, backed by labor, human rights, and political forces in the U.S. and around the world.

A new report by Global Labor Strategies, entitled UNDUE INFLUENCE: Corporation Gain Ground in Battle Over China’s New Labor Law, details how lobbying by American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai (AmCham), the United States-China Business Council, and U.S.-based global corporations have forced significant changes in contract, collective bargaining, severance, and other rights guaranteed for Chinese workers under a law to be voted on later this year by the Chinese National People's Congress. UNDUE INFLUENCE follows on GLS's groundbreaking report: BEHIND THE GREAT WALL: U.S. Corporations Opposing New Rights for Chinese Workers.

The battle is far from over, however. UNDUE INFLUENCE reveals that while publicly claiming to support the new legislation, companies like Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Google, General Electric and others have launched an unpublicized new attack demanding further gutting of the law's most important provisions.

But UNDUE INFLUENCE also discloses significant pushback by Chinese and international forces. U.S. members of Congress have introduced legislation decrying the corporate intervention and apparent Administration complicity; China's official labor organization, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), has taken a strong stand against corporate pressure; international union federations have pressured their employers to reverse course; and human rights organizations have mobilized support for Chinese workers' rights.

Such counter-pressure has led to splits among global companies operating in China. Nike has virtually repudiated the efforts of the United States Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai (AmCham) to lobby against the law. And the E.U. Chamber of Commerce has reversed its opposition to the law and renounced its threat that its member companies may leave China if the law is passed. Undue Influence reveals this and other shifts among U.S. and E.U. corporations operating in China.

Copies of Undue Influence are available here. The report appendices are available here.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1. A behind-the-scenes battle is raging worldwide over reforms in China’s labor law. On the one side are U.S.-based and other global corporations who have been aggressively lobbying to limit new rights for Chinese workers. On the other side are pro-worker rights forces in China, backed by labor, human rights, and political forces in the U.S. and around the world.

2. Corporations operating in China are claiming success in pressuring the Chinese government to weaken or abandon significant pro-worker reforms it had proposed. Global Labor Strategy’s analysis of the revised draft of the law shows how many of their demands have been conceded.

3. Now both the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai (AmCham) and the US-China Business Council have launched an unpublicized new attack demanding further weakening of the law.

4. The Bush Administration recently revealed to the U.S. Congress that it has been “closely following” the drafting of the new labor contract law and that the American Embassy in China has been consulting AmCham on this matter. But the Administration appears to have done nothing to disassociate itself from the efforts of U.S. corporations and their representatives to restrict the rights of Chinese workers.

5. Chinese and international forces are engaged in a significant pushback against the gutting of China’s new labor law. U.S. members of Congress have introduced legislation decrying the corporate intervention and apparent Administration complicity; China’s official labor organization, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), has taken a strong stand against corporate pressure; international union federations have pressured their employers to reverse course; and human rights organizations have mobilized support for Chinese workers’ rights.

6. Such counter-pressure has led to splits among global companies operating in China. Nike has virtually repudiated the efforts of the United States Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai (AmCham) to lobby against the law. And the E.U. Chamber of Commerce has reversed its opposition to the law and renounced its threat that its member companies may leave China if the law is passed.

7. The battle is likely to come to a head in the Chinese National People’s Congress in April or June of 2007. But the implementation of the new law, and the further expansion of Chinese workers’ rights, will depend on the rapid changes going on in Chinese labor relations, which are increasingly marked by burgeoning strikes, worker protests, lawsuits, and changing forms of labor organizations, including the expansion of the ACFTU into foreign invested enterprises such as Wal-Mart.

8. The new focus on the role of U.S. and other global corporations in China represents the emergence of a “new paradigm” for analyzing the current form of globalization not just in terms of a “trade debate” based on “free trade vs. protectionism,” but as a product of a global “sweatshop lobby” that is deliberately shaping labor law and labor markets around the world.

9. The role of China in the global economy is shaping up to be the dominant economic issue in the 2008 presidential elections in the U.S. With widespread anxiety about the security of U.S. jobs, the role of U.S. corporations in opposing rights for Chinese workers is emerging as a significant issue in those elections.

Very thanks to: laborstrategies.blogs.com