Trade Unions Ask India and Pakistan to Sign Nuclear Treaties
Trade union leaders in India and Pakistan have urged the two countries to sign the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and use the trillions they spend on bomb-making and the arms trade for poverty eradication and the welfare of their peoples.

At a conference organized by the International Trade Union Confederation of the Asia Pacific Region in Singapore on April 7-8, union leaders from the two countries joined with their counterparts  from Japan, the Philippines, Mongolia, Indonesia and other countries in the region  in demanding that the nuclear stockpiles of the two nations be scrapped.

The conference adopted a resolution pointing out that war was not something the people of either India or Pakistan wanted. Millions of people in this region are poor, unemployed and starving, and need food, education and jobs instead of the false security offered by nuclear weapons, the resolution said.

India and Pakistan have been in dispute for decades over Kashmir, a territory that is controlled 65 percent by India and 35 percent by Pakistan, where a large majority of the population is Muslim. The conflict between two of the world’s most populous  countries, both with nuclear capability, has the ominous potential to escalate into a nuclear war.

Unions Protest Rio Tinto’s Lockout of U.S. Miners
About 600 borax miners, all members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), were refused entrance to the borax mine and processing plant owned by Anglo-Australian Corporation, Rio Tinto, when they showed for work on Jan. 31. This followed their refusal to accept the imposition of a new contract that threatened to convert good jobs into temporary, part-time or outsourced positions.

Rio Tinto has used a firm with a notorious reputation for union-busting, J. R. Gettier, to bus replacement workers across picket lines to mine and process borates. Borates are used in numerous projects, including detergents, glass, building materials and as an ingredient in chemicals.

Ray Familathe, an ILWU vice president, said: “This is not just a problem for the small community of Borax, California, which relies on the mine for its survival, but a global threat when a corporate giant such as Rio Tinto gets away with riding roughshod over its employees.” Workers from  Europe, South Africa, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Papua,  New Guinea have expressed their solidarity with the locked-out Boron miners in the United States.

French Refinery Workers On Strike for Job Security at Total
A strike by workers at oil giant Total disrupted production at most of the company’s six refineries across France on April 15, but union officials said fueling stations would not be affected by the work stoppage. The protest action, the second staged by the refinery workers in less than two months, is to press demands for job security, after Total management announced last month the closure of its plant in Dunkirk, northern France.

The French industry group of oil companies had warned that Europe has too many oil refineries and that closures are inevitable. The world’s major oil companies are grappling with a crisis in the refining sector, which is forcing them to cut back heavily on their losses.

Total has said it will keep the five other plants running for the next five years and pledged to find new jobs for the 370 workers employed in the Dunkirk plant. Total is ranked the sixth biggest oil company in the world by sales and is France’s biggest company by market capitalization.

29 U.S. Coal Miners Killed in Mine with Many Safety Violations
The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA)  says Massey Energy Co.’s  Upper Big Branch mine, where 29 West Virginia coal miners were killed in an explosion on April 6, had a history of safety violations. In a preliminary report on the disaster to President Obama, MSHA also says its efforts to place Upper Big Branch into a special status that requires more frequent inspections and tougher sanctions were stymied by Massey’s gaming of the rules as well as policies this administration inherited that make it relatively easy  for operators like Massey to avoid pattern violations status.

The MSHA report and federal records show that 49 miners were killed at Massey operations since 2000. They lay out an  air-tight indictment of Massey’s overall safety record. Yet the company issued a statement April 15 saying it was “regrettable”  that Obama "has been misinformed about our record.”

From 2009 through this year, MSHA issued 639 citations and orders at the Upper Big Branch mine, and the citations were not only higher than the national average, but “they have also been more serious,” the report says.

Singapore Union Seeks Higher Pension  Contributions by Employers
Singapore should consider asking employers to contribute more to employees’ pensions as the nation’s economy improves, said Lim Sweet Say, secretary general of the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC). Employers now pay as much as 14.5 percent of a worker’s wage into a mandatory pension program, called “Central Provident Fund” (CPF), while employees pay as much as a fifth of their salary.

Singapore raised its 2010 forecast for the second time on April 16 as government estimates showed the $182 billion economy grew at an annualized 32.1 percent in the first quarter from  the previous three months. Employers are adding jobs and vacant positions  have dropped in the rebound from last year’s global slump. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate  was 2.1 percent in the three months ending December 2009.. The country added 37,500 jobs in the same three-month period.

Singaporeans are allowed to use their  pension funds to pay for mortgages, some medical bills, education and investments. The National Trades Union Congress represents 60 trade unions and has 500,000 members.

German Air Traffic Controllers Prepare for Strike
There will be a strike of German air traffic controllers next week unless the state-owned Deutsche Flugsicherung agrees to compensate its employees for overtime work. An airline spokesman said that the union’s 3,200 members were poised to walk out at any time from early on Monday. He said the strike could affect all airports in Germany, stranding thousands of passengers and paralyzing air travel in the country.

At the same time, the union, Cockpit, representing 4,000 pilots,  is locked in  bitter negotiations with Lufthansa, the country’s biggest airline. Cockpit is demanding a ban on lower-pay pilots hired in Italy from flying Lufthansa jets.

Last week, Lufthansa and the union took the dispute,  which led to a first round of walkouts last February, to arbitration. But as of April 13, there has been no substantial progress and the parties had not agreed on a chief arbitrator or a timetable.