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  Issue No 55 Official Organ of LaborNet 26 May 2000  

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News

Rio Tinto Appeals for Industrial Peace


The global campaign against Rio Tinto is beginning to bite, with corporate chiefs telling shareholders at the mining giant's Annual General Meeting in Brisbane this week that the company was ready for industrial "peace".

Facing a barrage of questions from victimised mineworkers, striking mineworkers, Union activists, Labor MPs, and disgruntled shareholders, chief executive Leigh Clifford repeated his comment made at the company's London AGM earlier this month, that Rio Tinto wanted industrial "peace" with Union employees at its operations.

Rio Tinto chairman, Robert Wilson, spoke of "reconciliation" with Union employees. Wilson even admitted to the AGM that Rio Tinto had made "mistakes in the past" in employee relations. However, he didn't identify what these "mistakes" are.

While welcoming the remarks of both Rio Tinto chiefs, our Union called on the company to put its money where its mouth is and match its rhetoric with action.

Despite an enormous rearguard campaign mounted by Rio Tinto among its institutional investors, the company has been rocked by the stunning support shareholders have given to two resolutions spearheaded by our Union, the ACTU and the peak Union organisations in Britain (the TUC) and the US (the AFL-CIO).

While the Unions were hoping for a reasonable response to its first ever corporate campaign to mobilise shareholder support, it was staggered by the 20% support it received for the resolution calling on Rio Tinto to adopt good corporate governance practices.

The international business community has been equally surprised as Rio Tinto used its powerful network to undermine the Union's shareholder campaign.

If the Unions had succeed in getting anything up to 10% of the shareholder votes, the business community would have considered it a severe setback for Rio Tinto.

But to win 20% of the vote - that is 113.8 million of the shares voted - is a spectacular success that puts Rio Tinto on notice that it has to lift its game and lift it quickly, because our campaign is only beginning.


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*    Visit the Rio Tinto campaign page

*   View entire issue - print all of the articles!

*   Issue 55 contents

In this issue
Features
*  Interview: The University of Rupert
National Tertiary Education Union president Dr Carolyn Allport on News Corp's move into tertiary education and the Universitas 21 experiment.
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*  International: The Unionist Who Sparked a Coup
Workers Online's Fiji expert Andrew Casey profiles one of the men at the centre of the crisis, detained PM Mahendra Chaudry
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*  Unions: The Call to Action
The Australian Services Union is leading the push into the call centre industry. But winning these new workplaces is a major challenge.
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*  Politics: Workplace Gladiators
Peter Reith as Russell Crowe? That's the image Labor IR spokesman Arch Bevis conjured up in a frecent address to the Industrial Relations Society.
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*  History: How to be a Good Unionist
It's 1917, WWI rages and federal public servants are given these rules on how to dischare their responsibility as members.
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*  Legal: The Price of Solidarity
Intimidation, threats and even murder still await many workers who attempt to organize in a number of countries around the world, says a new ILO report.
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*  Review: Inconvenient History
In may be cold comfort to Republicans, but the vote for Federation was every bit as tempestuous as this collection of articles shows.
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*  Satire: World Bank Caves In
In a victory for Seattle protestors, international monetarists have decreed that global utopia to begin immediately.
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News
»  Fiji Faces International Union Blockade
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»  Workers Return to Dump Reith's Third Wave
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»  Budget Raises More Questions than Answers
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»  Teachers Finally Achieve Satisfaction
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»  FairWear Campaign Targets Uniforms
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»  Rio Tinto Appeals for Industrial Peace
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»  Beer Hike Sparks Worker Concerns
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»  Libs Fail to Block Family Friendly Laws
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»  No Joy For 'Back Door' Pete
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»  Angry Truckies Converge on Border
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»  Unions Dues Test Case Looms
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»  Why Solidarity Messages Mean Something
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»  Radio Free East Timor Rocks
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Columns
»  The Soapbox
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»  Sport
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»  Trades Hall
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»  Tool Shed
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Letters to the editor
»  Neale's Spot On!
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»  Silence on the GST
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