Transnational Organizing: A Case Study of Contract Workers in the Colombian Mining Industry

Published date01 December 2014
Date01 December 2014
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12029
Transnational Organizing: A Case Study
of Contract Workers in the Colombian
Mining Industry
Elizabeth Cotton and Tony Royle
Abstract
This article examines recent organizing successes in the Carbones del Cerrejón
coal mine, reversing the organizational crisis of the Colombian mining union,
Sintracarbon. Using Wever’s concept of ‘field-enlarging strategies’, we argue
that these events were facilitated by the dissemination of organizing experiences
between affiliates of a Global Union Federation, International Federation of
Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions (ICEM), which
recently merged to form IndustriALL. Additionally, we argue that this articu-
lation between international and national unions, based on the principle of
subsidiarity, was facilitated through sustained ICEM educational project activ-
ity, providing multiple entry points for Sintracarbon to operationalize its strat-
egy and re-establish bargaining with multinational employers.
1. Introduction
The Carbones del Cerrejón mine is the largest opencast coal mine in the
world, situated in the northern state of La Guajira, Colombia. It is jointly
owned by AngloAmerican, BHP Billiton and Xstrata (previously Glencore),
operating under local Cerrejón management. The mine has its own transpor-
tation links to Puerto Bolivar from which coal is exported to Europe and the
USA. The mine is profitable, representing 50 per cent of Colombia’s coal
sector, with a national plan for increasing extraction of this valuable low-
carbon coal.
Sintracarbon is the largest coal mining union in Colombia, representing
over four thousand workers in the Cerrejón mine. The relationship between
Sintracarbon, previously Sintraintercor, and Cerrejón management has a
long history, from the initial establishment of the mine under state ownership
Elizabeth Cotton is at Middlesex University Business School. Tony Royle is at JE Cairnes
School of Business and Economics, National University of Ireland Galway.
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British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/bjir.12029
52:4 December 2014 0007–1080 pp. 705–724
© John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics 2014. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
(Intercor) to its current ownership structure. Despite these changes, there
has been a consistency of personnel, and many of the relationships between
Sintracarbon and Cerrejón management have been in existence for over 15
years. The make-up of the management and senior personnel of the company
has remained relatively consistent throughout the privatization process
including human resources, medical staff and technical heads of department.
Until 2007, as in most sectors in Colombia, collective bargaining had essen-
tially atrophied at the mine, and there was an increasing pressure on Sintra-
carbon to find ways to re-open negotiations with management in order to
deliver concrete benefits to members and consequently to maintain existing
membership levels.
Sintracarbon was one of the first Colombian unions to affiliate to a Global
Union Federation (GUF), affiliating to the International Federation of
Miners and then, following merger, the International Federation of Chemi-
cal, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions (ICEM) in the late 1990s.
More recently in June 2012, ICEM merged with the International Metal-
workers’ Federation, and the International Textile, Garment and Leather
Worker’s Federation to form IndustriALL, with a membership of over 50
million workers.
The foundations of ICEM’s work with Sintracarbon were educational and
institutional, with Sintracarbon leadership holding an important and active
role on ICEM’s regional and international executives from the time of their
affiliation in 1997. In 2005, as part of a global campaign on contract and
agency labour, ICEM commissioned a research report into the situation of
contract workers in Colombia. At that time, there was no data available from
the unions or government sources nor any evidence of existing union strate-
gies around organizing contract workers. Within two months, ICEM’s
research revealed that contractors employed 56 per cent of workers in the
electric power sector, 45 per cent in the glass sector, 47 per cent in the paper
sector and 27 per cent in the oil sector. Contrary to previous estimates, it
became clear that of the 8,400 workers in the Cerrejón mine, approximately
3,900 were contract workers, with an estimated 343 small contractors as well
as 18 large contractors providing the main bulk of labour and services. It was
also revealed that contract miners for these companies were paid on average
US$250 per month, compared with the average US$600–800 paid to directly
employed miners at the Cerrejón mine.
This was also reflected in the initial difficulties associated with defining
contract workers, at that time contract workers were commonly referred to as
‘contratistas’, denoting anyone working indirectly in the mine. The difficulty
of using this term was that it is the same word that is used for the contractor
companies providing services to principal companies. The term ‘contratista’
in Latin America includes labour agencies and service providers such as
cooperatives. In order to distinguish the companies from the people that
work for them, during the research process, alternative terms were developed
to describe the different actors and processes involved. This led to the
adoption by ICEM affiliates of the term ‘trabajadores tercerizados’ for the
706 British Journal of Industrial Relations
© John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics 2014.

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