Mongolia

By Andrew Casey - Working Life, February 13, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

AUSTRALIAN unions will lead a new global push against the big Australia-based multinational Rio Tinto with a focus on the mining giant’s poor behaviour in its worldwide activities.

Rio operates in 40 countries with more than 70,000 employees and is worth about $60 billion.

But the new global union campaign will put the spotlight on the bad behaviour of Rio Tinto in two key countries – Mongolia and Madagascar.

Global union campaigns are spreading.  Workers and their unions banding together to campaign as one, in a common fight against the same boss – whether they work in Sydney, Jakarta, Ulan Bator, Cape Town, Budapest, London, New York or Sao Paulo.

The aim?  To win global union agreements where multinationals:

•   accept and respect union organising;
•   maintain minimum global labour standards; and
•   agree to a fair collective agreement process.

After protests in South Africa last week mining unions expect to bring rallies to the streets of London and Melbourne in April and May this year – and onto the floor of Rio Tinto’s shareholders annual general meetings.

Australia in the badlands of resource investment

In Mongolia, Rio Tinto is the dominant mining giant – in a mineral-rich nation widely known in the resource world, only half jokingly, as Minegolia.

Minegolia is also the ‘badlands’ of resource investment.

The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative  reports that Rio Tinto’s big Oyu Tolgoi project will supply one third of Mongolia’s GDP by 2020. Ongoing disputes about the profit split between the government and Rio has hurt the jobs of Mongolians – thousands of whom were sacked last year.

Anger over misbehaviour of resource companies sees foreigners regularly entangled in an opaque legal system, used by populist politicians to assuage local anger.

Minegolia should be of special interest to Australians. We play a big role in foreign investment in this small nation stuck between the giants of Russia and China.

The poor behaviour of Rio Tinto, as well as other Australian resource companies, has given Australia a bad reputation, particularly among ordinary Mongolians.

Human rights organisations have in the past called on the Australian government to monitor Australian investors, to ensure they do not harm Mongolia’s local communities. As many of the world’s mining giants call Australia home, Oxfam Australia has also been a vocal critic.

Now, after a two-year lead up period to allow for corporate investment research, mapping of potential allies and the development of an effective strategy IndustriALL Global Union – representing more than 50 million workers – is ready to join the battle