This is the news page for Department 200 - Mining and Minerals. This page displays *all* news items from this Department and its Unions. To see news only from a particular Union, click on the Union title below.
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Posted Fri, 11/19/2010 - 3:58am by x361943
27 miners missing after New Zealand explosion
By the CNN Wire Staff
November 19, 2010 -- Updated 0829 GMT (1629 HKT)
(CNN) -- Twenty-seven miners were missing hours after an underground explosion on New Zealand's west coast, company officials said Friday.
Two other miners had emerged from the the Pike River coal mine in Atarau, authorities said.
About three hours after the blast, police said no fatalities had been reported. Emergency workers were going into the mine, TV New Zealand said.
The two miners who had surfaced arrived at the Grey Base Hospital, an hour away, with non-life-threatening injuries, TV New Zealand said. They had moderate blast injuries, with one being treated in the emergency room and the other in a ward.
Emergency crews had interviewed the two miners, trying to determine what happened. The cause of the explosion was not immediately known, police said.
According to early accounts, an electrician went into the mine to investigate a power outage and discovered a driver who had been blown off his loader about 1,500 meters [0.9 mile] into the mine shaft.
A special mine rescue team was among the many emergency workers on the scene.
Communications underground were "terminated" when the explosion happened, Pike River CEO Peter Whittall said.
The entrance to the mine is about 2.2 kilometers along and then branches out, police said. The power outage might have compromised ventilation inside the mine.
Smoke hung outside the mine, trees were charred and a hut had been blown off a hill, TV New Zealand said.
There are two routes out of the mine, Whittall said. Unlike the Chilean mine where 33 miners were rescued in mid-October, the Pike River mine has steep terrain, and the shafts run horizontally into the hill, not vertically into the ground, he told TV New Zealand.
The remote mine is about 50 kilometers [31 miles] northeast of Greymouth, police said.
Posted Sat, 06/23/2007 - 1:10am by x326388
Hashmeya (pictured, right, with a written message of thanks to the IWW for its solidarity with workers in Iraq) is a native of Basra and a 25-year veteran in the Iraqi Department of Electricity. While she is the first woman to rise democratically from the ranks to represent a national Iraqi labor union, she emphasizes that she is not alone - that there are many dedicated and committed union women in the forefront of the Iraqi labor movement.
Ten days ago, two top leaders of Iraq's labor movement, Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein , President of the Electrical Utility Workers Union, General Federation of Iraqi Workers (EUWU-GFIW))and Faleh Abood Umara, General Secretary of the Federation of Oil Unions (FOU) spoke throughout the San Francisco Bay Area as part of an Iraqi labor tour of the US. They spoke urgently of Iraqi labor's unified demand for the end of the brutal US occupation and sought for the support of US labor in rejecting the imposition of the Oil Law which the US is using to force the surrender of Iraqi oil resources to foreign corporations as the price of their withdrawal.
Posted Tue, 09/26/2006 - 12:25pm by x344543
Disclaimer - The following article is reposted here because it is an issue with some relevance to the IWW. The views of the author do not necessarily agree with those of the IWW and vice versa.
The IWW has no connections to "Hands of Venezuela", the Venezuelan state, or Hugo Chavez. This article specifically relates to workers and the IWW because of the AFL-CIO's apparent meddling in thw democratic affairs of workers in nations where the AFL-CIO has no organized presence.
In April 2002, following a general strike led by oil company management and collaborating labor union leaders in Venezuela, parts of the Venezuelan military launched a coup to remove democratically-elected President Hugo Chavez Frias from office. After physically removing Chavez from the presidential palace in Caracas, Miraflores, the head of the national business confederation, FEDECAMARAS, Pedro Carmona, was sworn into office.2
Posted Sun, 08/13/2006 - 5:11pm by x357537
Disclaimer - The following article is reposted here because it is an issue with some relevance to the IWW. The views of the author do not necessarily agree with those of the IWW and vice versa.
New America Media, News Analysis, David Bacon, Aug 09, 2006
Editor's Note: Business interests in Mexico are taking the election of Felipe Calderon as a green light to crack down on striking mine workers. David Bacon is an associate editor at New America Media and author of "The Children of NAFTA" (University of California Press, 2004).
Posted Sun, 06/25/2006 - 6:49am by IWW.org Editor
PRESS RELEASE from Naftana - UK Support Committee for the General Unionof Oil Employees Iraq
OIL UNION BANK ACCOUNT FROZEN
IRAQI GOVERNMENT ATTACKS OPPONENTS OF OIL PRIVATISATION
We have just confirmed reports that the Iraqi regime has frozen all the bank accounts of the Iraqi oil workers' union, both abroad andwithin Iraq.Wave of anti-union activity by government The Iraqi regime's decision comes in the wake of a series of anti-union measures, including the disbanding of the council of the lawyers' union, freezing the writers' union accounts and the September 2005 decree making all trade union activity illegal.
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