In 1969 the first of three aluminium smelters was built in Iceland at Straumsvík, near Hafnafjörður, on the South West side of Reykjavík by Alusuisse (subsequently Rio Tinto-Alcan). In 1998 a second smelter was constructed by Century Aluminum (now a subsidiary of controversial mining giant Glencore), at Hvalfjörður near Reykjavík, and in 2007 the third, run by Alcoa, was completed at Reyðarfjörður in the remotely populated East of the country. The Icelandic Government had been advertising the country’s vast ‘untapped’ hydroelectric and geothermal energy at ‘the lowest prices in Europe’ hoping to attract jobs and industry to boost Iceland’s already very wealthy but somewhat fishing dependent economy. The industry, which would permanently change Iceland’s landscape with mega-dams, heavy industry scale geothermal plants and several kilometer long factories, was promoted by the Icelandic Government and the aluminium companies as ‘good employment for a modern age’. However, ten years after the flagship Alcoa Fjarðaál project was completed, unemployment is higher than it was in 2005, and Iceland’s economy has become dependent on an industry which is vulnerable to commodity cycle slumps and mass job losses. Worse, the price charged for Iceland’s energy is tied to the price of aluminium and analyses of the country’s 2008/9 economic crisis suggest it was exacerbated by the poor terms of Iceland’s late industrialisation. Yet demands for further industrialisation remain, and more than 1000 Icelanders are employed in the aluminium sector.

This article exposes the conditions inside Iceland’s aluminium smelters based on interviews with workers conducted in 2012. The stories from two smelters share correlating accounts of being forced to work in dangerous conditions under extreme pressure, and without adequate safety equipment, leading to serious accidents which are falsely reported by the companies. These shocking allegations require serious attention by the trade unions, Icelandic government and health and safety authorities. This especially in the current context of labour disputes with the aluminium companies, alongside revelations about the same companies’ tax avoidance schemes and profiteering in the country.

Century, Grundartangi:

A former worker from the Century plant at Grundartangi shared his story, though did not want his identity revealed. Steini (not his real name) had worked at the plant for ten years and only quit recently.

“When I went to work there I thought of it as just a job and it was good pay. My experience of it was that they were taking our labour for cheap and making work us like slaves. The only thing we get out of it is our pay.

There were so many accidents that were their fault, not ours. They put so many rules in place, but you have to break the rules to get the work done, which they are pressuring you to do, then if something goes wrong its all your fault.”

Steini described how bonuses are awarded to the shift according to the number of accidents. If you have an accident and are off work you lower your annual bonus. At first the bonuses included smart new bikes, then they were reduced to a restaurant meal, and finally just pizza and beer.

He described the pressure of the job; how workers are pushed to work harder, but as soon as they get quick at the tasks they add more work so they are even more pressured. Akin to Alcoa Fjardaál in the East of Iceland the turnover rate is around 20% with only a handful of people staying for ten years as he had. Similarly, both Alcoa and Century Aluminum have gradually replaced permanent jobs with contract labour. Increasingly the work force was made up of University students on summer jobs which made the work even more risky as this short term labour was less experienced and more prone to accidents.

Shifts were twelve hours long, for 183 hours/month and the working hours were very unsociable, many at night for three days in a row. Steini described how most of the days off in between shifts were used to sleep and recover energy in order to work again. As the plant was expanded and more pots were added the work got harder.

“Everybody who works in Norðurál [Century] hates it. Most of the people are eating anti-depressants and everything. They hate the company, they hate the work but they are afraid to change and be without work.” He said.

He described how many accidents there were at the factory and how the company avoid paying compensation or having to report the severity of the incident;

“I got a broken finger, I burned my feet and once I had a forklift drop on my arm. I never got any compensation from the company and when I went to insurance companies I could get nothing either. The company ask you to come back to work as soon as you can move and just sit at the computer, then they count that as being ‘well’ in their records so it looks like less ‘work days lost’. The insurance companies also see it this way so it it very hard to get compensation.

One guy was doing something very risky and fell into the [molten aluminium] pot up to his knees. He was on morphine for a few weeks. I remember the health and safety guy coming out of a meeting with him smiling. He had admitted that it was all his own fault.”

Industry standards on reporting discriminate between lost time injuries and restricted work injuries, with the former being taken more seriously. Like Alcoa, Glencore claim that the ‘total recordable injury frequency rate’ (TRIFR) is being reduced annually. Nonetheless ten people died at Glencore’s global operations last year according to their 2015 Annual report, and sixteen in 2014.

Scandals over worker’s rights had previously erupted in Iceland during the construction of several mega power projects for the aluminium industry after the conditions of cheap foreign labour were exposed. More than a dozen Chinese and other foreign workers died during the construction of the Kárahnjúkar dam and several Romanian workers suffocated in geothermal pipes on the site of a Reykjavík Energy work camp in Hellisheiði where they worked up to 72 hour weeks.

Steini described the heat of the pot rooms and how restrictive and hot the many types of safety clothing are. As a result most workers chose to use the minimum amount of safety clothing, enabling them to be comfortable and work faster to get bonuses;

“You used as little safety equipment as you could so you could get the job done. When I was in the pot room I just used a paper mask for comfort. I stopped noticing the smell of the gases, then after a period working in the pot lining rooms I went back to the pot room and I really smelt it. It chokes your throat and you know it’s bad.”

‘Pot rooms’ are huge sealed troughs of carbon anodes and aluminium flouride through which up to 320,000 amps of electricity are passed to separate the strongly bonded oxygen from the alumina. Molten aluminium is then ‘tapped’ from the pots and cast into ‘ingots’. The process generates gases including inorganic fluorides, sulphur dioxide, CO2 and perfluorocarbons. Perfluorocarbons (PFCs) are extremely potent greenhouse gases lasting up to 50,000 years in the atmosphere. Tetrafluoromethane, the most common PFC is 6,500 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2 and its main global source is from aluminium smelters. Sulphur dioxide and fluoride emissions are acidic and can kill or stunt plant growth. Fluoride emissions also build up in the bones and teeth of animals and humans causing Skeletal Fluorosis, which weakens bones and can lead to bone deformation much like arthritis. Farmers living around Centrury’s smelter in Hvalfjörður claim their sheep and horses have got sick and even died from flouride poisoning.

Saga (not her real name) started work in Century Aluminum’s Grundartangi smelter in 2006, before turning twenty. It was her first big job and her introduction to the working world. She was working twelve hour shifts from the outset, and her work began in the pot rooms. Like Steini she described the fallacy of the health and safety training;

“We were told to wear dust-masks because of all the dangerous and unhealthy gases that come out of the pots, also because of the alumina, fluoride and other pollution in the air. You could always smell it all through the mask though. It was emphasized very heavily not to smoke inside because smoking inside the pot-rooms could result in ‘stone-lungs’ in few years time, which is very common amongst smelter-workers. That is because of all the pollution in there. If you would smoke inside, you were inhaling three times more tar and other stuff straight down to your lungs than if you where smoking outside in more normal surroundings. We also learnt that pregnant women are never allowed to enter the pot-rooms because there is a great risk of foetal harm.”

Saga accused Century of extremely low health and safety standards and condemned the company for making workers “repeatedly risk their lives to keep the smelter operational into the next shift”. She described being given second hand protective clothing in poor condition, and claimed that much of the equipment was in need of repair but was still being used as parts were hard to come by. Like Steini she had witnessed and experienced serious injuries, which had been misreported or disguised by asking workers to come in for office days when injured in order to improve the figures on workdays lost due to injury;

“Working for show” you could call it. I have even heard about workers with broken legs being made to show up for hanging out in the office for a few hours just to keep the records clean. It was easy to pressure people with many passive methods, such as bringing down the accident record which means that their shift doesn’t get a reward like the others that went through the year “without” accidents that caused absents.”

She gave a scathing and detailed account of the pressured and dangerous work environment;

“I witnessed others, and found myself, doing dangerous and life threatening things in the smelter. This was not because we had some kind of death wish or thirst for adrenaline but because there was no other way to finish our daily jobs on time. There is no other choice than to climb on that pot, drive that windowless forklift, work on this broken down and not really functioning crane today, not take proper breaks. Be one doing two people’s jobs, drive too fast because you have to hurry and “fixing” things with all possible and impossible ways so they will last just a little bit longer. I have seen people run away, scared for their lives, and then being forced back because somebody has to take care of what went wrong. I have witnessed what happens after a pot explodes.

Far too many people cram themselves into vehicles, because distances are very long and your main transport is your own two legs on the hard concrete floors. These are all labeled as dangerous things to do in there and in theory they are not “really” allowed. For example climbing on pots –which are very often badly closed and have broken lids or holes. Working alone on a crane, which is strictly speaking never allowed, always to be performed by a team of at least two workers. That’s because of the danger of people passing out from the heat, exhaustion, lack of liquid, rest or food, and a crane-operator could very likely be in a critical place when that happens, like over an open pot. Driving vehicles with the lights not working, broken windows or too filthy windows to actually see out is not allowed. Neither is the operation of any vehicles or cranes without proper training, or vehicles and cranes that are broken or not functioning properly. Having your shoes not closed all the way, having an old helmet, old shoes, no dust-mask, standing under an crane in use, not preheating your tools well enough to touch liquid metal or acid. Working in too much loudness, too much darkness or too much pollution. Not getting the breaks that you are entitled to. Teaching yourself how to do things. Working with a person you don’t trust or yourself being in so bad physical state, like suffering illness, fatigue, hunger, pain, that you don’t even trust yourself.

All of these things, I have had to do to finish my duties, just like everybody else in there (at least back then). Of course I could have said no at any given time, but you don’t really want to do that when you know that it is just going to be somebody else, a co-worker who is in the same shoes as you, that will have to take care of it and finish what you left. Everything has to be finished every day no matter what it takes.”

Alcoa Fjarðaál.

The Alcoa plant in the East of Iceland was heralded by the Icelandic Government as the saviour of the waning Eastern economy and a fantastic employment opportunity which would bring young people from Reykjavík to the East. Officials promised up to 1000 permanent jobs, plus another 2.5 jobs created in other sectors for each job in the aluminium industry. Ten years later, however, few of the promised benefits have come to the region, and overall unemployment in Iceland, which was less than 3% in 2005, reached 7.5% in 2009 and remained at 5% 2015.

Alex Smári drove the Alcoa bus from Stöðvarfjörður to Reydarfjörður from 2006 to 2008. He says people in the East believed work in the smelter would be easy, with good pay and plenty of time off, but the reality had turned out to be very different. He described workers returning from their shifts as ‘like corpses’ in the bus, and claims many quit their jobs after a short time. In his opinion the East has not become more thriving as the politicians and company promised, to the contrary “Fjarðabyggd is like a labour camp”.

One worker in the Alcoa Fjarðaál smelter was willing to speak to me though he did not want to be named. Bergur (not his real name) noted the high turnover of workers with many leaving after just a year or two. He claimed around 100 of the 450 employees in the smelter were foreign, suggesting that many in the East simply don’t want to work there. There are only a handful of people who have remained in employment with the company since the smelter opened in 2007.

“Out of twenty people on my shift that started working there five years ago there are only two left. Everyone else quit because they didn’t like working there. The turnover was 20% last year. 20% with all the unemployment in Iceland! It really tells a story.”

Like the Century workers he described how the managers push the workers to work as fast and hard as possible during the shift. However, once they have learnt to work faster the job load simply goes up again.

“The Alcoa building system is devised to suck every bit of what you have. You start with 100 people doing 100 people’s jobs and then you push everyone until 90 people are doing 100 people’s jobs, and then there are 60 and then 50. At Alcoa, everyone gets into the situation where he is working the whole shift doing his absolute best and still walking away with a kick in the butt for not finishing something or other.”

Bergur claimed company people had told them in a meeting that Fjarðaál is the most dangerous of Alcoa’s smelters in Europe. Shifts are twelve hours long and often at night and employees are expected to work 176 hours a month compared with only 142 hours on eight hour shifts at Rio Tinto’s Straumsvík plant near Reykjavík.

There is also a bonus system that rewards the workers for the quantity and quality of aluminium they produce. This means workers effectively get fined when a machine breaks or poor quality alumina is delivered, even though this is out of their control.

“Everything is connected to the bonus. If a crane breaks down and it holds off production it lowers the bonus for everyone. Now we have low quality alumina coming in which means we get through more anodes and that also lowers the bonus. When this situation is going on the workload gets substantially higher, so not only are you working a lot more, but you know you are getting less pay.”

As a result of this pressure Bergur claims the few days off between shifts are usually spent simply sleeping and recovering before work starts again. Contrary to Alcoa’s claims that the workplace is ‘family friendly’ he claims Alcoa Fjarðaál has become known locally as ‘the divorce factory’ since so many couples have separated due to the unsociable hours which affect their relationship.

Bergur also spoke about Alcoa’s use of contract labour, and its effect on worker’s rights and the strength of the unions:

“There are two groups of people working at Alcoa: There are Alcoa employees and there are contractors who are not part of Alcoa. We are doing the same work but they are not members of the unions. By having these two groups they can control the employees more easily and the unity within the factory will be less.”

“We have to live!”

Former Prime Minister of Iceland Halldór Ásgrímsson famously promoted the Alcoa Fjardaál project by proclaiming “we have to live!”. But what kind of livelihood have Icelanders been forced to accept? All of the workers expressed feeling misled by the government and the aluminium companies.

Saga claimed that prospective workers were denied information about the health and safety risks;

“Our government has been been eagerly promoting smelters as very agreeable and good working places for years. Smelters are being promoted in places where people don’t know them, don’t know the dangers, the threats and the health risks, and don’t feel they have a choice. How can a place where you are constantly breathing heavy pollution – alumina, fluoride and dangerous gases – that make you feel like your lungs took a severe beating every time you open up a pot, be a healthy and agreeable working place?”

Bergur analysed the Icelandic government’s claim that the smelter would reverse the East to West migration trend:

“The people who have quit there, who have returned to Reykjavik or whatever…I call those the sensible people. They have moved to the East to work for Alcoa, maybe both man and woman. They come with high hopes and determination to make this work. After working for a year, or a year and a half, the pressure which goes on at the shift becomes too much, and when they realise this is the system and will not change, that they are never going to be in a situation where you are working a relatively easy shift and going home not so tired….this is not going to happen. When they realise that, they quit and get out.”

Steini also questioned the government’s promotion of aluminium smelting as a good employment for Icelanders;

“People in Iceland just wanted jobs, but not necessarily this kind of factory. The question is who put this idea in our minds that the only way to get a job is by having an aluminium smelter?”

Of course, Icelandic smelter workers are not alone in their experience of pollution and dangerous working conditions, and there is much potential to link up with global struggles for workers rights. At Hindalco’s Hirakud aluminium smelter in Odisha, India, workers are taking the company to court asking why they were not told what they were breathing in. They were being moved from the pot-room every four years, told that this was due to the potential health effects of working in such high heats, but the effects of breathing in highly toxic fumes were never mentioned. They believe the company was deliberately concealing the dangers while trying to minimise them.

On top of poor working conditions, employment in the aluminium industry is innately insecure, as it is vulnerable to the peaks and troughs of the commodities supercycle. The recent commodities downturn led to the demise of the UK steel industry, including the likely closure of Port Talbot steel, cutting 11,000 jobs. The workers have already lost part of their pensions, a common phenomenon in the metals industry, as the owners – Tata Steel – claim they cannot afford to pay the full amounts. The rusting skeleton of Century Aluminum’s Helguvík smelter, abandoned midway through construction in 2009, stands as a stark reminder of the false promises and volatility of this industry.

Iceland’s aluminium workers cannot expect their employers, experts in anti-unionising and misleading PR, to protect their rights. Instead, they must properly inform themselves of the risks to their health and security, and contribute to the debate on what constitutes ‘a nice place to work’ in a modern Iceland.

Sources:

Cooke, K. and Gould, M.H. 1991. The health effects of aluminium, a review. The Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health. 111, 163-8.
Aslam M, Khalil K, Rasmussen RA, et al. (October 2003). “Atmospheric perfluorocarbons”. Environ. Sci. Technol. 37 (19): 4358–61.
Dr R. Liteplo and Ms R. Gomes, 2002, ‘Environmental Health Criteria for Fluorides’. International Programme on Chemical Safety, UNEP. http://www.inchem.org/documents/ehc/ehc/…

Indriði H. Þorláksson, economist and former tax director

Frumvinnsla áls – Lýsing á hinni mengandi og orkufreku framleiðslu álbarra

The Financial Times notes the importance of his ‘fixer’ role, noting that:

The quietly spoken and affable geologist is seen as someone willing to throw himself into engaging with governments and communities in some of the “difficult” countries where miners increasingly operate. That is something that Vedanta is seen as desperately needing – not least in India itself. Mr Albanese may lack experience in the country but one analyst says that can give him the opportunity to present himself as a clean pair of hands who will run mines to global standards…“There’s a big hill to climb there” Mr Albanese said.(1)

In fact Albanese has already been hard at work for Vedanta since he discreetly joined the company as Chairman of the little known holding company Vedanta Resources Holdings Ltd on Sept 16^th 2013, billed as an ‘advisory’ role to Anil Agarwal (Vedanta’s 68% owner and infamously hot headed Chairman).

Vedanta Resources Holdings Ltd (VRH Ltd) (previously Angelrapid Ltd) are a private quoted holding company with $2 billion assets at present, and none at all until 2009. VRH Ltd own significant shares in another company called Konkola Resources Plc – a subsidiary of Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) – Vedanta’s Zambian copper producing unit. This is an example of the complex financial structure of Vedanta – with holding companies like this one serving to move funds, avoid taxation and facilitate pricing scams like ‘transfer mispricing’.

Shortly after becoming CEO of Vedanta Resources Holdings Albanese helped Agarwal by buying 30,500 shares in Vedanta Resources in November 2013 as their share price plummeted and Agarwal himself bought a total of 3.5 million shares to keep the company afloat. In December Albanese bought another 25,163 shares.

By February 2014 he was being sent out to Zambia to manage a crisis over Vedanta’s attempt to fire 2000 workers, which Agarwal himself had failed to fix during an earlier trip in November, and further damage caused by revelations about the company’s tax evasion, externalising of profits and environmental devastation in Foil Vedanta’s report Copper Colonialism: Vedanta KCM and the copper loot of Zambia. 

In a taste of things to come newspapers referred to Tom Albanese as the Chairman of Vedanta Resources, and Labour minister Fackson Shamenda alluded to a ‘change of management’ giving them new confidence in Vedanta. Albanese appeared to have done some fine sweet talking, promising that workers would not be fired as part of a ‘new business plan’ and claiming that all of KCMs reports are transparent – an outright lie as their annual reports, profits and accounts are as good as top secret in Zambia and the UK.

However, scandals and unrest continued to blight Vedanta in Zambia and the Financial Times reported that Albanese had flown out a total of four times in February alone.

Albanese’s role as a ‘fixer’ and sweet-talker is nothing new. His appointment as CEO of Rio Tinto in 2006 was on very similar terms, as an article in The Independent newspaper noted his role to ‘green tint’ Rio, and ‘scrub its image clean’. The article mentions that, in an exclusive interview with the paper Albanese declared unprompted that the company is a “good corporate citizen”, and describes him showing no emotion and choosing his words carefully, focusing on safety and environmental and social responsibility.

But Albanese could not play dumb about the reasons a new image was needed for Rio. Since he joined the company in 1993 Rio had been accused and found guilty of a number of major human right violations. 

In the early nineties they forcibly displaced thousands of villagers in Indonesia for their Kelian gold mine. They, and partner Freeport McMoran caused ‘massive environmental devastation’ at the Grasberg mine in West Papua, and when people rioted over conditions in 1996, began funding the Indonesian military to protect the mine. $55 million was donated by Freeport McMoran to the Indonesian military and police between 1998 and 2004, resulting in many murders and accusations of torture. In 2010 they locked 570 miners out of their borates mine in California without paycheques leaving them in poverty. In 2008 Rio threatened to shut their Tiwai point aluminium smelter, firing 3,500 if the government imposed carbon taxes. In Wisconsin, Michigan and California the are accused of toxic waste dumping and poisoning of rivers, and in Madagascar and Cameroon they have displaced tens of thousands of people without compensation or customary rights at their QMM mine, and the giant Lom Pangar Dam – built to power an aluminium smelter.

In 2011 a US federal court action accused Rio Tinto of involvement in genocide in Bouganville, Papua New Guinea, where the government allegedly acted under instruction from Rio Tinto in the late eighties and nineties when it killed thousands of local people trying to stop their Panguna copper and gold mine. 10,000 people were eventually killed in the class uprising that resulted from the conflict over the mine. Rio Tinto were accused of providing vehicles and helicopters to transport troops, using chemicals to defoliate the rainforests and dumping toxic waste as well as keeping workers in ‘slave like conditions‘.

Yet, Albanese is being seen as a respectable CEO with a more diplomatic and clean approach than his new Vedanta counterpart Anil Agarwal. There is great irony in Albanese’s promises to improve workers conditions in Zambia when Rio Tinto are famed for their ‘company wide de-unionisation policy’, with 200 people marching against the ill treatment of mineworkers outside the international Mining Indaba in Cape Town in February, calling them ‘one of the most aggressive anti union companies in the sector’.

Perhaps Albanese will feel at home in another company with a dubious human rights and environmental record. Both Rio and Vedanta have been removed from the Norwegian Government Pension Fund’s Global Investments for ‘severe environmental damages’ and unethical behaviour following investigations. The Norwegian government divested its shares in Rio Tinto in 2008, while it divested from Vedanta Resources in 2007, and also excluded Vedanta’s new major subsidiary Sesa Sterlite from its portfolio just a few weeks ago in January 2014.

Albanese was previously famed for being one of the highest paid CEOs on the FTSE 100, earning £11.6 million in 2011. However he refused his 2012 bonus in a last ditch attempt to save his career at Rio before he was fired in January 2013 amid a total of $14 billion in write-downs caused by his poor decision to acquire Alcan’s aluminium business just before prices crashed, and a $3 billion loss on the Riversdale coal assets he bought in Mozambique, making him in effect a ‘junk’ CEO today.

Other commentators have noted that this is not the first time Vedanta have recruited a junked mining heavyweight to save their bacon, but point out that the appointments have previously been short-lived, possibly due to frustrations about the dominance of majority owner Agarwal and his family. The infamous mining financier Brian Gilbertson, who merged BHP and Billiton, was another scrap heap executive who helped Vedanta launch on the London Stock Exchange in 2003 in the largest initial share flotation that year. However, he quit after only seven months after falling out with Agarwal.

Albanese is diplomatic when faced with questions about potential conflicts between himself and 68% owner and Chairman Anil Agarwal claiming Agarwal “will be in[the] executive chairman role when it comes to M&A and strategy”. However, commentators point out that, ‘the British Financial Services and Markets Act of 2000 stipulated that the posts of CEO and Chairman of companies should be separated – a principle which was backed in October 2013 by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority’, potentially posing another corporate governance issue for Vedanta, who are already accused of violating governance norms in London by people as unlikely as the former head of the Confederation of British Industry – Richard Lambert.

But Albanese is positive about his re-emergence as a major mining executive. In fact the man with so much blood on his hands may be alluding to his experience in making great profit from others’ misery, when he says to the Financial Times, on the occasion of his appointment as Vedanta CEO, that:

“Sometimes the best opportunities are when the times are darkest”.

1) Financial Times, March 10 2014, ‘Albanese back at the helm to face Vedanta challenge’.

* quotes are only in paper version in section on ‘marriage of convenience between American miner and Indian billionaire.

More than 100 protesters from Foil Vedanta and other organisations crowded the entrance to British mining company Vedanta Resources’ London AGM and poured red paint on the steps on Tuesday in an attempt to disrupt the meeting. In Goa and Odisha in India where Vedanta operates, parallel demonstrations involving thousands of people affected by the company’s activities took place on Monday and Tuesday. Inside the AGM the meeting was once again dominated by dissident shareholders who pointed out Vedanta’s racism, major environmental and social violations and poor governance.

See the Foil Vedanta website for further information and photos.

This is the content of Saving Iceland’s first round of brief monthly news from the struggle over Iceland’s wilderness and connected struggles around the world.

Hellisheiði: Asthma, Sulphur Pollution and Effluent Water Lagoon

Those who promote large-scale geothermal energy production as green and environmentally friendly, are once again forced to face another backlash as a recent research suggests a direct link between sulphur pollution from the Hellisheiði geothermal plant and asthma among the inhabitants of Reykjavík. The results of this particular research, which was done by Hanne Krage Carlsen, doctorate student of Public Health at the University of Iceland, were published in the Environmental Research journal earlier this year, showing that the purchasing of asthma medicine increases between 5 and 10 percent in accordance with higher sulphur pollution numbers in the capital area of Reykjavík.

Adding to the continuous unmasking of the geothermal green myth, environmentalist Ómar Ragnarsson recently discovered and documented new lagoons, created by run-off water from Reykjavík Energy’s geothermal power plant in Hellisheiði. At first Reykjavík Energy denied that the lagoons’ water comes from the company’s power plant, but were forced to withdraw those words only a few days later. Ómar had then brought a journalist from RÚV, the National Broadcasting Service, to the lagoons and traced the water to the plant. Despite the company’s withdrawal, they nevertheless rejected worries voiced by environmentalists, regarding the very possible pollution of ground water in the area, and insisted that this is allowed for in the plant’s license.

According to the plant’s license the run-off water should actually be pumped back, down into earth, in order to prevent polluting impacts and the creation of lagoons containing a huge amount of polluting materials. Ómar’s discovery shows that this is certainly not the case all the time, and additionally, the pumping that has taken place so far has proved to be problematic, creating a series of man-made earthquakes in the area, causing serious disturbances in the neighbouring town of Hveragerði.

In an article following his discovery Ómar points out that for the last years, the general public has not had much knowledge about geothermal power plants’ run-off water, and much less considered it as a potential problem. Ómar blames this partly on the Icelandic media, which have been far from enthusiastic about reporting the inconvenient truth regarding geothermal power production. One of these facts is that the effluent water, which people tend to view positively due to the tourist attraction that has been made of it at the Blue Lagoon, is a token of a serious energy waste, as the current plants use only 13% of the energy while 87% goes into the air or into underutilized run off-water. These enlarging lagoons — not only evident in Hellisheiði but also by the geothermal power plants in Reykjanes, Svartsengi, Nesjavellir and Bjarnarflag — suggest that the energy companies’ promises regarding the pumping of run-off water, are far from easily kept.

The Fight Over Iceland’s Energy Master Plan Continues

During the last few weeks, the Icelandic Parliament’s Industries Committee received 333 remarks in connection with the committee’s work on a parliamentary resolution for Iceland’s Energy Master Plan. The resolution, which was presented by the Ministers of Industry and of Environment in April this year, gives a green light for a monstrous plan to turn the Reykjanes peninsula’s geothermal areas into a continuous industrial zone.

The remarks can generally be split into two groups based on senders and views: Firstly, individuals and environmentalist associations who, above all, protest the afore-mentioned Reykjanes plans. Secondly, companies and institutions with vested interests in the further heavy industrialization of Iceland who demand that the Master Plan’s second phase goes unaltered through parliament — that is, as it was before the parliamentary resolution was presented, in which the much-debated Þjórsá dams and other hydro power plants were still included in the exploitation category. Saving Iceland has published one of the remarks, written by Helga Katrín Tryggvadóttir, which differs from these two groups as it evaluates energy production and nature conservation in a larger, long-term context.

During the process, the head of the Industries Committee, Kristján Möller — MP for the social-democratic People’s Alliance, known for his stand in favour of heavy industry — ordered and paid for a remark sent by management company GAMMA. The company first entered discussion about one year ago after publishing a report, which promised that the national energy company Landsvirkjun could become the equivalent of the Norwegian Oil Fund, if the company would only be permitted to build dams like there is no tomorrow.

In a similarly gold-filled rhetoric, GAMMA’s remark regarding the Energy Master Plan states that the changes made by the two ministers — which in fact are the results of another public reviewing process last year — will cost Iceland’s society about 270 billion ISK and 5 thousand jobs. According to the company’s report, these amount are the would-be benefits of forcefully continuing the heavy industrialization of Iceland, a plan that has proved to be not only ecologically but also economically disastrous. Seen from that perspective, it does not come as a surprise realizing that the management company is largely staffed with economists who before the economic collapse of 2008 lead the disastrous adventures of Kaupþing, one of the three biggest Icelandic bubble banks.

Alterra Power: Decreases Revenue, Enlargement Plans in Iceland

Canadian energy company Alterra Power, the majority stakeholder of Icelandic energy company HS Orka, recently published the financial and operating results for the first quarter of this year. “Consolidated revenue for the current quarter was $16.4 million compared to $18.9 million in the comparative quarter,” the report states, “due to lower revenue from our Icelandic operations as a result of lower aluminium prices, which declined 13.9% versus the comparative quarter.”

At the same time, the company’s Executive Chairman Ross Beaty stated that Alterra is preparing for an enlargement of the Reykjanesvirkjun geothermal power plant, located at the south-west tip of the Reykjanes peninsula, which should increase the plant’s production capacity from the current 100 MW to 180 MW. The construction is supposed to start at the end of this year and to be financed with the 38 million USD purchase of new shares in HS Orka by Jarðvarmi, a company owned by fourteen Icelandic pension funds.

According to Alterra, permission for all construction-related activities is in place. However, as Saving Iceland has reported, Iceland’s National Energy Authority has officially stated their fears that increased energy production will lead to an over-exploitation of the plant’s geothermal reservoir. Furthermore, Ásgeir Margeirsson, Chairman of HS Orka, responded to Alterra’s claims stating that due to a conflict between the energy company and aluminium producer Norðurál, the construction might not start this year. According to existing contracts, the energy from the enlargement is supposed to power Norðurál’s planned aluminium smelter in Helguvík. That project, however, has been on hold for years due to financial and energy crisis, and seems to be nothing but a fantasy never to be realised.

Greenland: Cheap Chinese Labour and Toxic Dumping

The home rule government of Greenland is split in their stand on Alcoa’s plans to import 2 thousand Chinese workers for the construction of the company’s planned smelter in Maniitsoq. The biggest governing party, Inuit Ataqatigiit, is against the plan as the workers will not be paid the same amount as Greenlandic labour. On the other hand, the Democratic Party, which has two of the government’s nine ministerial seats, is in favour of the plans on the grounds that the workers’ working condition and payments will be better than in China.

In Iceland, during the construction of the Kárahnjúkar dams and Alcoa’s aluminium smelter in Reyðarfjörður, Chinese and Portuguese migrant workers were imported on a mass scale. More than 1700 work-related injuries were reported during the building of the dams, ten workers ended up with irrecoverable injuries and five workers died. In 2010, the Occupational Safety and Health Authority stated that the Kárahnjúkar project was in a different league to any other project in Iceland, with regard to work-related accidents.

At the same time as Greenland’s government argued over Alcoa, Danish newspaper Politiken reported that the Scottish oil company Cairn Energy — a company that, along with Indian mining giant Vedanta, shares the ownership of oil and gas company Cairn India — is responsible for dumping 160 tons of toxic materials into the ocean in the years of 2010 and 2011. The dumping is linked to the company’s search for oil off Greenland’s shore and is five times higher than the amount of comparable materials dumped in 2009 by every single oil platform of Denmark and Norway combined.

Preface

Glencore are the majority shareholder of Century, the owner of one operational and one half-built smelter in Iceland, it’s key operations for aluminium smelting. But who are Glencore and what are the implications for Iceland? This comprehensive article profiles the world’s biggest commodity broker, who’s only comparable predecessor was Enron. The profile covers the reach and grip of Glencore’s domination of metal, grain, coal and bio-oils markets, allowing it to set prices which profit very few and are detrimental to many. It shows the tight web of connections between the major mining companies and Glencore through shared board history and shared ownership of assets, cataloguing key shareholders (and board members) who’s stakes make them larger shareholders than institutional investors in ownership of Glencore. These connections include Rusal’s co chair Nathaniel Rothschild, a financier with a $40m investment in Glencore, and a personal friend of Peter Mandelson (former EU trade commissioner and British politician) and George Osborne (UK Chancellor).

The article details the human rights and environmental abuses of Glencore at it’s many operations, including the 2009 killing of Mayan indigenous leader Adolfo Ich Chamán who spoke out about Century’s activities in Guatemala under CEO-ship of Peter Jones (still a Century board member). It claims that Glencore is higher than most in the running for most abusive and environmentally detrimental mining company, going where lesser devils fear to tread – trading with Congo, Central Asia and embargoed countries such as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and apartheid South Africa. Glencore founder Marc Rich was involved in trading embargoed Iranian oil, and fled the United States in 1983 accused of insider dealing and tax dodging over Iranian deals, becoming one of the 10 fugitives most wanted by the FBI, until he was pardoned by Bill Clinton. Glencore is still run by two of his main men.

Introduction

From Kazakhstan to Australia, taking in the views of Zambia, war-stricken Congo and Angola, cutting across from Siberia to Iceland is a network of mining and metals companies with a catalogue of environmental and community abuse in their wake. In Iceland its  face is Century Aluminum, but behind them, at the heart of this web lies the secretive commodity broker Glencore International of Switzerland. Glencore is about to launch one of the biggest placement of shares, raising $10 Billion, making a lot of people very rich and valuing itself as a company worth $60Bn. In this article we start to throw a spotlight on just how Glencore makes its money and how Iceland is just one of many victims of a company built on ruthless exploitation.

On the surface, Glencore’s wealth comes from the buying and selling of the world’s commodities (see below for more detail), specialising in grain and metal markets. However, what is unusual for a commodity broker is that it invests heavily in the very companies whose produce it is trading. Its interests are global, from the breadbaskets of Russia, to zinc mines in Kazakhstan, copper and cobalt interests in Congo and Angola, and aluminium in Iceland.

It is the latter that ties Glencore into the Icelandic economy through its 44% ownership of Century, as well as membership of the board of directors. Century is the owner of the Grundartangi smelter and is behind the building of another plant at Helguvik, for which a number of controversial new geothermal and hydro power plants would need to be built. There is also a doubt if enough energy to run a smelter in Helguvík actually exists. Glencore controls 38% of the global trading market in aluminium. Of this, 50% of this comes from Century and UC Rusal, the Russian Aluminium giant (of which Glencore owns 8.8%).

The result is a private network of personal ties and business relationships so tight that what matters to Century also matters to Glencore. The Icelandic government may be doing deals with Century, but Glencore is always present in the background, bringing unsavoury alliances to this particular bed. There are a lot of unanswered questions over how and with whom Glencore chooses to invest. One only has to look at its principle partners and deals to see it does not shy away from exploitation of war torn countries or making alliances with men whose fortunes carry with them heavy taints of corruption. Despite all the exuberance in financial circles at the profits to be made by the Glencore share offering, a few more level-headed traders and journalist are wondering if there should be more caution, especially given how little is known about the inner workings of the company and just how manages to pull off so many exceptionally profitable deals.

It is also worth noting that the last time the world saw such a commodity broker dominate a market to this extent ended up going very sour – that commodity broker being Enron.

Who are Century Aluminum?

Century is a company that specialises in smelting aluminium. It was founded in 1995 when various interests controlled by Glencore were brought together. In 1996 it was spun off as a public company^.1 As well as its Icelandic sites, which it owns outright, it owns or has a share in aluminium plants at Ravenswood, West Virginia, at Hawesville (100%), Kentucky (80% owned with the rest owned by Glencore), and at Mt. Holly, South Carolina (50%, the other half owned by Alcoa Inc). In the past it has had interests in the Congo. As a global player it is the 10th largest producer.

Its ownership remains dominated by Glencore at 44%, with the majority of the other shareholders being held in relatively small amounts by US institutional investors (hedge funds etc.).² It is clear from Century’s website that Iceland is a major part of their business and strategy and three executives of its Icelandic operations are listed as key management.

Key People

Gunnar Gudlaugsson, Plant Manager of Nordural Grundartangi

Joined Nordural in 2008, from Straumsvik, the Rio Tinto Alcan smelter, where he had served for over ten years.

Ragnar Gudmundsson, Managing Director of Nordural

Nordural is the holding company for the Icelandic interests of Century. Previously Chief Financial Officer of Basafell, prior to which he was a senior manager at Samskip, both leading companies in Iceland.

Wayne R. Hale, Chief Operating Officer

Joined Century in 2007, having previously been with Sual in Russia (it was Sual, Rusal and Glencore’s Russian aluminium interests which merged to form UC Rusal). Has also worked for Kaiser and Rio Tinto.

Peter Jones, Director

2001-2006 was President & Chief Operating Officer of Inco Ltd. Former President & CEO of Hudson Bay Mining & Smelting Co (retired at the end of 2009).

David J. Kjos, Vice President of Operations in Iceland

Former manager of Cygnus Inc, an aerospace manufacturing company; prior to that was with the United Development Co & Kaiser Aluminium & Chemical Co.

Logan W. Kruger, CEO, President

Joined November 2005. Before Century, from 2003 he had been a leading executive at Inco, the large nickel mining company where he over saw operations in the Asia / Pacific region, including the Goro Nickel operation in New Caledonia and other projects in Indonesia, remaining as a director of the Indonesian subsidiary P.T. Inco (Inco has since been acquired by the Brazilian nickel miner Vale). He has also served as head of Anglo American’s operations in Chile (2002-03) and as CEO of the Hudson Bay Mining & Smelting Co in Canada (1998-2002).³ He is also a director of Amcoal which over sees the South African coal interests of the mining giant Anglo-American.

Andrew Michelmore, Director

From 2009 CEO of Minerals and Metals Group; former CEO & Managing Director of OZ Minerals. Both firms are leading Australian mining companies. Minerals & Metals Group is a subsidiary of Minmetals Resources Ltd, a Hong Kong based company with significant aluminium interests in China.

John P. O’Brien, Chairman of the Board

Chairman since January 2008. His background is in business management and restructuring.

Willy R. Strothotte, Director

Chairman of Glencore and of Xstrata (see below under Glencore).

Jack E. Thompson, Director

Also serves a director for a number of other mining companies including Anglo-American and Centerra Gold (largest Western-based gold producer in Central Asia), among others.

Though there are 4 other directors who appear to represent general institutional investors, it is clear from the above that the board is dominated by mining executives who share considerable common history. There is much more that is not obvious just from this board of directors. For example, Century and Noranda purchased from Kaiser Aluminium the bauxite mine at St. Anns, Jamaica and factory at Gramercy, Louisiana, though Noranda has since bought out Century. Noranda is a spin off from Xstrata who originally purchased it in 2006 when it took over the Falconbridge mining company.

Other links of note are:

Xstrata and Anglo-American Chile are joint owners of the Collahuasi copper mine, the world’s third biggest such mine and which in 2010 saw violent action against striking miners.⁴

Hudson Bay (of which Logan Kruger, now Century CEO, was CEO until 2002) is now the subject of a lawsuit over the murder of Mayan indigenous leader Adolfo Ich Chamán who spoke out over the company’s activities in Guatamala – he was hacked to death by security personnel in 2009.⁵ This took place while Century board member Peter Jones was CEO of the company.

Centerra Gold has acquired the Kumtor mine in Kyrgyzstan from the government there. Given that the deal saw little benefit to the people of that country, it has, as a result, played an important political role there.⁶ Jack Thompson, board member of Century and of Anglo-American sits on Centerra’s board also.

In 2006, indigenous tribes people stormed the Inco mine at Goro, New Caledonia due to environmental concerns.⁷ Inco’s CEO of the time was Peter Jones, while Logan Kruger oversaw operations at this mine from 2003-2005, and remains a director of its parent company P.T. Inco of Indonesia.

UC Rusal, the world’s single largest aluminium producer is controlled by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska through his En+ Group which he chairs. En+ is the controlling interest in a large number of other extractive and power generation businesses, mostly based in Siberia.⁸

His co-chairman is the financier Nathaniel Rothschild who runs the mining investment company Vallar, has a $40m investment in Glencore and is on record as being keen to support a Glencore takeover of Xstrata.^9,10 Rothschild is also a personal friend of both Peter Mandelson, the former EU Trade Commissioner, and of George Osborne, current UK Chancellor.

Xstrata has large interests in Australia where it has been criticised for sharp business practices¹¹, run roughshod over indigenous people at the McArthur River site¹² and is subject of a campaign due to its environmental destruction at it Mangoola opencast mine.¹³

It is hard to single out any firm within the incestuous world of mining conglomerates as being better than the other. All have issues with relationships with indigenous people, suppression of union activity and environmental damage, however the ease at which these accounts can be found in the collective past and present of Century’s key people and directors is telling.

Glencore International AG

Marc Rich & Co

The origins of Glencore are in the trading firm controlled by commodities baron Marc Rich, a controversial figure over the last few decades. Rich built up a commodities trading empire by making deals with the likes of Ayatollah Khomeini to trade Iranian oil while a US embargo was in place. At the same time he was linking himself to Mossad, the Israeli secret service.

In 1983, he and his partner Pincus Green were accused of insider dealing, dodging tax and illegal dealings with Iran when that country was under US sanctions. As a result they both fled the United States and Rich was named among the top ten most wanted fugatives by the FBI until he was controversially pardoned by Bill Clinton on the latter’s last day in the White House. Interestingly, his representative in Washington for 15 years (1985-2000) was Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, the subsequently disgraced Chief of Staff to Dick Cheney.

Rich settled in Switzerland where he founded Marc Rich & Co, continuing his commodities dealing, specialising in oil, gas and metals. In 1993/4 he failed in an attempt to corner the world zinc market, which lead to the loss of control of his company, though he remains a comfortably well off billionaire.

At the same time part of the company was spun off to become the equally controversial Trafigura. This is another commodity broker who entered the news when it brought out a ‘super-injunction’ to stop reporting of its role in illegal dumping of toxic waste in Côte d’Ivoire, though it has other scandals to its name as well.

Glencore

Marc Rich & Co was taken over by Rich’s inner circle and renamed Glencore. Many of its partners, of whom there are 485, will become very wealthy men following the listing of the shares. Day-to-day control remains principally with two of Rich’s former lieutenants, the highly seclusive and media-shy Ivan Glasenberg (current CEO) & Willy Strothotte (founding CEO and Chairman). Under these two, Glencore has continued to grow and dominate many of the markets it is involved in. It developed the tactic of investing in producers of raw materials, then striking deals that gave it exclusive access to their products which it would then trade on the market. The result is a global empire with its fingers in many pies, particularly metals, oil and grain. The ruthless and aggressive dealings methods developed under Marc Rich continued to shape the culture of the company, though it remains mired in considerable secrecy.

A large part of Glencore’s success is its willingness to do deals in places and with people were the more respectable sides of capitalism are wary to tread, doing deals in Congo and central Asia. It has also never been afraid to make deals that breached embargoes, including Saddam Hussein or South Africa during the apartheid era. Large-scale deals are being done in Central Asia with the numerous mining barons which emerged there after the collapse of the USSR, and who have strong links to corruption in those states. To this day many of its subsidiaries continue to be accused of human rights and environmental abuses.

The networks of control associated with Glencore are vast. In terms of its position in the world, it controls huge amounts of the addressable global market in copper (50%), zinc (60%), aluminium (38%), lead (45%), cobalt (23%), ferrochrome (16%), thermal coal (28%), wheat (10%), and one quarter of the worlds barley, sunflower and rape seed.^14,15 What this means is that it can effectively set prices for these commodities.

Addressable: the amount of a commodity accessible to a market. For example, many mines are owned by larger concerns who have acquired them entirely for their own use rather than for trading the ore/products on the open market. Thus the percentages quoted are for the volume of the global market rather than the total amount if all production is taken into account.

Leading Business Interests¹⁶

Glencore has a vast number of interests around the globe. The following is a brief on some of its leading assets and their problems, and it is certainly not exclusive. Many of the other mines it has a controlling interest in are open cast, with all the attendant problems, such as habitat destruction and pollution of the environment.

Argentina

The AR Zinc Group, acquired in 2005 operates the Aguilar mine, the Palpala smelter and a sulphuric acid producer, Sulfacid S.A. in the heavily mined north-western state of Jujuy, Argentina. These operations are part of a group of mines and related industries that have caused significant environmental damage and health problems to the various indigenous peoples of the region – demonstrations and protests against the presence of the mining companies have been held, including AR Zinc.^{17, 18, 19}

Australia

Glencore have a 40% stake in Minara Resources (formerly Anaconda), which runs the Murrin Murrin mine. Willy Strothotte, Ivan Glasenberg and others connected with Glencore sit on Minara’s board.²⁰ Both Murrin Murrin and Mt Isa Mines, which is controlled by Xstrata, were cited in 2009 as among the worst polluters in Australia.²¹

Bolivia

Glencore owns the Sinchi Wayra mining company that operates five mines. There has been an ongoing dispute with workers over attempts to increase working hours and on pay. The workers have called on the government to nationalise the company.²² In the past it has been criticized for mass lay-offs as a cost cutting tactic.²³

Columbia

The El Cerrejon Norte mine, jointly owned with Anglo American & BHP Billiton has been described as “a continuing horror story of forced relocations of indigenous people, human rights violations, environmental destruction and other assorted injustices”, in particular against the Wayuu people. Union organisers have received death threats from paramilitaries.²⁴ Similar allegations are made in relation to its coal mine at La Jagua, which Glencore’s subsidiary Prodeco purchased from Xstrata.^25,26,27 Prodeco also operates an open cast coal mine at Calenturitas, La Loma.

Congo

Glencore acquired control in 2008 of the financially troubled Katanga Mining²⁸, one of Africa’s biggest copper and cobalt producers. It is situated in a highly troubled region where militias have funded their struggles by selling off resource rich land. There are reports of water contamination and poor working conditions at its mines.²⁹ Swiss NGOs have been highly critical of Katanga Mines, with Bread For All and The Swiss Catholic Lenten Fund publishing a report accusing Glencore of involvement with of human rights abuses, child labour, pollution and tax evasion in the region³⁰, which has lead to a campaign against the company. ³¹ Glencore also owns the new mine at Mutanda, also in Katanga province. Glencore’s minority partner in Katanga is the Israeli magnate Dan Getler who specialises in investments in the Congo and who has links to blood diamonds and to right-wing Israeli politicians, in particular Avigdor Lieberman.³²

Kazakhstan

Glencore has partnered with Kazakhstan private investment company Verny Capital to take control of the Kazzinc, which has extensive mining and smelting interests throughout that country. Currently 51% owned by Glencore, that stake is expected to rise to 93% following Glencore’s floatation. Verny is controlled by the controversial Utemuratov family, which is close to President Nazarbayev, who is also believed to have a stake.³³ Under Nazarbayev there has been large-scale transfer of the nation’s mineral wealth into private hands and Glencore has been integral to that process.

Peru

Glencore owns the Iscaycruz & Yauliyacu mines (Los Quenualos), which have been accused of unsafe working conditions and subsequent anti-union activities.³⁴

Philippines

Xstrata’s proposed Sagittarius mine at Tampakan, Mindanao threatens indigenous peoples and important rainforests. On 9th March, 2009 a leading opponent of the project, Eliezer “Boy” Billanes, was assassinated.³⁵ Mines in Philippines, such as this one, have also been linked with threats to food security, partly due to the particular nature of the ecology they work in.³⁶

Russia

UC Rusal³⁷, the Russian aluminium giant; controls the world’s largest deposits of bauxite (the ore from which aluminium is obtained) and is the second biggest producer of global alumina (aluminium refined from bauxite) with a 14% of global production. Controlled by oligarch Oleg Deripaska, the firm was created by a merger of Rusal with the smaller SUAL and Glencore aluminium interests. There remain strong links between Glencore and UC Rusal with Glencore owning 8.7% of UC Rusal, and a friendship between Deripaska and Glasenberg.³⁸

As well as UC Rusal, Glencore has numerous other business interests in mineral wealthy Russia. Some of these date back to when Glencore was swift to do deals to take control of Russian state assets following the collapse of the USSR. Though it has been edged out of some of these companies who prefer to sell direct to consumers in China, etc, it does have deals with Russian producers of coal, oil and grain, in part through EN+, Deripaska’s company. There are rumours that it is trying to exploit links into the zinc, nickel and lead producers. Other deals and their relations to Glencore remain murky³⁹, but another major partner is the independent oil refiner Russneft.⁴⁰

Zambia

Glencore has control of Mopani Mines, which has come under environmental scrutiny, being believed to be the source of acid rain due to sulphur dioxide emissions.⁴¹ In 2005, 20 miners died in different accidents at the mine, blamed in part on cut backs in training.⁴² A Daily Mail investigation has claimed that Glencore is engaged in exploitation tax evasion through sharp pricing techniques, so depriving the country of much needed revenue.⁴³

Zimbabwe

In 2011 Glencore signed an agreement with Mwana Africa to acquire nickel from the Trojan mine at Bindura in Zimbabwe – notable for its links with Morgan Tsvangirai. Mwana’s is a South African based miner with copper operations at Katanga in the Congo and gold mines in Ghana.

Other global interests

Glencore owns the PASAR copper smelter in the Philippines, the Sherwin Alumina smelter in Texas (cited for hazardous chemical releases^44,45) and the Portovesme lead and zinc smelter on Sardinia. It also owns 70% of the South African coal miner Shanduka. As owner of the Moreno sunflower oil company, one of the biggest in the world’s largest suppliers of sunflower oil, Glencore is heavily involved in the producing and selling of genetically modified products.⁴⁶ It controls 270,000 hectares of agricultural land and has various grain processing sites around the world which aid its interests in these markets.

After many years of preparations the Greenlandic government say the final decision on Alcoa’s proposed smelter will be taken at the spring 2012 of the parliament. It is more likely, as the global history of the industry and the evidence in Greenland tells us, that the decision has in fact already been made undemocratically behind closed doors, despite the decreasing support of the Greenlandic people. In fact Alcoa and the Greenland government are so keen on passing the project that they have just hired an eighth employee at their national company Greenland Development- formed to enable the industry to go ahead. Juaaka Lyberth’s explicit remit is to influence public opinion on the smelter through the media. Greenland Development paints a rosy picture of an aluminium future for Greenland, but will their promises of prosperity come true? A comparison to Alcoa’s Fjardaal project in East Iceland suggests that many will not.

Local employment?

“The aluminum project is a major project that will offer a large number of stable and lasting jobs.” says Minister for Industry and Mineral Resources, Ove Karl Berthelsen.[1]

Despite this claim Alcoa recently asked the Greenlandic government’s permission to use Chinese contractors to build the two hydro dams and smelter. Chinese workers would be paid half the salary of members of the Greenland Workers Union. They claim this will be necessary to make the project competitive and that the Greenlandic labour force will not be sufficient[2].

Greenland Development responded immediately to this unpopular news by sending out a press release explaining why competitiveness was so important. The release explained that since the financial crisis China has increasingly dominated the market for aluminium smelting due to their low cost of construction and production. Building a smelter in China costs $3000/ton of production capacity compared to $4500 – £5000/ton in Iceland or Saudi Arabia. Greenland is in direct competition with these prices and will have to provide very good terms for the company if they want the project to go forwards[3]. ‘Good terms’ means cheap labour and foreign workers over Greenlandic contracts.

The labour question has dominated debate on the smelter in Greenland recently. Bjarne Lyberth, Head of the organisation Against Aluminium Smelter in Greenland is concerned that other important issues are being sidelined:

“In my view the issue on cheap foreign labour is just one of many problems. There is a risk that this becomes perceived as the main hurdle to the project and other serious cultural, social, health, environmental and, economic impacts just become “minor issues” to deal with later.”

However, the promise of jobs is usually cited as the biggest rationale for building such huge industrial constructions, and it is a very tempting one in economically deprived rural areas where smelters are often built. When the decision on the Fjardaal aluminium smelter and associated Karahnjukar dams was pending, the Iceland government made similar claims. They promised the Confederation of Icelandic Labour that the ratio of Icelanders to foreign workers at the dam construction site would be about 8:20, amounting to 3000-5000 jobs for Icelanders[4]. In reality the construction company Impregilo only employed around 100 Icelandic workers out of 1100 employees at the site. Many of these workers were Chinese, Portuguese and other non EU nationalities. Impregilo claimed that Icelanders didn’t want the work as it was not as highly paid as they had hoped, and there was a high turnover. In contrast the Chinese workers were very stable despite tough conditions[5]. Increasing company profit by using temporary low paid foreign labour is known as ‘social dumping’.

The construction of the dams was plagued with controversy as it was revealed that foreign workers were being paid less than Icelanders and made to work in unsafe conditions without proper equipment[6]. 1700 work related injuries were reported during the dam’s construction, 120 resulting in long term or permanent inability to work. Four workers are known to have died from injuries on the site[7] [8]. There is evidence that when the Icelandic coalition of unions became vocal about the treatment of workers in the press they were silenced by bribes from Impregilo who promised to pay into the union’s pension funds. A few years later it was revealed that the payments had not been made and the union (ASI) raised rights of foreign labourers again. Shortly after the funds were finally paid and ASI’s complaints ceased.

National income from aluminium export?

Greenland Development‘s recent news release explains;

‘The project economy of each individual project is decisive. The competition is as such between countries that it among other issues hinges on the terms a host country will provide for a new project. Countries in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America are all trying to develop smelter projects. Only projects that are competitive on a global scale will have a chance to become real projects and be implemented[9].’

In reality, being ‘competitive on a global scale’ with countries such as China means selling energy and labour as cheaply as possible and providing tax breaks that make the project attractive to the company – minimising benefit to the host country. National unions of workers the Greenland Employers? Association and the Organisation of Greenlandic Employers have warned that the only income from the project in its first few years will be tax paid by its employees, and with much workforce coming from abroad on low wages this is likely to be very little[10]. The government has also said that company tax should not be counted on for the first fifteen years, suggesting that large tax breaks have been given[11].

In Iceland predictions that the smelters could be an economic drain and not a boost are increasingly being proven. Energy prices paid by the smelter operators were kept from the Icelandic public until very recently following a scandal when it was revealed that  Century Aluminium had been paying a fifth of domestic prices – the cheapest energy for aluminium production in Europe[12]. Prices for Alcoa’s Fjardaal smelter were accidentally revealed by then company Chairman Alain Belda when he claimed that Iceland was charging some of the lowest rates in the world, just $15 per MWh (megawatt hour)[13]. The deals they made link energy prices to the cost of aluminium so when the market drops the taxpayer can end up subsidising the companies rather than profiting from them.

In the run up to Iceland’s dramatic financial crash in 2008 the OECD concluded their country report by warning Iceland that ‘large scale public investments are inherently risky’ and strongly advised them not to approve further aluminium developments until it was clear whether they would get a long term profit from existing ones:

‘No major investments in energy-intensive projects, including those already in the planning phase, should proceed without prior evaluation within a transparent and comprehensive cost-benefit framework (including environmental impacts and inter-generational effects).[14]’

Two years earlier a report by Icelandic bank Glitnir warned that any benefit from large scale aluminium developments “is probably outweighed by the developments’ indirect impact on demand, inflation, interest rates and the ISK exchange rate”. Similarly economist Thorsteinn Siglaugsson claimed that “Kárahnjúkar will never make a profit, and the Icelandic taxpayer may well end up subsidising Alcoa”[15]. A 2009 report by Economist Indriði H. Þorláksson concluded that the industry would have negligible benefits on the Icelandic economy, possibly causing long term damage, and should not be considered a way out of the financial crisis[16].

Despite all of this evidence Greenland Development have dedicated another recent news article on their website to trying to disprove that Iceland’s crash had anything to do with the smelters. Though they admit that ‘high investment in construction also played a role which put pressure on the economy’, this was ‘hardly significant‘. Instead they claim that aluminium industry ‘has been crucial in earning foreign currency for Iceland during the crisis‘[17].

In another article Greenland Development’s website enthusiastically claims that the aluminium price is likely to rise in the coming years due to demand for ‘green’ cars and solar panels and economic growth in Asia[18]. Though this would somewhat increase Greenland’s chances of making a profit there is no guarantee of market stability, which has been very volatile in recent years. A critique of the concept of ‘green aluminium’ can be found here[19].

Already there seems to be some degree of caution in Greenland about taking too much of the burden of construction costs and loans which caused so many problems in Iceland. The Greenlandic government is considering bringing in a third party to ownership of the project instead of taking the whole of the 50% stake they were offered by Alcoa.

Public more sceptical now

Despite Greenland Development’s expensive propaganda war, public support for the Alcoa smelter has been steadily decreasing. People’s organisations Avataq and the newly formed Against Aluminium Smelter in Greenland have worked hard to discover the truth about the environmental and social impacts of the smelter and the ethical track record of the company abroad. As a result Greenland Development reported that their own October/November 2010 survey of public opinion revealed rapidly changing attitudes:

‘there is a very low degree of knowledge, as well as a less positive attitude towards the project than in previous years. Of the citizens that have expressed either a positive or negative attitude towards the aluminium project, there is thus now only a small majority (54 percent) who are positive.[20]’

The main reason for the ‘increased scepticism‘ towards the project was ‘concern about the possible environmental consequences‘ with 20% of those interviewed believing that the project ‘can have a markedly negative impact on nature and the environment‘ compared to only 7% the previous year[21]. This was identified to be mainly due to critical media coverage and Greenland Development’s ‘information manager’ was hired shortly afterwards to address this. Environmental protection group, Avataq, says Greenland Development has deliberately tried to distort public opinion about the aluminum industry. Their head Mikkel Myrup explains:

“Greenland Development has assumed a role as an aluminium industry propagandist, and do that rather primitively. But this wouldn’t be possible without strong support from the civil servants in the central administration and the smelter municipality administration. The civil servant’s pro industry influence on the cabinet members and the parliament is a massive democratic problem, because they suppress and/or ignore information that would equip the politicians with a wider, and more realistic knowledge base from which to make enlightened decisions.”

With three operating smelters Icelanders have had a good opportunity to assess the benefits of the industry which has been promoted as their economic saviour. A recent online poll by news outlet Visir revealed that only 13% of participants thought heavy industry was the most important area to focus on. Despite high level promotion of the industry’s benefits by certain sectors of the national leadership evidence shows that tourism and fishing are still the most important and growing industries for the Icelandic people[22].

Who is in power? Naalakkersuisut or Alcoa?

Last week’s meeting between members of the Greenland Government (Naalakkersuisut) and Alcoa clearly shows the power relationship between the industry giant and our nation, that has characterized the project’s development from the beginning, Alcoa dictates and Naalakkersuisut obey across the population.

This form of government is undemocratic and demeaning to our people who are still recovering from 250 years of colonial rule.

Alcoa has made it clear to Naalakkersuisut that a condition to continue the aluminum project in Maniitsoq is the issue of cheap foreign labor will be resolved immediately.

In two large departments of the government, business department and the EPA recent years lawmaking has been highly in favor of the industry giants who get their wishes fulfilled as they want it, even an entire company Greenland Development (GD) has been set up with seven employees working to get Alcoa established in the country.

While the majority of the public institutions increasingly are subjects to cutdowns, E.G. by halts in hirings, GD has just hired a new employee to provide more public information, hence the company has now three people working media issues. Conversely, EPA lacks four employees to provide an adequate assessment of environmental impacts of aluminum project.

Having a public information led by GD with overt interests in having the aluminum industry established in the country that is based on studies funded by the same company, while agencies to scrutinize other consequences get cut in appropriations, is extremely worrying for the country’s democracy and integrity.

Who do Naalakkersuisut work for? Alcoa or the people of Greenland?

It is now up to Naalakkersuisut whether to follow their own principle of involving the public, including the labor union (SIK) and other organizations, or whether they will continue to be dictated by Alcoa and other industry giants.

Time will tell what the next requirement from Alcoa will be. Lower wages during the operation? Lower environmental or safety standards? What will be the next …

On behalf of Against Aluminium Smelter in Greenland,
Bjarne Lyberth, Chairman,

On behalf of Avataq,
Mikkel Myrup, Chairman,

Social Forum Journey / Malmö-Belem-Istanbul

Abstract: This article looks at how the national mass protests against neoliberal regimes in Iceland, Tunisia, Egypt and other African and Arabic countries and the Wisconsin in the US are linked with the climate justice movement. Both national protests and the climate justice movement are developing unevenly. National protests in some hot spots, the climate campaigning more even all over the world. By looking at how countries like Denmark and its organized civil society acts it can be possible to understand how the struggle both for defensive goals and constructive solutions can strengthen each other by what lacked in Denmark but exists on the global level. That is solidarity against repression and building resistance which enables solutions uniting anti-neoliberal struggles in general and specific areas.

This is important both at transnational level and in countries that are more advanced in this struggle as well as those lagging far behind their objective potential like Denmark or Sweden. The challenge is how to combine the strength of the workers movement lacking a global democratic organization representing the working class also in the South and peasants, environmental, women and indigenous people who have established such global democratic organizations. The argument is that the key lies in combining the workers movements strength in defending the common interests with the offensive constructive program promoted by popular movements that have established global democratic organizations and organize solidarity against repression of all popular movements.

The commodification of all human beings and all of nature is at the core of the present development model. The resistance against this model is now enabling alternatives to emerge at both national and on specific fields also the transnational level ultimately paving the way for abolishing the present unsustainable development model. By bringing the two ways of challenging the present development model together and critically examine while also celebrating them it might be possible to find new ways of struggling and winning against the rulers of the world. Both the national uprising against authoritarian neoliberal and austerity regimes and the climate justice movement are part of the same democratic momentum questioning the global world order in all kind of countries all over the world.

The mass climate movement must go beyond the neoliberal agenda

Solutions to the climate crisis is a field were those holding on to the present development model are especially aggressive. They push for a new global land and air grabbing regime with the aim of oppressing the poor to give their fair share of the global commons to the rich and wealthy and into the hands of transnational corporations.

The incapacity of those in power due to the present development model to address global warming have caused growing wide-spread concern. In 1991 people in 70 countries on 500 places participated in international climate action days, in 2009 there were actions on 5000 places and last year 7000 places in almost every country on earth. This incapacity also have caused the rising of the climate justice movement which not only asks for action but also resistance against the present development model and promote constructive solutions beyond the limitations set by those in power.

A primary force behind this climate justice movement has been the anti-debt movement emerging from the riots against International Monetary Fund policies imposed on countries who are oppressed and been given the role of delivering their economic resources to those who already are rich owners of capital, riots that erupted in Peru in 1976 and Egypt in 1977 and since then spread all over the world.

Another force has been the resistance against development projects imposed on local communities in the interest of transnational corporations and the capitalists that owns them. This resistance erupted also at the end of the 1970s when the indigenous Katinga and Bontoc people started armed resistance with arrows and bows against the Chico dam project in the Philippines which was supposed to be financed by the World Bank. Many died in the struggle but the Katinga and Bontocs never gave up in spite of the violence and attempts at bribing their leaders gaining both local, national and international support. The conflict ended with victory paving the way for indigenous and other movements protesting against the present development model in all parts of the world. A movement of oppressed indigenous and local communities that have grown stronger and stronger which was expressed at the international Cochabamba gathering in Bolivia last year with 33 000 people calling for climate justice.

These strands in a global popular movement against the present development model together with the peasant, women’s and environmental movements formed in 2007 the Climate Justice Now! Network. Thus a system critical movement had been established as an alternative to the global coalition of well funded environmental and like minded foundations and other organizations often lacking democratic accountability like Greenpeace. A coalition that in different forms address global warming and other environmental issues as mainly technical and individual moral issues claiming that what is necessary is media attention and pressuring politicians but not changing any social order.

This coalition has been dominated by Western organizations lacking global democratic accountability while the climate justice movement builds on the oppressed peoples and global democratic popular movements like Jubilee South, Via Campesina, Friends of the Earth and Women’s World March. They all have a leadership very much from the third world and build on ideas of equal distribution of power in the movement instead of top-down management.

What is lacking is the perhaps most important movement in resisting the present development model or at least in defending peoples interests, the workers movement. But the trade union is the only larger global popular movement that has refused to build on democratic accountability towards the global working class- ITUC, the International Trade Union Confederation has instead chosen to be dominated by the working class in the rich and wealthy countries and no strong alternative to ITUC have emerged which the other popular movements can cooperate with for building a joint resistance and constructing alternatives to the present world order. ITUC promotes social dialogue with business, IMF and G-20 instead of organizing the global working class.

This was criticized at the Open World Conference against War and Exploitation held in Alger 27-29 novemeber 2010 with 400 mainly trade union participants. Abdel Majid Sidi Zaid. General secretary of the Algerian TUC (UGTA), stated in his inauguration speech that employed and people in common had disappeared from the economic agenda. The only thing that seems to count is to give tax payers money to the capitalists. Sidi Zaid criticized how ITUC gradually slipped into becoming a social partner with business, G-20 and governments instead of representing a different interest than that of the employer.

But the voices of North African and other third world working class cannot be heard in the way ITUC excludes the large working classes to have their proportionate say as only number of individual members is counting making it possible for the rich countries with smaller working class but higher percentage of enlisted member to dominate the international organization. This weakens the trade unions everywhere and so also their ability to cooperate with other movements who are independent and not necessarily sees a solution to every problem social partnership with business and government. Thus is the trade unions a problematic ally as their lack of global democracy in their main international organization effectively excludes the third world working class from influence, the same working class that is so necessary to have as allied for popular movements struggling for climate justice.

Without a strong international cooperation partner among the trade unions it is necessary to find other ways to win the majority against false solutions to the climate crisis and for a just transition. The strength of the climate justice movement so far has been several. The commitment of activists in indigenous struggles against exploitation or climate camps and other forms of struggle has a key role. That strong organizations with a multi issue interest in both social and environmental concerns have been able to cooperate in CJN is another factor. So are the well articulated arguments against false solutions like carbon trading, nuclear power or monoculture biofuel. But what is lacking is a program for solutions, for just transition of housing, industry, transport, agriculture, forestry and many other sectors. It is not enough to know what we are against. We need alos something to long for.

Such a programme is indivisibly linked with going beyond the neoliberal limitations set by the social partnership agenda. Without a clear idea of how to socially mobilize for just transition domestically and internationally the struggle for change will become fragmenticized and easy to diverge into ideas of socially neutral technological plans or moral appeals without substantial economy and social forces to enable a just transition

Protests against the general neoliberal politics

While the climate justice movement is a growing wide spread protest in every corner of the world building momentum in small and large scale it has its limitations. What is also needed is challenging the system at the general political level. That is what is going on in some countries at the moment while in many others the situation is passive. While the climate justice movement and the general concern about global warming is spreading rather steadily all over the world the mass protests against the neoliberal general politics and the strongly connected wars and occupations to control the supply of natural resources are more volatile.

In general at least in Europe antineoliberal mass movements are on the defensive and especially trade unions are under pressure if they do not accept worsening working conditions. In elections right wing parties are the dominant force on the whole continent. When mass protests occur as in Greece two years ago the result can be worsening of the situation and even more neoliberal policies put in place to save the foreign banks and make the people pay.

The solutions accepted at the national level by some popular movements causes serious problems in other countries. The German trade unions accepted wage dumping in exchange for maintaining jobs. In other countries workers were able to maintain their salaries in par with the increase of productive instead as in Germany were the productivity increase worked in favor of the owners of the companies and growing export. If every trade union had chosen to follow suit the result would have been an even deeper crisis. But finally drastic contradictions in the European neoliberal politics reached Eastern, Southern and North Western European periphery as well as North Africa and many other places. The role of the periphery is clear, to feed the banks in the richest countries and owners of capital living on speculation while living with rising food prices and social cuts as a result often of demands by IMF. This has been a problem in many parts of the world for long but have now reached also Europe. The renewed axis between Germany and France to promote even more austerity politics with the help of EU will only deepen the contradictions and crisis.

But when the neoliberal authoritarian regimes following the demands by IMF and supported by EU and the US in North Africa started to fall down like in Tunisia and Egypt and now on the way in other countries this model meet severe resistance by movements that had started to protest against their politics already in the 1970s. These uprising are now often supported from the right to the left, with some similar claims and some different, all too limited from an environmental and climate justice movement perspective.

The common statement by the right and left is that this is a struggle for democracy in the Arab region against authoritarian regimes or dictatorships. This is misleading from an antineoliberal environmental point of view. From this point of view politics, ecology and economy are indivisible. Struggle for democracy is thus necessarily linked to the ecological and economical side of the protests. It is quite clear that the neoliberal model is directly in contradiction with the food sovereignty politics demanded by Via Campesina, Friends of the Earth groups and many others. With the total industrialization of agriculture which neoliberalism aims for with the exception of a small niche production of ecological food for those wealthy enough to afford it. The sky rocketing food prices which is the result of a volatile speculation economy combined with the destruction of domestic peasants by subsidized food from rich countries agriculture industry is a devastating combination together with the general assault against working people like the textile female workers in Egypt which with their strikes is a main factor behind the uprising.

Thus the linkage between an ever growing capitalistic speculation economy and a development model based on ever growing consumption of natural resources including destruction of ecological friendly ways of domestic production of food is at the core of the conflict behind the uprisings. A politics promoted by neoliberal regimes in rich countries unto the rest of the world in alliance with authoritarian segments in oppressed countries. In the case of the Arab world this is further emphasized by the role given to the region of the rich countries with their fossil fuel based economies as a region controlled by smaller privileged nations with less population that are supported by the rich countries to see to that the countries with larger populations are kept under control by their oppressive leaders and massive intervention from the West, at times with brutal force as the help to Iraq to make war with Iran and the later war against Iraq.

From an environmental point of view the struggle in the Arabic world is thus intimitely linked to the struggle against a development model devastating nature and built on aggressive control of fossil fuel sources which for certain is not a struggle which can be limited to the Arab world but is a common task. To the environmental movement in Sweden have since decades stated that the primary solidarity struggle is to change production and consumption patterns in Sweden so that it is not based on overuse of natural resources from other countries. As long as this development model claiming that people in rich countries are entitled to use more than their fair share of the natural resources on earth is in place it is causing the support by so called democratic countries as EU member states to oppressive regimes in the whole world.

The right and the left have some differing point of views on the uprisings in the Arabic and African world now spreading to the mass protests in Wisconsin in the US. The right delinks politics from economy which is helpful for avoiding the connection to the ecological and social justice problems which are a part of the economy promoted by the rich and proclaimed democratic nations. To the right winger whether liberal or conservative democracy is a question of form and have nothing to do with content. The geographic limitations is also self evident to them and thus there is no decisive connection between formally democratic countries in the West and the oppressive authoritarian regimes in countries with a central role in seeing to that rich and formally democratic nations is secured cheap natural resources. Under all circumstances there is no reason to reevaluate the own politics at home due to the uprisings in the Arab world.

To the left winger in rich European countries the dominant view seems to be that of revolutionary romanticism, general US criticism and delinking the struggle in the Arabic world from the struggle in their own countries. Appeals are made for mass protests in Palestine against the Israeli occupation in this leftist version of constant exotism appealing to revolutions sometimes in the future or in other countries rather than to reevaluate the struggle at home and also under other conditions than utter desperation like after 60 years of occupation supported by the rich countries.

US as a main enemy of the left is also a way to avoid focusing on politics were one can make a difference at home. In Sweden the left has mass produced articles about how bad the US is with their war and occupation of Iraq. There are hundreds of left wing articles in Sweden strongly criticizing the US for making false claims on the existence of weapons of mass destruction to start the war against Iraq causing the death of hundreds of thousand people. I have seen not one article about the responsibility of Sweden causing the death as many or more people in Iraq as we and others were supporting the economic sanctions against Iraq with devastating effects on the population built on exactly the same false accusations as those used by the US to start the war. The weapons of mass destruction did not disappear suddenly the day the US invaded, they had long gone before in a time when economic sanctions caused the death of hundreds of thousands. The left seems sometimes to have become part of an international literature market were it is more important to appoint big names as enemies than to do the home work in the municipality or country you live in instead of putting all your energy into criticizing other countries or calling for Palestinians to do one more dangerous intifada. From an environmental point of view EU and its member states is as much of a problem as the US and have supported ”stability” in the Arab region and Africa in similar and devastating ways.

The struggle to change production and consumption patterns and politics at local and national level including foreign policy is of course at times not as spectacular as large uprisings in other parts of the world or omnipotent ideas about shifting EU to become a progressive political force. But it is here we need to see what we can do and how the challenges in the world model for an economy based on cheap natural resources as fossil fuel by the uprisings in the Arab or other regions also means something for the daily struggle in every corner of the world also when it is not spectacular. By simultaneous struggles at all levels combining daily struggles and organizing solidarity across borders when necessary also in less spectacular cases is an internationalistic way forward. But this seems to be outside the view of many left wing commentators. They seem to draw the same conclusion of the uprisings in many aspects as the right – Under all circumstances there is no reason to reevaluate the own politics at home due to the uprisings in the Arab world.

The successful uprising in Western Europe

This becomes clear when seeing what both the left and right excludes from their analysis but the environmental movement have to include and all other opposing the present world order. That of successful uprising against neoliberal politics in a rich European democratic country were the government had no choice but to step down or call in the military from an EU member state to survive against the confrontative demands by the people. What is going on in Tunisia and Egypt have already been successfully accomplished in a Western European country. Thus the claim that what is going on is uprisings in the Arab world is wrong, the uprisings are also going on in other parts of the world with similar form and content including the best and richest of formally democratic nations. Why the right commentators excludes this fact from their analysis is after all understandable although makes their intellectual position utterly weak. After all it was 20 years of right-centre neoliberal government that was thrown out of power with a large scale popular uprising. Why the left also is excluding this Western European country in the same way is a fact at first thought puzzling, at second thought possible to understand as the example point at the necessity of change of the form and content of left wing politics in Western Europe.

The successful uprising started in the autumn of 2008 and reached a climax in January 2009 when people after demonstrations every week broke all restrictions of the police and forced their way through the police lines and smashed more or less all the windows of the parliament making it very clear that the government had no whatsoever control of the country any longer and had to go. The actions were disciplined and no harm was made to policeman but there was no way to not understand the message, you have to go as you have no power anymore. The police force was to small to control the growing protests. For the first time since 1949 the police used tear gas but it did not help. The only choice left was to call in the military from the EU member state Denmark who were staying on ships in the outer harbour of Reykjavik. But to call in the former colonial power that gave the freedom to Iceland as late as 1944 was not a popular option so the right-centre government resigned and new elections were held which brough a left-centre government to power.

Both the form, the content and the result of this successful uprising in Iceland brings in question the left in the rest of Western Europe. One is that the uprising was disciplined and all the different strands with the anarchists and environmentalists as those most radically questioning the present development model in Iceland both in content and in the way protests were organized as well as more moderate political forces all keeping to a strict code of not using violence against people. This in contrast to the unclear notion of diversity of tactics which is splitting the movements into factions in some countries. Thus when repression hit the Icelandic movement there is a lot stronger solidarity then in other Western countries were solidarity sometimes is lacking almost totally. This becomes clear before and during the trial against the Reykjavik 9, protesters standing trial in January 2011 for a peaceful action inside the parliament in 2008. In Iceland all the main stream press have declared them guilty of violence for months and stated that what they have done have no precedence in Iceland and thus many years in prison is reasonable. The foreign minister declared the opposite in the court room. In other countries like Sweden even the most self proclaimed revolutionary left wing party either joins the police opinion and declares the activists as more or less terrorist in need of policing or gets totally paralysed due to the media accusations of violence and starts to fight each other instead of the repression.

The political result of the uprising is also a fact showing that what more or less all the left with some parliamentary power is doing in Western Europe is wrong. The Icelandic people did not only make one uprising, they made two, both successful. With the new left-centre government in place Iceland started to negotiate to come out of the economic collapse that the former government had put the country into. They tried to make a deal with several foreign countries and institutions as IMF. The people did not accept the deal and started protesting again and thus the government found a clever way out. A referendum were a clear majority rejected the deal. Now the government could go into negotiations again making a better deal than before.

What Iceland did was directly contrary to the solutions forced onto countries like Greece and Ireland. Iceland placed its biggest lenders in receivership. It chose not to protect all creditors of the country’s banks. “Iceland did the right thing by making sure its payment systems continued to function while creditors, not the taxpayers, shouldered the losses of banks,” stated Joseph Stiglitz to Bloomberg.

The successful politics in Iceland after the uprisings are seen as good also by main stream economists. So why do we not hear about this solution o the crisis? The reason might be simple. The parliamentarian left is so occupied by being respected as responsible and accepts the core of the solutions in saving the banks instead of challenging the whole model by stating Iceland as an example and pointing at the economic catastroph in for Greece and Ireland when domestic debts possible to reduce by domestic decisions are turned into international debts making the EU the powerful collector for the foreign banks. What EU does is the opposite to Iceland, to force countries and thus their tax payers to make the creditors of the banks completely irresponsible and fully paid for their speculation without risk. To stand up against this way of saving the banks by letting people pay is not what many or any left wing parliamentary parties do by pointing at the Icelandic alternative. Instead general ideological rhetoric stating we do not pay for their crisis becomes a way for these parties to avoid using the parliament as a platform to build political opposition.

What they are doing instead, at least in Sweden, is playing political theatre. This became obvious in the last election when the left party formed an alliance with the Greens and social democrats. To very many in the left party it was obvious that the political platform of this Red Green alliance had no substantial difference from that of the right wing alliance which has now for the first time since 1932 been able to govern the country for a second term. One radical left winger in the party concluded that if the left party should have formulated a stronger political platform which he sees is needed and stayed outside of the alliance between the Greens and the Social democrats the party would have been totally ignored by media and would not have been able to come into the parliament. Thus was the support from the left party of the Red Green alliance necessary.

So at least some Left parties also with a long record of being system critical and still having substantial knowledge of what political opposition is necessary are not independent political actors anymore but extensions of the mass media playing a role in their political theater. To such political parties Iceland is a threat to their image as radical and it is better to exclude this example from people’s memory and continue using anticapitalist rhetoric while not opposing the core of today’s politics in parliament.

The non-parliamentary left have equal strong reasons for excluding Iceland from their understanding of the present situation. If they see parliamentary politics only as a problem and their own role as being non-parliamentarian is it not useful to claim that the Icelandic parliamentary politics and its solution to the crisis is of interest for the rest of Europe. If it furthermore includes member of the governments that defends anarchists the identity politics of much of the non-parliament falls into pieces. Such central politicians cannot have a progressive role when the main stream press is totally against the anarchists claiming that they are violent so Iceland cannot exist. It is too much a threat to identity politics of both the parliamentary and non-parliamentary left.

Iceland is not only a threat to the identity politics of the left at the tactical level but also on the strategic. The strongest supporter of the 9 accused Reykjavik activists comes from the environmental movement Saving Iceland. And if there is a left wing strand among the accused activists it seems to be anarchistic while traditional radical left wing organizations are not a visible actor anymore, at least not presented well abroad. Furthermore it is claimed in the support brochure for the Reykjavik 9 that : ”In interviews and other coverage of the court case, the Reykjavík Nine have shown that their participation in that winter’s uprising was rooted in their opposition towards the whole system – not only the economic collapse and “the crisis”.” With other words the activists are not belonging to a single issue movement or ad hoc group but a system critical movement with more long term goals than replacing one government with another to make some shifts in the costs for the bankruptcy of the banks for the Icelandic people. This threat is fully understood by the neoliberal press who have called for hard sentences against the Reykjavik 9 and claimed that they not only were violent, but also introduced a culture of violence into Icelandic protests. Thus they are also guilty of the escalating protests that continued during the winter and finally forced the government to resign.

In Many Western European countries the non-parliamentarian left is still to quite some extent influenced by parties claiming they are revolutionary and their press. To this left Iceland is a threat showing how a new radical system critical movement is emerging, so better keep silent about Iceland. One good exception is the German MP who have actively engaged in the case. He also makes a connection between the case of the Reykjavik 9 and the recently discovered British spy that was sent into the Saving Iceland movement as well as direct action movement in many other countries and asks if this is part of a European–wide policing of movements.

The case is similar for the environmental movement. In Iceland it is the system critical direct action movement that is strong and not so much environmental NGOs which is the opposite to most other countries in Western Europe. Neither the strong solidarity between the environmental movement and the protesters against the neo-liberal regime or civil disobedience as a form of action are not what many environmental NGOs sees as important.

In spite of that the Icelandic experience is relevant for a number of political reasons it is thus largely ignored both among the left and the environmentalists.

Connecting the hot political spots and the weak

The case of Iceland becomes also interesting when seeing if there is a possibility of connecting struggles in hot spots with successful uprisings and the more daily struggle and even defensive struggle when things gradually gets worse.

Here the climate justice connection can serve as helpful. The climate struggle is going on almost everywhere helped by the fact that any emission or deforestation anywhere on earth are contributing to global warming making our destiny as a human race ultimately connected.

Thus we here can see both an issue and a struggle different in the form in terms of a more steady increase forward and less volatile as the struggle against the economic crisis.

What are than the connections? One is the political content. In both cases is antineoliberal politics at the core of protests. In the case of the climate justice movement the stand against carbon trading, in the case of Iceland a general protests against neoliberal politics. There is furthermore some deeper connection. One is that the banks that brought Iceland to de facto bankruptcy earlier were state owned and then privatized, a privatization with some consequences. One other that the Icelandic crisis have a root in exactly the same idea which is underlying carbon trading schemes, that of establishing a market mechanism for selling nature. A speculation boom like the one promoted by the privatized Icelandic banks has to built on some cash flow and this was created by the decision to allow the selling of fish quota in Iceland.

This points at two complementary ways of challenging the neoliberal hegemony by general political uprising in some countries and a world wide challenge against the expansion of a neoliberal regime in one important sector, nature.

The other connection between the hot spot Iceland and more weak struggle in many other places is the form. Here Iceland has set an example that will tear up some of the hardest resistance against challenging the neoliberal world order, the resistance among many organizations claiming themselves to be anti-neoliberal or even revolutionary.

This resistance was clearly evident during the climate summit in Copenhagen when Denmark was a host to a meeting of global importance. Every revolutionary and other left wing parties in Denmark as well as every other environmental or social organization built on membership and representative democracy chosed to claim that non-violent civil disobedience towards an assembly of legislators which is a central character of a UN conference is an impossibility in Denmark. It would automatically result in violence to be blamed on those initiating the non-violent action and was thus unacceptable in a Nordic political culture like the Danish.

This is correct in the sense that a majority of the Danish people according to opinion polls claims that the violence used by the police against non-violent demonstrators is not actually violence committed by the police but violence caused by the non-violent activist. This is totally different from lets say an Egyptian policeman beating demonstrators with his stick in Cairo to protect the stability of the state who according to the same world view now is committing violence which everyone can see as easily as she or he can see how the policeman using his stick at the Climate Summit conference building is actually not using violence as the violence is caused by the demonstrator who does not understand the self evident need of the stability if the Danish state.

It is also correct in the sense that main stream media and the large majority of the parliamentary parties in Denmark have the same view. The media uses a model for shifting chronology or placing people in false places to make believe the story about police behaving properly and those under violent attack from the police as the cause of violence.

Thus if the only stone thrown at a policeman at the Climate Summit that actually harmed a policeman causing only light injury was thrown as an reaction in another part of the city after that the police mass arrested 918 innocent demonstrators this is by the media presented as preceeding the violence of the police against the demonstrators.

Similar is the way the mass arrested demonstrators are presented as causing their own mass arrest as some few demonstrators were smashing a dozen windows at the stock exchange and foreign ministry. But this was in another section of the demonstration where the police had guided activists into the demonstration that intended to go elsewhere but the police wanted them in the demonstration. It was also in another part of the city far away from the mass arrests. By claiming that there is a connection between the section that was mass arrested and the material damage at the stock exchange and the foreign ministry media presents a model for how the violence against the demonstrators is caused by themselves.

All parliamentary parties from the most radical left to the right with the exception of the social liberal party in the center followed the same pattern in their firsts comments on what had happened. Emberessment was not directed against the totally unacceptable mass arrest of 918 demonstrators who all later in court have been found the right to receive damages as innocent and victims of police abuse. The emberessment was instead directed against stones thrown at the police fueling furthermore the false chronology and misplacing of the mass arrested section in relation to the course of events.

With other words we have a people, mass media and parliamentary parties supporting the police view that the violence used by the police is not violence but actions by non-violent demonstrators and activists is the cause of the violence for everyone to see. Such a country is not at all a police state but a police nation, a situation probably similar to that in many other countries and of importance to deal with if a simultaneous protest movement against the present social and ecological crisis should be able to emerge in more than a few countries under extraordinary circumstances.

In such a police nation it is understandable that representative democratic organizations claim that non-violent action against a UN-conference will be perceived as guilty of the violence that automatically will take place according to this logic. But it is not acceptable. Every organization have their own responsibility towards their stated goal. If the rest of the nation have turned into a police nation this is no excuse for any organization to join the band wagon and even make a principle about it. To claim that only temporary activist networks should carry the whole burden against the violence of the police nation or even see to that when this violence occurs the victims should receive no solidarity is not standing up for the truth which is the basis of our society.

The claim by all formal Danish organizations rejecting to support a non-violent direct action was that the political culture in Denmark was such that by action, non-violent or not, against an assembly of legislators would be regarded as completley unacceptable by everyone except for an isolated small group. This was wrong as such a non-violent action took place at the EU-summit in the same conference center as COP15 was held but this fact was hidden to international cooperation partners or forgotten. More important is that Denmark cannot claim that their political culture is significantly different from that of Iceland sharing history for almost a thousand year and with stable democratic institutions.

As the Icelandic people have been able to make an uprising and storming the parliament successfully in a non-violent manner, this form of action cannot in principle be said to be impossible in Denmark. Furthermore can the Icelandic popular movement show results in combating neoliberal economic politics that most or all the left wing and environmental organisations in Denmark also would like to achieve.

The key point therefore is a question that concerns any European antineoliberal organization, is the kind of non-violent action against a parliament in principle always unacceptable this also means to say not to both the political antineoliberal success and form of the protests in Iceland. As Via Campesina and others in Copenhagen showed was it possible also at a Climate Summit to do the same thing as the Icelandic popular movement did, although it had less success due to that Danish left wing and environmental organizations opposed the non-violent action. It is well argued to claim that Iceland has similar political culture as Denmark. The conclusion of this is that the left-wing and environmental organizations in Denmark are not anti neoliberal or interested to protect the environmental but prefers to be part of a police nation and protect the state when given a choice.

It is necessary in every country were these kind of organizations dominate the political space for opposition to demand clear principles that shows respect for the Icelandic people. There are always specific conditions in each circumstances but there are also a general level were similarities exists. Iceland is a long term democratic nation and their experience should be reflected in any antineoliberal organization in a Western democracy. It gives possibilities of strengthening simultaneous struggles in different countries which also are of importance at Summits when global popular movements can combine their efforts with local mobilization to challenge the present world order.

Linking climate justice to anti neoliberal general political uprisings

Many left wing and environmental organizations are today not only part of the police nation but also accepting the limitations set by mass media. They see the unity with organizations having access to media as more important than to build on clear demands against false solutions on the climate issue. In spite of that key global democratic movements as Jubilee South, Via Campesina, Friends of the Earth International and the whole Climate Justice Now network is opposing carbon trading and offsetting most organisations prefer signing such statement and go home afterwards not taking them seriously.

If it is not media attention there are other tactical reasons for not taking international declarations seriously. One is the interest in cooperating with social partnership trade unions who refuse to take an antineoliberal stand in the climate justice issue. This is why the global day of action has such a out of date watered down platform.

But the antineoliberal climate justice movement is sufficiently large today to enable a stronger uniting initiative leaving the old claim for more action and a real climate deal behind. This was attempted at the Cochabamba gathering but with some problems. One was the exclusion of the Roundtable 18 (mesa 18) which also critically addressed social changes within countries including Bolivia. Another was the rather big ideas about a global referendum but no idea on the immediate term for uniting the climate justice movement.

But this is crucial for the ability to strengthen both the climate justice struggle and the general antineoliberal uprisings and struggles. By using the capacity of the climate justice movement to be present in almost every country a real important force would be added to the general antineoliberal uprising at national level. This would also work well in reverse. By politically showing more closeness to the political energy coming from the uprisings against authoritarian regimes whether in the West or other parts of the world the climate justice struggle would also be strengthened.

The climate justice movement could also learn from the Icelandic experience concerning solidarity. In spite of that all the press was in the hands of neoliberal perspectives and nine activists put to trials were presented as violent while making an action inside the parliament the movement kept together. 705 people claimed they had done the same crime which according to the attorney should result in minimum one year in prison. The trial ended with the verdict not guilty for most of the activist, a fine for two and suspended sentence for two others. The nine activists refuses to accept the verdict claiming that only full aquittal is acceptable.

After COP15 the trials are not yet over and two spokes persons for the non-violent action have been sentenced to four months in prison, verdicts that are up in court once more in the end of May. The massive solidarity in Iceland have lacked in Denamrk, especially during COP15 but also compared to Iceland afterwards. Without solidarity, the movement dies.

The anti-neoliberal uprisings can learn from the climate justice movement work for a constructive program for both agriculture forestry, industry, rural and urban planning to solve the climate crisis in ways which also solves other social and environmental crisis. Inspiration can come from the Klimaforum09, Assembly of Social Movements at European Social Forum in Istanbul and the Cochabamba roundtable 18 declarations that focus much on social justice and constructive solutions. A popular movement cannot only be against if it shall be able to win in the long term, it also needs something to long for, something that can attract more sympatizers and bring about change.

During a long period since 1980 all the results of the productivity increase have fallen into the hands of owners of capital. This has enabled those in power to penetrate every mind and every movement with the message that the market can solve everything while others cling to the defensive hope for the state or EU to challenge the market. The uprisings in Iceland, Africa and Western Asia challenges this model for controlling societies and limiting protest to defensive demands. The key way to try to limit the effect of the uprising in Africa and Western Asia is to claim that this is only a rebellion against dictatorships limited to the Arab world. Here Iceland is an example showing clearly that this is false. Together with the uprising in Wisconsin in the US inspired by the revolt in Egypt we here have examples showing that it is all authoritarian neoliberal and corrupt economic regimes that are challenged.

Together with a global action against neoliberal solutions to the climate crisis combined with a program for just transition the uprisings and the climate justice movement can make 2011 into a springtime of the people. A year of simultaneous struggle in many countries building a solidarity across borders that can bring us a decisive step towards making another world possible.

Tord Björk is active in Friends of the Earth Sweden.

Background on the COP15 lack of solidarity and trials:

The whole world on trial http://www.aktivism.info/socialforumjourney/?p=1109

Final count down for political theater at COP15 trials

http://www.aktivism.info/socialforumjourney/?p=1846

Danish law 1243: Truth! 2010: Power? http://www.aktivism.info/socialforumjourney/?p=1800

Historic COP15 victory against summit repression http://www.aktivism.info/socialforumjourney/?p=1892

Call for solidarity actions with the accused spokespersons for the Climate Justice movement and update information: http://www.climatecollective.org/en/start/

Strategy appeal made at World Social Forum tematico in Mexico May 2010:

Climate Justice and Class Struggles after Cochabamba http://www.aktivism.info/socialforumjourney/?p=1629

Reykjavik 9 and Iceland material:

Facebook cause Support the 9 Reykjavik and COP15 Activists! http://www.causes.com/causes/567523

Background material on the Icelandic situation: http://www.savingiceland.org/tag/rvk9

Solidarity web site for Reykjavik 9: http://www.rvk9.org/in-english/

Iceland’s Decision To Let Banks Fail Gaining Appeal by Paul Nikolov http://grapevine.is/Author/Paul-Nikolov

Report from Bloombergs with quotes from Stiglitz on Icelandic example: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-01/iceland-proves-ireland-did-wrong-things-saving-banks-instead-of-taxpayer.html.

When put into context with work related accidents in the rest of Iceland during that same eight year period, it becomes crystal clear that Kárahnjúkar was by far the single most dangerous workplace in the country. The 120 workers still disabled from work ammount to over 70% of all work related disabilities registered in the period, with eight times as many disabilities spawned from Kárahnjúkar than the rest of the country combined. The four who died as results of their accidents count 15% of all work related deaths in the country for those eight years, but they were 26 in all.

86% of those injured in Kárahnjúkar were employed by the construction company Impregilo, but they are known for being seriously lacking in worker security wherever they work around the globe. As an example of how safety issues were handled, Impregilo workers in Kárahnjúkar were forbidden from holding fire exercises, as it would waste valuable work-hours.

According to Kristinn Tómasson, senior physician at the Occupational Safety and Health Authority, the injury rate at Kárahnjúkar was exceptionally high and doesn’t stand comparison to any other projects in Iceland, the main reason being that safety issues were lacking in all regards and a proper risk assessment had never been fully completed.

“I am one of many people who have stood up and spoken out, because I have to. I wouldn’t be able to live with my own conscience when my grandchildren drive around Iceland (in the future) and it’s just full of factories and smelters,” said the singer.

Her new single Nattura encourages active support for environmentalism. Björk said she does not understand how “aluminium smelters can just come to Iceland and takeover,” and that any new business in Iceland should be “not only environmentally and economically sustainable, but also morally sustainable.”

Aluminium corporations operating in Iceland have been heavily criticised on moral grounds. Alcoa has been noted for it’s involvement in arms production and severe worker exploitation in countries such as Honduras and Mexico. Rio Tinto has just seen an investment ban by the Norwegian government for it’s inhuman mining practices in Indonesia, while Century Aluminum has been for it’s involvement with Chinese slave labour companies and dealings in West Congo.

“There have been ongoing supply issues at the dedicated power generating unit adjacent to our plant, which has forced us to go into the open market to secure power,” said John Thuestad, President of Alcoa’s US Primary Metals division. “Unfortunately local energy costs have escalated significantly over the past few weeks to an unsustainable level and we have no choice but to idle production that is reliant on uncompetitive power.”

Alcoa has taken Luminant, owned by KKR, Texas Pacific Group, and Goldman-Sachs through Energy Future Holdings, to court for spikes in Energy prices. Alcoa has claimed that Luminant is out to get rid of Alcoa in Texas.

Alcoa said in a copy of the lawsuit:

It appears that the Luminant family’s true goal may be to cause Alcoa’s Rockdale smelter to shut down completely and forever,’

Luminant stated, in response to Alcoa’s allegations:

We believe Alcoa has a history of using layoffs to manage costs and drive their own profitability. This is simply another example. Alcoa has made independent business decisions that have apparently now resulted in layoffs.

For the past two months, Luminant has offered Alcoa additional price protections along with a stable, predictable and economically viable power supply. Alcoa has refused, taking an inflexible stance, seeking power at unrealistically advantageous terms and demanding a price far below the prevailing commercial market price.

Luminant is supplying prices far below the martet price, as Alcoa signed up for “first drop” pricing, which means that if the grid gets overloaded, Alcoa’s smelting plant is the first to go be cut off. In that case Alcoa needs to find (highly expensive) short term supply on the market to prevent going off-line. In other words, Alcoa is suing EFH/Luminant for providing exactly the service they had contracted to provide.

It appears that Alcoa is using the power company as a scapegoat to close down a facility that has become less profitable. The 250 laid off workers and the local community pay the real price.

Also read:

• The Bad Neighbor – Alcoa’s Dirty Dealing in Central Texas by Esther Cervantes

We have heard from workers what kind of cirumstances they are in (2):

• The pipe wielders work 72 hour weeks in up to 17 hour long shifts, even in the winter.
• They work there for 3-6 months on end and then have a three-week holiday before they return to this project or a similar project in Iceland or elsewhere.
• They are not paid to Icelandic standards but to Romanian standards, with a monthly salary approximating 2300 Euros at current exchange rates (for a 72 hour work week).
• They are however paid in Icelandic Krona, rather than Euros. Due to devaluation of the Krona they have seen a quarter of their income disappear without compensation.
• They are forced to stay in the camp, with one night out in Reykjavik per month.
• The camp is worse than a prison – there are no recreational facilities and no gymnastic / sports facilities. Even their televisions do not work because the location hampers reception.
• Requests for simple facilities such as a football pitch or even a table tennis table are turned down.
• Those who complain too much are threatened with loss of their jobs.
• Workers have been told the expansion of the power plant is meant to provide energy for the city of Reykjavik. However, the plant is being expanded to provide energy to Century Aluminum’s smelter at Grundartangi, north of the city.

“It is not surprising that deadly accidents happen to workers who have to work 17 hour pipe wielding shifts. It is ironic that a public owned company such as Reykjavik Energy, who credits itself with being clean and green, constructs its facilities by exploiting foreign workers in this fashion. No Icelander would work in these circumstances. The only people willing to do this work are those that have very little opportunities and have no choice but to do this, to support their families back home” says Jaap Krater, a spokesperson of Saving Iceland.

“We have brought this issue up at previous actions that we have done at Hellisheidi (3, 4), but Reykjavik Energy has taken no action to improve the worker’s lot. Now that a number of workers have suffered a horrible and tragic death by suffocating in the pipes they were wielding, action has to be taken now to stop this scandalous behaviour by a company that is owned by the city of Reykjavik,” says Krater.

About Saving Iceland

Saving Iceland was started by Icelandic environmentalists asking for help to protect the Icelandic wilderness, the largest remaining in Europe, from heavy industry. Aluminium corporations Alcoa, Century Aluminum and Rio Tinto-Alcan want to construct a number of new smelters in Iceland. This would require exploitation of all the geothermal areas in the country, as well as damming most major glacial rivers (see http://www.savingiceland.org/sos).

References

• 1. Iceland Review (2008). Two Immigrant Workers Die in Work Related Accident. http://www.savingiceland.org/?p=2425&amp… and 

  ” title=”http://www.politube.org/show/817

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Worker’s accomodation

The union states that injured workers are often offered lighter jobs on site so that the company can avoid filing their accident as serious, as a “unable-to-work accident.”

The union leader of Akranes finds this quite intolerable and has made serious complaints about this both at Norðurál and at Elkem Iceland.

The unions website takes an example of a young woman working for Norðurál who, a few days ago, was hit by a lifter (sort of mini tractor) and was moved to the Akranes hospital. There her injures were less serious than they seemed in begin. “As she told her foreman that she was unable to come back to work because of the injuries and a shock he was quite angry and said that she couldn´t do that because it meant that the accident would be filed as a “unable-to-work accident.” This sort of behaviour is quite intoreble and the union can not and will not accept it,” the website says.

Another incident is mentioned where a worker for Elkem Iceland fell down some stairs and broke his arm. According to the union the company asked him to come back to work and do some lighter work even tough his medical paper deemed him unable to work at all.

It is stated that those incidents are not the only incidents of workers of those companies being asked to return to work after accidents at work.

REYKJAVÍK  – Today 30 activists from the international campaign Saving Iceland have invaded the Landsvirkjun (national power company) building (Háaleitisbraut 68) to disrupt work. Earlier this morning Saving Iceland activists dammed the house of Landsvirkjun director Friðrik Sophusson and nailed an eviction notice to his door.

“We oppose Landsvirkjun’s intentions to build the four Þjórsá and Tungnaá dams for Rio Tinto at Straumsvik (1,2), despite the referendum. They are also negotiating to dam Skjálfandafljót and Jökuslá á Fjöllum for ALCOA’s planned Bakki smelter (3,4). This is on top of the mess they are making of Þeistareykir (5) and the deep drilling into Mount Krafla, right next to the tourist attraction. LV are doing this for a company that is a self-admitted arms dealer (6) and has been in the news again and again for it’s gross abuse of human rights. (7) This company should not be welcomed by Landsvirkjun,” says Jaap Krater from Saving Iceland.

Extreme abuse of workers’ rights
ALCOA claims to be an excellent employer, taking good care of their workers. But the reality is different:

“Often workers have to urinate, or even defecate, in their clothing after repeatedly being denied permission to use the bathroom. The bathrooms are also dirty, lacking lights and toilet paper. Workers who take “too long” may be pulled from the toilet by guards. There have even been cases of women being made to disrobe and lower their underpants to prove they were having their period so they could use the bathroom more than twice a day,” says a recent report about Alcoa’s treatment of workers in Honduras (7).

“With as little as ten minutes notice, workers on the night shift can be ordered to remain working for another six hours, keeping them at the factory from 4:15 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. – nearly 14 hours. All overtime is obligatory and those who object can be fired.”

“The base wage of 74 cents an hour at Alcoa’s plants meets just 37 percent of a small family’s most basic survival needs.”

Workers have protested, but Alcoa does not encourage unionising. “Alcoa will use slightly veiled death threats, mass illegal firings, blacklists and threats to close the plant to block workers daring to exercise their legal right to organize,” says the report.

In Mexican factories, a range of human rights and worker abuse has also been reported (8). Ironically, Alcoa are now laying off 1240 workers in Honduras and Mexico as a response to decreased demand for aluminium for large cars due to high fuel prices (9).

ALCOA and the Arms Industry
Alcoa actively supports the US military ventures, such as the war in Iraq. “Alcoa Defense is proud to be a trusted partner for the U.S. military and defense industry.” said Dave Dobson, president, Alcoa Defense. “We look forward to protecting soldiers with our armor plate, while making vehicles lighter, faster and stronger.” (10).

“All Alcoans are working hard to ensure that these orders move quickly through the plant in order to support our troops,” said Mark Vrablec, director of manufacturing at Alcoa Davenport Works (11).

Other recent examples of Alcoa products for the US military include combat ships (12) and light tactical armed vehicles (13).

“Basically, electricity from the power plants Landsvirkjun is intending to build, will be exported straight to Iraq and Afghanistan in the form of Alcoa weaponry,” says Saving Iceland’s Jaap Krater.

About Saving Iceland
Last Saturday, Saving Iceland stopped work at the construction site of Century Aluminum’s planned new smelter in Helguvík while on Monday they blockaded the existing Century smelter on Hvalfjordur. This is part of their fourth summer of direct action against heavy industry in Iceland.

Saving Iceland was started by Icelandic environmentalists asking for help to protect the Icelandic wilderness, the largest remaining in Europe, from heavy industry. Aluminium corporations Alcoa, Century Aluminum and Rio Tinto-Alcan want to construct new smelters. This would require exploitation of all the geothermal areas in the country, as well as damming all major glacial rivers (see http://www.savingiceland.org/sos).

This year, the fourth action camp to protect Icelandic nature has been set up near the Hellisheidi geothermal plant east of Reykjavik. That power plant is currently being expanded to produce electricity for Century Aluminum.

More information
http://www.savingiceland.org
 savingiceland at riseup.net

References

(1) Landsvirkjun (2008). Alcan and Landsvirkjun reach agreement on electricity price. http://www.landsvirkjun.com/EN/article.a…
(2) Iceland Review (2008). Trial Delays Hydropower Projects in Iceland. http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandrevi…
(3) Visir.is (2008). Ný virkjun á stærð við Kárahnjúkavirkjun. http://visir.is/article/20080718/FRETTIR…
(4) Visir.is (2008). Enn stærra álver á Bakka hugnast Ingibjörgu ekki. http://visir.is/article/20080722/FRETTIR…
(5) Saving Iceland (2008). Energy companies destroying Þeistareykir. http://www.savingiceland.org/?p=1317
(6) ALCOA Defense website. http://www.alcoa.com/defense/en/capabili…
(7) National Labor Committee with Community Comunication Honduras (2007). The Walmart-ization of Alcoa. http://www.nlcnet.org/article.php?id=447.
(8) Comité Fronterizo de Obreras (2008). Alcoa in México. http://www.cfomaquiladoras.org/english%2…
(9) Reuters (2008). Alcoa Inc.’s Alcoa Electrical And Electronic Systems To Restructure Honduran And Mexican Operations. http://www.reuters.com/finance/industrie…
(10) Alunet International (2008). Alcoa to Supply Armor Plate for New Army Vehicle http://www.alunet.net/shownews.asp?ID=23…
(11) ALCOA (2008). Alcoa Provides Aluminum for Humvees Used In Iraq. http://www.alcoa.com/defense/en/news/rel…
(12) Cavas, C. (2007). Alcoa Joins U.S. Navy LCS Program. Defense News 10/10/2007. Cfr. http://www.alcoa.com/defense/en/news/rel…
(13) ALCOA (2008). Lockheed Martin Announces Alcoa As Principal Team Member To Compete For Joint Light Tactical Vehicle Program.http://www.alcoa.com/global/en/news/whats_new/2007/jltv_program.asp.

Alcoa are being targeted because of their involvement in the Karahnjukar dam projects. The campaign is growing and intensifying as the Icelandic government and Alcoa’s plans for devastation of the Icelandic landscape expand. Tomorrow Alcoa will announce whether they intend to build another smelter in the North of Iceland, a decision we feel should be made by the people of Iceland rather than a foreign corporation.

Recently a third of the workers at the Runcorn factory have been made redundant, according to them to get cheaper labour. Workers passing by our protest have all been very polite and many have wished us luck. The protest has been peaceful.

Iceland Review
8/03/2005

 

Father of Iceland’s most famous citizen criticized the government’s lack of initiative when worker’s rights are violated at Kárahnjúkar, the controversial hydro-electric development in East Iceland.

Impregilo, the Italian construction group building dams and tunnels at Kárahnúkar, has been allowed to break laws, for months at a time, says pop star Björk Gudmundsdóttir’s father, Gudmundur Gunnarsson, leader of the Icelandic Electrician’s Union. He believes that neither the police nor the government act when worker’s rights are violated but resources are always on hand during protests against the government-backed hydro-electric dam.

Gudmundur says that employees at the Kárahnúkar power plant have at times operated equipment without valid licenses, including driving without drivers licenses. Employees have been put in life threatening situations and violated in various ways. Impreglio has gotten away with repeatedly breaking the law which the government has chosen to ignore.

Ómar R. Valdimarsson, spokesperson for Impregilo, answered this criticism saying that all Impregilo employees work within the Icelandic law.

In the fall of 2002, Björk’s mother, Hildur Rúna Hauksdóttir, protested the building of the hydro-electric plant at Kárahnúkar by going on a hunger strike. The BBC reported that she stopped eating for over three weeks and survived on “on a homeopathic tonic and tea made from hand-picked Icelandic herbs such as thyme, jarrow and angelica.” According to the BBC the Kárahnúkar area, “home to reindeer, rare geese and plants, as well as glacial rivers, snow-covered volcanoes and deep, basalt canyons” was where Björk’s video for her 1997 single, Joga was filmed.

 http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandrevi…

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/04/3…

Schnews, 4th March 2005, Issue 487

Super-cool Iceland, the eco-tourist’s wet dream, right? Maybe not for much longer if the Icelandic government has its way.

You see, they’ve got a cunning plan to turn the whole country into a heavy industry paradise for all sorts of multinational scum, damming and flooding and generally trashing nature to power up a bunch of giant aluminium smelters and other slight blots on the landscape.

This is not an early April fool – it’s already started. The construction of the giant Karahnjukar dam in the Icelandic Highlands – one of Europe’s last surviving wildernesses – is well under way. Landsvirkjun (the national power company, a government quango) has a raft of further projects that would see 25% of the entire country dam affected by 2020: some vision.

Karahnjukar and most of Landsvirkjun’s future schemes harness glacial rivers fed by Vatnajokull – the biggest non-arctic glacier in the world. This glacier is the heart of a fantastically intricate eco-system: barren red and black Martian landscapes; geo-thermal springs and pools hot enough to take a bath in; rivers banked by deep, springy emerald green moss woven with tiny red and yellow flowers where no-one’s ever walked; the glacier’s own fantastic ice caves; seal breeding grounds on the black sand deltas to the north. All this will be destabilized and damaged forever if these dam projects are allowed to happen.

An international protest camp this summer aims to halt this war on nature. It’s going to be one hell of a struggle since the Icelandic government seems determined to push these projects through, no matter what opposition it faces.

What’s going on at Karahnjukar demonstrates the way that government operates. When plans for the mega-project were first submitted to the National Planning Agency (NPA) in 2001 they were rejected because of the “substantial, irreversible, negative environmental impact” the dam would have. All the experts agreed with this verdict (see IRN’s report linked below). But the environment minister overturned the NPA’s ruling and declared that in her opinion the project was environmentally acceptable – of course she is suitably qualified to decide on environmental issues – she’s a physiotherapist! There were a few financial hiccups with banks getting all ethical but Barclays bravely stepped forward with the necessary dosh – even though they’d signed up to the Equator Principles which demand “sound environmental management practices as a financing prerequisite.”

Work started in July 2003, with Italian bully-boys Impregilo (construction arm of Fiat, currently charged with corruption in Lesotho and ‘financial irregularities’ at home) and a terrifying squadron of Caterpillar bulldozers began to claw up and dynamite the fragile sub-arctic tundra. Reindeer, arctic foxes, other small animals and thousands of bird species that lived there fled in fear.

FROZEN ASSETS

All electricity produced at Karahnjukar is contracted to a massive Alcoa aluminium smelter (being built by Bechtel, due to be operational in 2007) which itself will pollute and ruin Reydarfjordur, a pristine eastern fjord. A Reykjavik court recently ruled that Alcoa’s planning permission for this monstrosity isn’t valid, but that probably won’t stop them as they immediately appealed to the – allegedly – rigged High Court.

Karahnjukar won’t benefit Icelanders at all: none of the electricity is destined for the national grid and cos there’s little unemployment in the region no Icelander’s gonna want a nice healthy job at the smelter thanks.

Yet the cost to the nation is enormous: independent experts say the economy is at risk (see IRN report), it has cost $1 billion so far and is likely to cost more – the electricity for Alcoa is for a price linked to the changing prices of Aluminium on London Metal Market…in other words no guarantee it’ll ever make a profit.

The environment suffers more by the day. They’ve already blown part of Dimmugljufur – Iceland’s Grand Canyon – to smithereens, and if they fill up the reservoir (scheduled 2007), 65.5 square kilometres of pristine wilderness will be completely submerged. This land includes birthing grounds for the majority of Iceland’s reindeer and Ramsar ‘protected’ nesting sites for endangered species such as pink-footed geese, and Gyrfalcon. Sixty waterfalls will be lost as will a range of sediment ledges – judged completely unique in the world by scientists studying global warming – which record 10,000 years of geological and climate change. And this vast projected reservoir would extend right onto the glacier itself, which is breaking up because of global warming. Wouldn’t giant icebergs trucking up to the dam be a bit – er – dangerous? Yep. And it gets worse – the dam is being built over a seismic fault!

Earthquake zone at Kárahnjúkar volcanoes
White lines = Ground rock cracks
Yellow lines = Erosion of sediments. Erosion is parallel
to cracks: Sediments are cracked, cracking is still active

.

In 2003, Landsvirkjun’s chief, Fridrik Sophusson, was asked what would happen if there was an earthquake under the dam. “It would burst,” he smiled calmly. “A catastrophic wall of water would annihilate everyone in Egilsstadir [the nearest town] and all the neighbouring farms would be swept away.” Icelandic Tsunami anyone? “It won’t happen,” he added smugly. Yet in August 2004 there were continuous earthquakes at Karahnjukar for several days.

Environmentalists also warned that silt residues left by changing water levels round the projected reservoir would dry to a fine dust which the wind would carry onto local farmland. This was dismissed, yet last summer silt left in the wake of unexpected surges in the newly diverted glacial river produced just such devastating dust storms.

But none of this makes any difference: while everyone else in the ‘developed world’ is busy dismantling dams, Iceland’s rulers just can’t get enough. There are plans to dam every major glacial river in the country. Rio Tinto Zinc are reportedly salivating over the chance to devastate the North of the country, while Alcan and Century (who’ve already got smelters near Reykjavik) are keen to expand their deathly shadow in the south.

Ironically, the government- via its tourist board – still invites visitors to enjoy the “unspoilt pure natural beauty” it’s hell-bent on destroying! So how do they get away with it? Well, Iceland has a tiny population (290,000) and power is concentrated in the hands of a few very wealthy families who control politics, industry and the media. Scientists, journalists, anyone who asks questions is swiftly discredited and then sacked.

But it’s not all bad news and you can even help. A really vigorous and up-for-it grass-roots environmental movement is emerging, determined to stop Icelandic nature being pimped to the highest bidder. It’s a David v. Goliath battle and the call is out for international support.

If you are up for peacefully showing your solidarity with some of the most fantastic nature on our planet, check out www.savingiceland.org and joining the protest camp summer 2005.

http://www.schnews.org.uk/archive/news487.htm

Also in pdf.

“…some Alcoa Rockdale employees… were offered a choice between early retirement or transfer to Iceland.” So much for job creation for the people of Eastern Iceland!

Dollars and Sence
The Magazine for Economic Justice
Issue #254, July/August 2004

Earlier this year, the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) broke ground on the $83 million Three Oaks lignite mine outside Austin. The mine will provide coal to Alcoa’s massive facility near the town of Rockdale: an aluminum smelter plus the three power plants that fire it. In addition to the lignite, Alcoa intends to remove groundwater from the new mine (as well as from its existing mine at Sandow, near Rockdale) and ship it to the city of San Antonio, more than 100 miles away. In a company report celebrating the Rockdale smelter’s first 50 years, manager Geoff Cromer thanks the facility’s neighbors for “the strong support we have received from the community”—but that’s less than half the story. The “several hundred people” who “took time from their jobs” to attend numerous public hearings and “provide comment in support of Alcoa and this project” were far outnumbered by those who struggled against it for four years.

The protesters are an unlikely bunch—mostly cattle ranchers and suburban commuters, a population that has lived in the shadow of the Rockdale facility for decades without complaint. But when the company decided to expand its profit-making repertoire by selling the area’s groundwater to a distant city, Alcoa’s neighbors rebelled. In their effort to block the new mine and stop the water deal, they also dug up the dirt on Alcoa’s 30-plus years of evading the Texas Clean Air Act at Rockdale. In spite of the protests, mining at Three Oaks is slated to begin in September; at the same time, though, Alcoa will have to announce how it will finally comply with clean air regulations.

Coal and Water

East of Austin the austere limestone hills over the Edwards aquifer give way to gently rolling scrubland—a patchwork of both bedroom communities of former ranchers and the oak, cedar, and tall grass-studded ranches of those who have yet to yield to the economic imperative of the commute.

In the 1970s the city of San Antonio bought 10,000 acres of this land, in Lee and Bastrop counties, and later leased mining rights to 4,000 more from Phillips Petroleum. San Antonio’s municipally owned energy provider, City Public Service (CPS), hoped to fuel a new power plant with the lignite coal that lay under this domain. Public protest and, eventually, the offer of cheaper, cleaner coal from Wyoming changed the plan. CPS’s new lands lay idle for years.

Though CPS never mined its lignite, other central Texas landowners have found use for the area’s dirty brown coal. Since 1952, Alcoa has mined the Sandow deposit near Rockdale. Three power plants run day and night on the fuel, producing enough energy each year to light the city—or run an aluminum smelter.

The equipment Alcoa uses to extract the lignite would delight anyone who celebrates humankind’s will to dominate the environment—or who has ever liked Tonka toys. Nate Blakeslee of the Texas Observer describes the draglines as two mechanical shovels, each 20 stories high with a 150-ton capacity bucket. Smaller (though still huge) shovels work inside the 100-foot-deep pit. Looking indeed like toys by comparison, dump trucks, bulldozers, and pickups dart around, lifting and hauling coal.

The draglines move enough earth each year to fill the Panama Canal; the resulting landscape dispels any impression that this is a game. Aerial photographs show a stark contrast between the stretches of mine that Alcoa has backfilled and the surrounding land it has never touched. The untouched land is a lush, deep green prairie dotted with stands of mature cedar and oak. The “reclaimed” land, planted almost exclusively with coastal bermuda grass, shows instead a sere khaki.

Alcoa officials like to point out that the company’s land reclamation has won awards from the Texas Railroad Commission (TRC) and the U.S. Department of the Interior. But one shudders to imagine the competition for those awards: the TRC cited Sandow for 26 violations of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act between 1992 and 1997. Much of the land mined there before the law’s 1977 enactment has only been reclaimed under the auspices of the TRC. Hundreds of acres more, left to Alcoa’s goodwill, remain a post-mine moonscape.

Massive earth-moving is not the only environmental disruption Alcoa causes at Sandow. The lignite there sits between two branches of the slow-recharging Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer. The deeper the draglines dig the pit, the harder the groundwater presses against the walls of the strip mine. Since 1988, Alcoa has had to pump seeping groundwater out of Sandow to keep it from flooding. Alcoa uses some of this water for dust control and dumps the rest—some 30,000 acre-feet (more than 9.75 billion gallons) annually—into local creeks.

In Texas, although the rules are slowly changing, groundwater is generally governed by right of capture, or the law of the biggest straw: anyone who can put the water to a legally-defined “beneficial use” may extract as much groundwater as their technology allows, and with the state’s blessing.

At Sandow, Alcoa has a very big straw. When it began pumping groundwater, the company agreed with the TRC to compensate nearby groundwater users for any damage, such as wells that dried up because the water table dropped out from under them. Of around 600 official complaints Alcoa has received since 1989, the company has addressed less than half to the satisfaction of the party affected.

Most neighbors were willing to put up with the bother, though, because of the jobs and other benefits that Alcoa brings to the area. The facility is the largest unionized employer in central Texas, employing about 1,200 workers. Alcoa also pays royalties to landowners whose property it mines. Others depend indirectly on the mine and smelter for their livelihoods.

Alcoa had long been seen as a livable neighbor—then it decided to get into the water business.

‘Til Your Well Runs Dry

Texas’ shift from right-of-capture to more formal groundwater regulation began with a 1991 lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to protect the wildlife of the Edwards aquifer (located west of the Carrizo-Wilcox) from the effects of excessive drawdown. According to the Sierra Club and area environmentalists, the vast Edwards aquifer, whose three segments span the more than 230 miles from Austin southwest to Del Rio, supports wide ecological diversity in a semi-arid climate.

More to the point, the Edwards passes below and provides water to two of the state’s major cities, San Antonio and Austin. San Antonio is entirely dependent on the aquifer for its drinking water and uses about 175,000 acre-feet per year; the city’s water use is expected to reach more than 375,000 acre-feet by 2050. In May 1993 the Texas legislature capped all Edwards withdrawals at 450,000 acre-feet per year, a number to be reduced to 400,000 in 2008.

According to San Antonio Water System (SAWS) spokesperson Susan Butler, “our groundwater supply has been severely reduced by regulation,” and the city is preparing for the future. In 1997, SAWS started building infrastructure to expand the city’s use of treated wastewater. First used in the 1960s to cool area power plants, treated wastewater now irrigates golf courses and has replaced the fresh groundwater that, until the late 1990s, maintained the flow of the San Antonio River through the River Walk. (The San Antonio no longer flows in dry weather without help.) This style of conservation is not for all tourist attractions, though: the log flume rides at Fiesta Texas, a nearby theme park, are not likely to switch to recycled wastewater.

At the same time San Antonio was casting about for ways to reduce its reliance on Edwards aquifer groundwater, the lignite in Alcoa’s Sandow mine was beginning to run out. If San Antonio would let Alcoa mine its long-abandoned lignite, the company offered, Alcoa would incidentally mine groundwater for the thirsty city.

The deal was struck in the last days of 1998. Alcoa acquired San Antonio’s 14,000 acres of mining rights and began planning to build the Three Oaks mine there, while agreeing to provide SAWS with 40,000 to 60,000 acre-feet of water per year from the Sandow mine. CPS (the municipal utility) signed over to SAWS the water rights to the same land it’s leasing to Alcoa for the new mine, rights good for perhaps another 15,000 acre-feet per year. The high-end total is about 40% of San Antonio’s current use, and it comes at no small price. In its contracts for water from Sandow and Three Oaks, SAWS agrees to pay Alcoa: for the water itself; a monthly project management fee for the duration of the contract, whether or not any water is delivered; and all the costs of designing, building, and operating the pipeline and other facilities needed to deliver the water, including, “to the extent allowed by law, all taxes, fees, and other costs … incurred … by Alcoa” due to its ownership of any land or facilities. Upon expiration of the contract (set for 2040, but subject to extension), ownership of all land associated with the pipeline is to be transferred to Alcoa by San Antonio. That’s water fees, administrative fees that apply whether or not the water is delivered, reimbursement for all infrastructure, eventual ownership of that infrastructure and the land on which it sits, and tax breaks on that land, all accruing to Alcoa at the expense of the citizens of San Antonio.

But San Antonio need not wait so long to see just how short its end of the stick really is. Once Sandow has closed as a lignite mine, very little of the water Alcoa would supply to San Antonio would be directly tied to lignite mining. The point is crucial. Only water extracted for lignite-mining purposes is covered in Alcoa’s agreement with the Texas Railroad Commission to compensate other Carrizo-Wilcox users for harm it may cause them by lowering the water table. The 1998 contracts leave SAWS holding the bag for any additional well damage.

It has the potential to be a mighty big bag. The University of Texas Bureau of Economic Geology’s model of the effect of the water-export deal on the Carrizo-Wilcox predicts a drop in the water table of as much as 300 feet by 2050. Such a drop is costly when the affected wells must be repaired or their owners compensated. When Lee County resident L. C. Hobbs wanted to sink a well on his property in 1997, Alcoa’s records assured him that he would hit water at 80 feet. The water that Hobbs did eventually find, 467 feet down, was so fouled by mineral deposits that it required filtration. Hobbs asked Alcoa for $8,400 to cover the extra drilling and $7,400 for the filtration system. When the company offered to settle at $5,000, Hobbs sued. The area that would be affected by the predicted drawdown is home to tens of thousands of similar small users of the aquifer today, and the local population is increasing rapidly.

But few knew the details of the water deal before the contracts were signed—three months before feasibility studies ordered by SAWS were finished. Why the rush? After a severe drought in 1996, the Texas legislature finally decided to extend the reform of its groundwater policy to aquifers other than the Edwards. Members of the SAWS citizen advisory panel allege that the rush to slide the agreement in under the door of the proposed new groundwater laws kept them ignorant of the deal until it was nearly done. The complex contracts were released to SAWS’ citizen advisors just days before the SAWS board voted to approve them.

San Antonians protested the deal once they knew about it, but the ink was already dry. Bob Martin of the Homeowners-Taxpayers Association claimed that a 31% rate increase announced by SAWS in 1999 brought 40 new members to his group, which opposed the Alcoa deal. At a 2000 public hearing, local minister Leslie Ellison declared the cost of the plan “outrageous.” Other speakers criticized the Alcoa deal as a “boondoggle” and called Mike Thuss, then head of SAWS, an “imperial parasite.”

San Antonio is supposed to take its first delivery of Alcoa water in 2013, although pipeline construction has yet to begin. SAWS has sought other means and more favorable terms on which to fill its water demands, and it has done well enough that Travis Brown, a founder of the local group Neighbors for Neighbors (NFN), speculates that the Sandow deal will eventually be abandoned. Still, the cost to the city for abandoning the deal grows with each passing month, and representatives from both SAWS and Alcoa maintain that the contracts are “current.” And even if no Alcoa water ever makes it into San Antonio taps, the city may decide to resell the water. The most likely customers? Growing Austin suburbs, including the very same communities that are to have the water pumped out from under them. Or, if the contracts completely break down, Alcoa may do the selling. After all, they’ve already laid claim to the water—and as Texas’ new groundwater rules emerge, it’s clear that prior claims can easily be parlayed into profit (see “The Longest Straw Lives On”).

Unlikely Activists

Cattle ranchers and suburban commuters seem an even more unlikely source of community activism than Sun Belt urbanites, especially on an environmental issue. But Elgin-based Neighbors for Neighbors has organized just such people, give or take a Buddhist nun and a nudist camp, into a vocal and tenacious resistance against the deal. The issue certainly hits closer to home for those who would be losing the water than for those gaining it. And, says Brown, the contracts “kind of blew up this rural versus urban contest.” Organizing was the only way for a scattered population to oppose the power of “all these thirsty cities looking to our area.”

John Burke, head of Aqua Water, the area’s nonprofit water provider, put it more bluntly to reporter Nate Blakeslee: “If you went down to San Antonio and the Edwards Aquifer and said I’m gonna draw down 100 feet over 1,400 square miles, those people would be coming to your funeral, because someone would hang you.”

The announcement of San Antonio’s contracts with Alcoa came as a surprise to area residents, according to Brown, and “ignited a firestorm” of protest. Founded in 1999, Neighbors for Neighbors at its peak had 500 dues-paying members and the support of countless other individuals and dozens of community organizations. Brown says, “We would get 200 people to come to [a public hearing] and raise hell.”

Neighbors for Neighbors—”one of the most successful grassroots groups” that Brown, in 30 years as an activist, has ever seen—fought the water deal on many fronts, including “raising hell” against Alcoa throughout the complicated process of getting permits for the Three Oaks mine. In 2000, NFN filed an unsuitability petition against the mine before the Texas Railroad Commission. “Most of the area is now a developing suburb of Austin and the area’s fortunes are tied to Austin, not Alcoa,” says Brown. The mine’s proposed location is just 20 miles from the city limits, so “it seemed stupid to ruin this land just to get that dirty lignite out of it.” The railroad commission disagreed. Brown counts this as an example of “our state regulatory agencies [being] in the pockets of big corporations.”

Brown claims that the “several hundred people” Alcoa says supported the project at public hearings were usually “shipped in by busloads” by Alcoa itself. There were often some “nasty feelings” at such hearings, but, Brown says, “actually we’ve had some Alcoa employees come to us with good information.” Neighbors for Neighbors even has some former Alcoa Rockdale employees among its members. Brown wishes NFN had put more energy into opposing Alcoa’s final permits. But NFN’s limited resources have been spread thin, protesting the new mine, the water deal—and Alcoa’s air pollution.

Burning Dirt

Water is invaluable in Texas’ semi-arid climate, but NFN fought its biggest battle with Alcoa over the lignite itself. Lignite is a particularly poor-quality coal; Brown calls it “burning dirt.” Sandow lignite produces the more than 104,000 self-reported tons of pollutants that Alcoa’s facility dumps into the air over Rockdale each year. Almost all (99.38%) of the pollution enjoys grandfathered exemption from the 1971 Texas Clean Air Act, making Alcoa Rockdale Texas’ largest unregulated stationary source of air pollution.

Though NFN’s efforts have forced Alcoa to decide how to bring its emissions in line with the Clean Air Act by September, it’s already too late for the health of many Rockdale residents. Asks one contractor who occasionally works on refrigeration systems at the plant, “If the air is as safe as they say it is, then why are there so many Alcoa retirees toting around oxygen tanks?” This year, EPA consultant Abt Associates found that every year in Texas, pollution from coal-fired power plants causes 144 deaths from lung cancer, 1,791 nonfatal heart attacks, and almost 34,000 asthma attacks. Most of them could be prevented, according to Abt, if the plants would install available pollution controls.

Alcoa was on the guest list when, in 1997, then-governor George W. Bush invited executives of Texas’ largest grandfathered point-source polluters to help him draft a Voluntary Emissions Reduction Permit (VERP) plan. The program’s first official review was not scheduled until 2001, a move that ensured VERP a place in Bush’s stump speeches in his bid for the presidency. And VERP’s corporate co-authors contributed more than their legislation-drafting skills: the same companies donated $250,000 to the Bush campaign. Alcoa itself abstained, but its law firm, Vinson and Elkins, gave $202,850. Bush later tapped Alcoa CEO Paul O’Neill for his cabinet.

Bush would not have gotten nearly as much public relations mileage out of VERP if its first review had come before the 2000 election. In January 2001, the then-Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission (TNRCC, or “Train Wreck” in local parlance; it later changed its name to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality) reported that, in its first year and a half, VERP had been responsible for exactly no reductions in grandfathered emissions. None.

To its credit, the Texas Legislature replaced Bush’s voluntary reduction plan with a mandatory one in spring 2001. Former state legislators joined citizen organizations in lobbying for the change. Former Representative Sissy Farent­hold told the Chronicle that, “Back in 1971, I could have expected that my hair would be white by now, but I certainly did not expect this loophole [of grandfathered emissions] to still be in effect.”

The new law was scheduled to take force in September 2001; in another display of impeccable timing, Alcoa finally applied for VERP permits in July, promising to reduce its emissions of smog-forming nitrous oxide by half in one year, and of acid rain-causing sulfur dioxide by 90% by 2006, as long as the reductions proved “economical.” Otherwise, Alcoa lamented, pollution reduction would shut the Rockdale smelter down.

Meanwhile, NFN, Public Citizen, and Environmental Defense were gathering dirt on Alcoa’s dirt. The groups found evidence that upgrades to the Rockdale facility in the 1980s constituted legally defined “major modifications” that should have nullified its grandfathered status and subjected it to Clean Air Act regulations. Alcoa downplayed the upgrades as “routiwne maintenance.” In 1985, however, the Rockdale Reporter quoted Alcoa officials boasting that they had “torn apart as much as [possible] without throwing the whole thing away” and that the facility could “in no way … be called a 30-year-old plant because of the almost constant improvements and construction during the years.”

Based on these discoveries, in October 2001 the three groups filed a notice of intent to sue Alcoa in federal court for 15 years of violations of the Texas Clean Air Act. The lawsuit was settled in April 2003. Alcoa would pay $1.5 million in fines and contribute an additional $2.5 million to local land trusts and environmental efforts. By September of this year, Alcoa must decide how to approach long-term reduction of its Rockdale emissions: install pollution control devices in the three existing power plants; shut those plants down and build cleaner ones; or find a cleaner source of energy for the smelter. (Shutting down the power plants would not shut down the mines: Alcoa could still supply lignite to a fourth power plant on site that is owned by another company.)

And there is always the whispered possibility of closing the smelter completely. Since protest against the water deal and the new mine began, Alcoa has complained that the expense of fitting the facilities with pollution controls or switching to a cleaner type of fuel would reduce their profits so much that the smelter would have to be closed.

The Austin American-Statesman has cited the cost of pollution controls at $100 million, resulting in a $40 million drop in profits for the Rockdale facility (no time frame was given for either figure). Alcoa will not reveal numbers for Rockdale alone, but in 1999, the year the Statesman published its figures, the corporation as a whole had $17.46 billion in assets (of which the $100 million would be 0.57%), had profits of $853 million (of which the $40 million would be 4.69%), and employed 92,600 people (of which Rockdale’s 1,200 were 1.3%). The lost profits figure in particular makes one wish Alcoa had given the Statesman a time frame. Alcoa could not have meant that improvements at Rockdale would cost it $40 million in a single year; for, if Rockdale accounts for four and a half percent of Alcoa’s profits in any given year, then investing one half of one percent of the company’s assets in upgrading the site would seem justified. (And what company would give up such workers, who seem to produce three times as much annual profit, on average, as the workforce as a whole?)

It’s conceivable that, in September, Alcoa will announce the closure of Rockdale; it already cut capacity by 25% in 2002. If, however, Alcoa continues operating its power plants and smelter, it will spend $4 million in fines and other payments for the Clean Air Act suit, along with the projected $100 million to reduce emissions—where the $100 million by itself was once lamented as too much for the operation to sustain. Perhaps Alcoa hopes that the $104 million cleanup cost (and additional lost profits) at Rockdale will be offset by the cheap coal and the water revenue its new mine nearby is slated to bring.

Everything’s Under Control

In 2001, the Austin Chronicle declared NFN “Dragon Slayer of the Year,” but the group has been forced to retreat while the dragon still lives. Alcoa, with its massive capital assets, can afford to fight such fights indefinitely. (NFN, in contrast, was delighted to get a $14,000 grant from the Ben and Jerry’s Foundation in 2000.) Even Alcoa’s defeats, as at the hands of the CFO (see “Alcoa Acts Out Abroad”), are minor, affecting only one part of the corporation and making no change in its usual attitude or behavior.

The mechanical might of the Sandow strip mine can stand as a metaphor for that attitude, which reflects above all a desire to control the environment in which the company operates. The Texas Clean Air Act’s requirements inconvenienced Alcoa in Rockdale, so the company blithely ignored the law for more than 30 years. Likewise, the state legislature’s proposed groundwater regulations might have impeded Alcoa’s ability to trade water for lignite, so Alcoa rushed San Antonio into their 1999 water deal before the legislative session began.

Given the insignificance of the projected cost of alternate fuel for Rockdale relative to the profits and assets of the corporation as a whole, cost may not be the real issue. Perhaps having control over the smelter’s energy supply is even more important. Alcoa’s bid to build expensive but private energy sources in energy-poor Brazil seems to support the notion, as does its treatment of labor organizers in Mexico.

Alcoa claims that its central Texas deals enjoyed “strong support … from the community,” despite the strong, if unsuccessful, resistance they actually encountered. This attempt to revise history may be seen as a reach for control over public perception—keeping up the image of a good corporate neighbor that the company prefers to project. But Alcoa doesn’t want to play by the rules set by the communities in which it operates. The company is aided by the complicity of some government officials who make deals that help the company undercut those rules.

“It’s the tough stuff, like don’t strip mine and don’t pollute,” that Alcoa can’t get straight in Texas, according to former NFN president Billie Woods. When elected officials side with corporations against the public interest, the organized community is perhaps the only effective means for making the public voice heard again. Alcoa, other corporations like it, and the politicians who coddle them cannot claim to be good neighbors, and expect to enjoy the support of the community, until they get the “tough stuff”—including democracy—straight.

Esther Cervantes is a Dollars & Sense collective member and a graduate of the LBJ School of Public Affairs.

The Longest Straw Lives On

In March 1991, when the law of the biggest straw still governed groundwater use across Texas, Ron Pucek opened the Living Waters Artesian Springs catfish farm outside of San Antonio. The farm’s raceways were fed by what the owner claimed was the world’s largest water well, with a 40,000-gallon per minute capacity. Living Waters’ annual water consumption was equal to that of about a quarter of the population of San Antonio at the time. Although Pucek’s use of the water was classified as “non-consumptive”—the water still existed when he was done with it—it came out of the raceways with too many impurities, like fish excrement, to be potable. After years of legal wrangling over the wastewater discharge, Pucek packed in Living Waters’ fish operations for good.

There was still opportunity in the water business, though, and Pucek took advantage of it. When the Edwards Aquifer Authority asked users to file pumping permit applications in 2000, Pucek was given rights to 17,724 acre-feet annually—far short of his claimed historical maximum usage of 46,483 acre-feet, but still substantial. More legal wrangling followed; in 2001, Pucek gained rights to an additional 4,776 acre-feet per year. In late 2003, the San Antonio Water System, after three years of negotiations, bought the tangible assets of Living Waters Artesian Springs, Ltd., as well as most of its groundwater rights, from Pucek. The deal cost San Antonio $30 million.

Alcoa Acts Out Abroad

Alcoa’s disregard for the rules is not limited to Texas. In 1997, members of the Border Workers Committee (known by its Spanish initials, CFO) employed in an Alcoa Fujikura plant in Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, presented Alcoa’s shareholders meeting with complaints of undisclosed gas releases that had sickened workers three years before. Then-CEO Paul O’Neill at first denied the claim, saying that the plants were so sanitary that you could “eat off the floors.” But by the end of the meeting, where CFO was supported by the Interfaith Committee for Corporate Responsibility, Alcoa agreed to investigate the poisonings. The investigators substantiated CFO’s claim, and Alcoa Fujikura’s president, Robert Barton, was fired.

In 2002, the company resorted to violence and illegal firings to keep its favored representatives in charge of the state union operating in an Alcoa Fujikura plant in Piedras Negras. The CFO is still demanding that all workers who were illegally dismissed be reinstated, that Alcoa Fujikura recognize an independent union, and that two particularly abusive managers be fired.

And in Brazil in 2001, at a time when individual consumers was suffering electricity shortages, Alcoa proposed three major hydroelectric dams in the Amazon—their power to be used exclusively to fire the company’s aluminum smelter in São Luis. The Brazilian government welcomed the project and brushed aside the effect it would have on indigenous settlements and the environment.

Similarly, despite years of intense public protest, the Icelandic government in 2003 gave Alcoa the go-ahead (and promises of subsidized energy) to build a smelter on the north side of the island’s largest glacier. The project, which was stalled by a citizens’ lawsuit in early 2004, would dam a glacial ice-melt river, divert it into a 25-mile long tunnel, and flood 22 square miles of wild tundra. Supporters point out that the smelter and associated works would employ 600 people; opponents counter that the location is prime for ecotourism, a sector that is growing rapidly in Iceland while aluminum performs erratically on the world market. Neighbors for Neighbors’ Travis Brown also intimates that not all of the 600 positions promised would go to Icelanders; some Alcoa Rockdale employees have told Brown that they were offered a choice between early retirement or transfer to Iceland.

Source: http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/…