Baku-Ceyhan Campaign: Draft Trade Union Motion

Below is some suggested text for a resolution to a trade union branch meeting - this may be adapted as required. If your branch passes a resolution, please let us know!

Preamble:

Trade unions have an essential role to play in combating BP's proposed Baku-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, since BTC violates many of the fundamental principles of the trade union movement.

Many oil workers, fishermen and construction workers in the three countries have come out against the pipeline and the working practices it imposes. Union leaders and workers raising objections to the project have suffered assaults and persecution.

The coordinator of Azerbaijan's only independent trade union, for example, has been arrested three times for her efforts to fight corruption, exploitative contracts and the unsafe working environment in the offshore oil industry. Because of government restrictions, there is very little unionisation in the three countries - indeed, this is a major part of the problem for affected workers.

In designing the pipeline, BP has relied on a global web of colluding national governments, multi-national corporations and international funding institutions. Thus workers and NGOs in the region have expressed a strong interest in international solidarity and collaboration with their counterparts elsewhere. The Baku-Ceyhan Campaign urges all who can to contribute to this crucial resistance to the ongoing corporate usurpation of local power.

This Trade Union Branch notes:

1. That BP, a multinational company with an appalling record of human rights abuses and safety violations in its previous pipeline projects in Alaska and Colombia, is the moving force, along with the US, behind the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, and will demand up to $2.5 billion in what BP calls "free public money" to transport Caspian oil from Azerbaijan through Georgia and the Kurdish regions of Turkey to Western markets.

2. That the BTC project will:
o Massively increase the likelihood of environmental damage and/or disasters and catastrophic accidents along the route, which goes through several national parks and sites of scientific interest.
o Impoverish and displace local people, who have generally received paltry sums in compensation for their land, scarcely enough to buy groceries, let alone new fields.
o Compound the already woeful human rights situation in the region: the pipeline is to be guarded all along the route by paramilitary groups, including the Turkish state gendarmerie, who are implicated in the torture and disappearances of thousands of Kurdish people in recent decades.
o Set back the democratic development of the three countries by decades: the project is being conducted under a façade of consultation and "stakeholder participation", when the lack of freedom of expression in the region makes dissent impossible. Critics of the pipeline have been detained, intimidated and threatened.
o Undermine the economic development of the three states by draining them of their natural resources, encouraging already skyrocketing levels of corruption and extortion, making them responsible for BTC cost overruns and security and legal costs, and undermining both tourism and existing industries such as the Borjomi mineral water plant in Georgia.

3. That the BTC project is explicitly intended by its makers to act as "a model for extractive industries in developing economies," and thus will set the parameters of corporate colonialism for the 21st century. The legal agreements for the project, the Host Government Agreements (HGAs), supercede all relevant domestic legislation in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey that affects BTC, not just now but for at least the next 40 years, making BP the effective ruling power along the pipeline. The HGAS give BP the right to unlimited water and other resources and military intervention in the case of "civil disturbance", while leaving national governments with no effective powers to protect their own citizens.

4. That although the project itself states that it "is not intended or required to operate in the service of the public benefit or interest", its planners will seek about $2.5 billion in public money from the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and national export credit agencies, including the UK's Export Credit Guarantees Department.

5. That the "public disclosure period" of 120 days, during which the funders must consider objections to the project, runs from June to early October, and because of a complicated funding structure the project developers are highly vulnerable to delays in funding. Thus now is the time to take action.

6. Trade unionists campaigning alongside enviromentalists, human rights organisations, NGOs, community and solidarity groups etc can make a difference on an international scale as demonstrated by the Ilisu Dam Campaign.

This Branch therefore condemns:

1. The assaults on and intimidation of workers, unionists and ordinary people along the route who dare to criticise the BTC project or demand their rights

2. The overtly political agenda behind the pipeline -American hunger for oil from sources they can easily control is putting the welfare of ordinary people at serious risk and destroying the chance for these developing states to become effective democracies.

3. The conspicuous failure of BP to live up the numerous promises it has made with regards to the pipeline, and the equal failure of the UK government and international funders to hold the company accountable.

4.The use of billions of dollars of public taxes to subsidise giant oil companies when the BTC project is demonstrably not in the local or international public interest.

This Branch therefore resolves to:

1. Support the Baku-Ceyhan Campaign and make a donation.*

2. Assist the campaign in raising public awareness about the Baku-Ceyhan project, including its human rights and environmental implications, and the public's capacity to cause serious disruption to the project through funding delays.

3. Make contact with trade unions in the affected regions and show solidarity by making twinning arrangements and assisting with solidarity tours.

4. Invite speakers from the Baku Ceyhan Campaign.

* payable to "Ilisu Dam Campaign" and send to address below

For information contact:

Baku Ceyhan Campaign
Box 210, 266 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 7DL
tel 01865 200 550 E-mail: [email protected]
www.baku.org.uk

The Baku Ceyhan Campaign is an initiative of the Ilisu Dam Campaign