Ryanair faces six-day strike in Spain during holiday season

Spanish trade unions call for flight crews to walk out from June 24 to July 2 to demand better work conditions.

Ryanair is the only international airline that does not have a collective bargaining agreement that defines workplace conditions for its Spanish employees 

[File: Peter Nicholls/Reuters] Published On 13 Jun 2022

Spanish trade unions have called on staff at low-cost airline Ryanair to hold a six-day strike at the start of the holidays, the latest action by aviation industry workers to demand better conditions in Europe.

The planned work stoppage could cause more travel headaches in Europe, where strikes and shortages of staff have hit a sector that has started to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ryanair to keep ‘racist’ Afrikaans test for S African passengers

Monday’s call for flight crews to walk out from June 24 to July 2 aims to push Ireland’s Ryanair to reach a deal that “guarantees decent work conditions for all personnel” at the airline, the USO and SITCPLA unions said in a joint statement.

Ryanair is the only international airline that does not have a collective bargaining agreement that defines workplace conditions for its Spanish employees, according to the trade unions.

It finally agreed to negotiate with trade unions eight months ago, but ended talks after reaching a deal, which includes minimum pay and flight hours previsions, with one union that does not have a majority among the flight crew.

The USO and SITCPLA unions believe that the agreement is insufficient and does not respect Spanish labour law.

Boom in demand

The strike would come as summer holidays get under way in European countries and a recovery in air travel following the lifting of most COVID-19 travel restrictions.

The boom in demand has caught short some airlines and airports that shed staff during the pandemic and that are having trouble rehiring employees as well as facing demands for wage hikes and better working conditions.

Staff shortages have disrupted flights in London, Amsterdam and Frankfurt in recent weeks.

Strikes at Paris’s main airport on Thursday led to a quarter of flights being grounded, runways closed and passengers delayed.


Nearly 1,000 SAS pilots have threatened to go on indefinite strike from the end of June after talks broke down with the Scandinavian airline.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES /AL JAZEERA

Ryanair staff in Spain to strike for six days in June

Airline says it does not expect widespread disruption and claims most crew members will not support the planned industrial action


A Ryanair plane at an airport in Spain where two trade unions representing cabin crew have voted to go on strike for six days. 

Photograph: Bryan O'Brien

By Ian Curran

Mon Jun 13 2022 

Two Spanish trade unions representing cabin crew at Ryanair have voted to hold six days of strike action later this month in a move that could disrupt the travel plans of many passengers.

Spanish-based staff represented by the USO and SITCPLA unions will walk out for two three-day strikes from June 24th to June 26th, and from June 30th to July 2nd.

Describing the announcements as “a distraction”, Ryanair claimed that most crew would not support the planned industrial action and that it would have little impact on its schedule.

“Ryanair has negotiated collective agreements covering 90 per cent of our people across Europe,” a Ryanair spokesperson said in a statement. “In recent months we have been negotiating improvements to those agreements as we work through the Covid recovery phase. Those negotiations are going well, and we do not expect widespread disruption this summer.”

The spokesman added: “In Spain we are pleased to have reached a collective agreement with CCOO, Spain’s largest and most representative union, delivering improvements for Spanish-based cabin crew and reinforcing Ryanair’s commitment to the welfare of its cabin crew. Recent announcements by the much smaller USO and SITCPLA unions are a distraction from their own failures to deliver agreements after three years of negotiations, and we believe that their strike calls will not be supported by our Spanish crews.”

So far the airline, Europe’s biggest by passenger numbers, has escaped much of the turmoil affecting its rivals, particularly EasyJet in the UK, and said it has not cancelled any flights because of its own staffing issues. However, the Spanish unions now appear to be fixed on action, largely to pursue increases to basic salaries after cuts during the pandemic.


The general secretary of USO’s Ryanair section, Lidia Arasanz, said: “We have to resume mobilisation so that the reality of our situation is known and Ryanair is forced to abide by basic labour laws.”

The unions, speaking in Madrid, said they would look to co-ordinate action with other unions representing Ryanair staff in Belgium, France, Italy and Portugal, according to Bloomberg.

Despite its assurances Ryanair has previously been forced to cancel hundreds of flights through industrial action by its staff, with the two years before the pandemic marked by disruptive walkouts, including UK pilot strikes in 2019 that followed crew walkouts across Europe in 2018.

The airline operates out of more than 20 airports, including nine bases, in Spain, with more than 70 domestic routes as well as the large international tourist trade. – Additional reporting by The Guardian

German union calls on steel workers to hold further warning strikes

Reuters | June 11, 2022 | 

Industrial worker in Germany. 

(Reference image by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, Wikimedia Commons).

German union IG Metall called on Saturday for steel workers to hold further warning strikes after employers failed to meet its wage increase demands in the third round of talks.


The action is set to begin on Monday, a day before talks are due to resume. Similar strikes took place earlier this month.

IG Metall, which is demanding an 8.2% pay rise for workers, on Friday rejected an offer by employers for a 4.7% increase for 21 months.

“The steel industry is making a lot of money right now. Employees want their fair share of that,” said Knut Giesler, head of IG Metall in North-Rhine Westphalia and leader of negotiations in northwest Germany.

Steelmakers such as Thyssenkrupp, Salzgitter and ArcelorMittal, which profited from high prices during the pandemic, are facing rising energy and raw material costs.

(By Tom Sims; Editing by Mike Harrison)

POSCO to halt some plants as S.Korea trucker strike continues

Reuters | June 12, 2022 |

(Image by POSCO).

South Korean steelmaker POSCO said on Sunday will halt some of its plants in the country due to a lack of space to store finished products, which have not been shipped due to a strike by truckers who are demanding higher pay as fuel prices surge.


POSCO follows automaker Hyundai Motor in cutting production lines as the strike by thousands of truckers disrupted cargo transport at the country’s industrial hubs and major ports.

“Some production at our Pohang steel plants is set for suspension, and we are not yet certain how long this suspension will last,” a POSCO spokesperson said, adding that the halt will take effect from Monday.

The decision came as the government and the Cargo Truckers Solidarity union were holding a fourth round of meetings to find a compromise and end the strike, which began on June 7.

South Korea is a major supplier of semiconductors, smartphones, autos, batteries and electronics goods. The strike has deepened uncertainty over global supply chains already disrupted by China’s strict Covid-19 curbs and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

As ports worldwide struggle with supply bottlenecks, a slowdown in chip production, petrochemicals and autos threatens South Korea’s mainstay exports, and consumer inflation in Asia’s fourth-biggest economy is at a 14-year high.

The truckers are demanding an extension to subsidies, set to expire this year, that guarantee minimum wages as fuel prices rise.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said it responded to the union by explaining “that ship owners, the party of interest, demand the current Safe Trucking Freight Rates System be abolished”.

A joint statement from a total of 31 industry associations on Sunday urged truckers to end their strike and return to work, as bottlenecks are building up across industries including cement, petrochemical, steel, auto and IT components.

“This lengthening strike by the Cargo Solidarity is nothing more than putting up a fight in an extreme way by holding national logistics as a hostage, even as the government has said it will find a way for inclusive growth through talks,” associations representing employers, taxis, semiconductors, automobiles and others said in the statement.

Around 40 people have been arrested in the strike, some later released. The actions have been largely peaceful, though tense at some locations.

The ministry estimated some 6,600 truckers, or 30% of the Cargo Truckers Solidarity union members, were on strike on Saturday, halting trucking activities at petrochemical complexes in Ulsan and slowing product deliveries for POSCO.

The union says the number of those striking was higher, without specifying a number, and that non-union truckers were also choosing not to work.

Container traffic at Busan port, which accounts for 80% of the nation’s total, had plunged by two-thirds from normal levels on Friday, a government official said.

At Incheon port it has fallen 80%, while at the port for Ulsan, the industrial hub where much of the strike action has occurred, container traffic has been halted since Tuesday.

(By Cynthia Kim, Heekyong Yang, Byungwook Kim and Choonsik Yoo; Editing by William Mallard, Jacqueline Wong and Louise Heavens)

Copper more effective than silver in killing covid virus

Valentina Ruiz Leotaud | June 12, 2022 |

The material a surface is made of affects how long viruses and bacteria can remain contagious on it. 

(Image courtesy of Ruhr-University Bochum).

Researchers at Ruhr-University Bochum investigated ways to make copper and silver release even more ions than they normally would as a result of corrosion, a process that helps prevent the growth of bacteria or kill them completely.


In a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, the scientists describe the use of a so-called sputtering system with which the thinnest layers or tiny nanopatches of the metals can be applied to a carrier material.

Depending on the sequence or quantity in which the individual metals are applied, different surface textures are created. If a precious metal such as platinum is also applied, silver corrodes even faster and releases more antibacterial ions.

“In the presence of a more noble metal, the baser metal sacrifices itself, so to speak,” researcher Alfred Ludwig said in a media statement. This phenomenon is called the principle of the sacrificial anode.

The effectiveness of such sacrificial anode systems against bacteria has already been demonstrated. However, whether viruses can also be rendered harmless in this way has not yet been investigated in detail.

“This is why we analysed the antiviral properties of surfaces coated with copper or silver as well as various silver-based sacrificial anodes, and also examined combinations of copper and silver with regard to possible synergistic effects,” virologist Stephanie Pfänder said.

The team compared the effectiveness of these surfaces against bacteria with the effectiveness against viruses.

Surfaces with sacrificial anode effect, especially nanopatches consisting of silver and platinum as well as the combination of silver and copper, efficiently stopped bacterial growth.

Yet, a different picture emerged with SARS-CoV-2: thin copper layers significantly reduced the viral load after only one hour. On the other hand, sputtered silver surfaces had only a marginal effect, and silver nanopatches did not impress the virus either.

“In conclusion, we demonstrated a clear antiviral effect of copper-coated surfaces against SARS-CoV-2 within one hour, while silver-coated surfaces had no effect on viral infectivity,” Pfänder said.

A system for the reversible hydrogenation of carbon dioxide into formic acid

by Ingrid Fadelli , Tech Xplore

Credit: Wei et al.

In recent years, engineers have developed a growing number of alternative energy solutions that source electricity sustainably from sunlight, water, wind, hydrogen and other natural resources. For these technologies to fully substitute existing energy solutions, however, the energy they produce will need to be reliably stored and distributed on a large-scale.

Researchers at Leibniz-Institut für Katalyse and APEX Energy Teterow GmbH have recently introduced a new strategy that could aid the storage of chemical energy, particularly hydrogen. In their paper, published in Nature Energy, they outline a system for the reversible hydrogenation of CO2 to formic acid, which employs a Mn-pincer complex as a homogeneous catalyst.

"To transform our current energy system into a more sustainable one, it is important to develop technologies that allow for a practical and efficient storage of renewable energy (wind, photovoltaic, etc.)," Matthias Beller, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. "While the storage of electrons on a large scale is difficult, the storage of chemical energy carriers is easier."

In their previous studies, Beller and his colleagues introduced the idea that formic acid (FA), a simple carboxylic acid that is known to be contained in bee venom and other natural materials, could be a good hydrogen carrier. They showed that FA can be generated from CO2, as well as what is known as "green hydrogen" (i.e., hydrogen produced by splitting water intro hydrogen and oxygen using renewable energy technology).

Credit: Wei et al.

"If energy is needed FA can be easily dehydrogenated under mild conditions and provides electricity on demand in well-established PEM fuel cells," Beller explained. "Parallel to the release of hydrogen, normally CO2 is also released, due to its gaseous nature. Hence, when you want to generate the hydrogen carrier back, you need carbon dioxide again."

The new system for the hydrogenation of CO2 introduced by Beller, Henrik Junge, Peter Sponholz and their colleagues, does not require CO2 again once the first charging process is completed. In fact, its design ensures that the CO2 remains in the reaction medium, which eliminates the need for additional CO2.

The researchers' system relies on the use of a Manganese (Mn)-based pincer complex and L-lysine, an essential α-amino acid.

"We were surprised to find that the combination L-lysine and Mn pincer catalysts allows for hydrogenation of CO2 in the air with extremely high efficiency," Beller said. "In this process, initially the amino functions of L-lysine bind to CO2 , forming as so-called carbamic acid derivative, which is in equilibrium with the corresponding bicarbonate. Hydrogenation of the activated CO2 leads to the formation of FA, and by lowering the pressure hydrogen can be released from the system."

Credit: Wei et al.

The researchers evaluated their system in a series of tests and showed that it attained highly promising results. Notably, they found that both the Mn catalyst and L-lysine had a good stability and could be used again numerous times. Overall, their system attained a total turnover number of 2,000,000 for CO2 hydrogenation and of 600,000 for FA dehydrogenation.

When they used potassium lysinate, the researchers achieved an H2 evolution efficiency above 80% and a CO2 retention of over 99.9% over ten charge and discharge cycles, without having to re-load CO2 between these cycles. The team also found that this reversible hydrogenation process could be scaled up considerably, without significantly reducing the system's productivity.

"An interesting finding of our work is the analogy between hydrogen storage systems and traditional electric batteries," Beller said. "In a typical rechargeable battery, electrons can be added and released under very mild (ambient) conditions. In principle, the same is true for hydrogen storage materials if the reaction system is designed in an appropriate manner."

Credit: Wei et al.

In the future, the system for the reversible hydrogenation of CO2 to FA introduced by this team of researchers could help to store green hydrogen more efficiently. This could contribute to the large-scale implementation of fuel cells and other hydrogen-based sustainable technologies.

"For the 'hydrogen battery,' we now would like to improve the energy content of the system by generating methanol instead of FA," Beller added. "In addition, we want to improve the practicability of such a system by performing charging/decharging steps in an automatic manner."

New biobattery for hydrogen storage

More information: Duo Wei et al, Reversible hydrogenation of carbon dioxide to formic acid using a Mn-pincer complex in the presence of lysine, Nature Energy (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41560-022-01019-4

Journal information: Nature Energy 

© 2022 Science X Network

Ontario developer finds massive cache of pure synthetic graphite at planned housing site

Valentina Ruiz Leotaud | June 12, 2022 | 

Graphite. (Reference image by Robert M. Lavinsky, Wikimedia Commons).

When developer King & Benton Holdings acquired the former Union Carbide synthetic graphite manufacturing facility in Welland, Ontario, the last thing management thought was that they were going to end up joining the battery metals space.


The idea was to create a new community that included a mix of residential, prestige industrial and commercial spaces in the 178-acre brownfield site. But in the process of executing the environmental due diligence on the property, the team doing the fieldwork discovered a 500,000-tonne cache of pure synthetic graphite, remnants from the site’s industrial past.

Plans changed swiftly and a new company was born, ReGen Resource Recovery.

Using King & Benton’s experience in aggregate processing, the nascent firm will focus on refining the existing stockpile of graphite with the goal of supplying the North American market.

Established in 1907, the Union Carbide plant in Welland produced ferrosilicon for the steel industry. (Image by the Welland Historical Museum, courtesy of ReGen).

“We are planning on initial separation and stockpiling 2,000 tonnes daily from the graphite deposit. This material will be processed for end-users at the new ReGen Resource processing facility to be located in a recently acquired 250,000-square-feet facility adjacent to the graphite deposit,” Steve Charest, president and CEO of the King and Benton group of companies, told MINING.COM.

“We will have equipment that can both micronize and shape ReGen material if needed and spheroidize imported natural graphite. Initial micronizing capacity will be 35,000 tonnes annually starting in 2024.”

Charest pointed out that plans are underway to expand the plant’s capacity to 100,000 tonnes per year allowing for the additional processing of imported natural graphite. The raw material would be acquired once relationships, partnerships or acquisitions have been established with mining companies and importers who could benefit from ReGen’s processing capabilities.

Demand for the final product is expected to arise from companies requiring high-grade synthetic graphite for batteries, as well as from other industrial applications that seek an alternative to the current Chinese-dependent supply chain.

Chile and Ecuador restart copper talks after yearslong impasse

Bloomberg News | June 12, 2022 | 

Ecuador Energy and Mines Minister Xavier Vera. (Image from Vera’s Twitter profile).

After a yearslong deadlock, Ecuador and Chile have resumed negotiations over a partnership to develop a major copper deposit just as demand for the wiring metal is set to surge in a nascent clean-energy transition.


Chile’s state copper producer Codelco agreed to a request by its Ecuadorian counterpart Enami to suspend two arbitration processes over the Llurimagua copper-molybdenum exploration project in the Andean region of Imbabura, Ecuador Energy and Mines Minister Xavier Vera said.

“That suspension generated positive conditions for talks,” Vera said Sunday in an interview from Toronto, where he’s heading a delegation at the PDAC mining conference. “We have opened a line of contact with the highest executives at Codelco.”

Citing a confidentiality agreement, Vera declined to offer any details of the “excellent conversations,” or the likely timing of the project, which he said probably contains much more than the initial estimates. The project recently won a court battle over its environmental impact.

Environmentalists oppose the development of Llurimagua, which they say will cause irreparable damage to the pristine, heavily forested Intag Valley.

The resumption of Llurimagua talks comes as Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso looks to resolve the permitting bottlenecks and tense community relations that have held back development in the mineral-rich nation.

The administration is moving forward with development of a mining registry or cadastre, Vera said. It’s also working on a new competitive system of awarding exploration permits; introducing the right of free, prior and informed consent for indigenous peoples with regard to new projects; and planning regulation for companies’ minimum procedures for dealing with communities, he said.

Mining generated about $2.1 billion in export revenue for Ecuador last year, double 2020 levels, and is projected to reach $10 billion by 2030. There’s a handful of projects getting close to the development stage, while Southern Copper Corp.’s giant Ruta del Cobre project isn’t too far behind. The Mirador operation is set to expand and Solaris Resources Inc. is progressing with its Warintza project.

Vera described it as “a very special moment” for Ecuador, despite some citizen resistance to large-scale mining in regions including Azuay.

As mining projects around the world get trickier and pricier to find and develop, more companies are taking a serious look at Ecuador. They include Barrick Gold Corp. and Peru’s Cia. de Minas Buenaventura SAA, he said. Vera was also about to sit down with London-based heavyweight Rio Tinto Group: “I’m sure they are interested,” he said.

(By James Attwood and Stephan Kueffner)

New working group to monitor truce between Las Bambas, Peruvian Indigenous communities

Valentina Ruiz Leotaud | June 12, 2022 | 

The signing of the 30-day truce between the Indigenous communities of the Cotabambas province, the Peruvian government and Las Bambas. (Image by the Presidency of the Ministers’ Council).

Peru’s executive power launched a temporary working group to keep track of the commitments agreed upon by Chinese miner MMG and the Indigenous communities protesting against its Las Bambas copper mine.


The announcement, published in the official gazette El Peruano, follows a decision regarding a 30-day truce made public on Thursday by representatives from the six communities involved in the conflict ​​that forced MMG to halt operations for more than 50 days, the longest in the mine’s history.

The protest was started in mid-April by the communities of Fuerabamba and Huancuire, who say Las Bambas had not honoured all of its commitments to them. Both communities sold land to the company to make way for the mine, which opened in 2016.

The Chila, Choaquere, Chuicuni and Pumamarca communities joined later and all six of them will now be part of the new committee, which will operate under the umbrella of the Presidency of the Ministers’ Council (PCM). A representative from Las Bambas will also be part of the group, as will a representative from the Cusco ombudsman office and the ministers of energy and mines, environment, justice and human rights, women and vulnerable populations, agricultural development and irrigation, health and education.

According to ministerial resolution N° 182-2022-PCM, the committee will be in charge of establishing the procedures and schedule for each party to fulfill the commitments they’ve subscribed to and assessing the results of the actions carried out to honour such commitments.

Among the issues agreed upon is a promise by the Huancuire community to no longer protest inside mine property, while Las Bambas said it will halt the construction of its new Chalcobamba open-pit mine, set to be located in land formerly owned by Huancuire.

The company also said that it will evaluate and restructure the executive positions in charge of negotiations with the local communities, as community leaders say they are spurring social conflicts.

The working group has to be set up within the next 10 days, will be active for 60 days from the day it is installed and will also have to establish six subgroups that will be in charge of implementing the specific agreements related to each of the communities involved in the negotiations.

The initial 60-day period can be extended for another two months but once the set time has expired, the working group only has 30 days to present a final report to the PCM.

Peru is the world’s no. 2 copper producer and Chinese-owned Las Bambas is one of the world’s largest producers of the red metal, accounting for 1% of the Andean country’s gross domestic product.

OMG THAT'S YUGE 

Gem Diamonds unearths 245-carat stone in Lesotho

Staff Writer | June 13, 2022 

Letšeng is the world’s highest dollar per carat diamond mine. 

(Image from: Gem Diamonds’ presentation.)

Gem Diamonds (LSE: GEMD) announced on Monday the recovery of an exceptional quality 245 carat white Type II diamond from the Letšeng mine in Lesotho on June 11.


Following the recovery of a 129 carat diamond on 23 May, and a 125 carat diamond on 31 May, the 245 carat diamond represents the third diamond of over 100 carats recovered from the Letšeng mine within the past three weeks.

In 2021, Gem Diamonds found only six diamonds over 100 carats at Letšeng. This compares to 16 rocks of more than 100 carats discovered in 2020.

245-carat stone recovered June 11 at Letšeng

The find comes as prices for small diamonds have jumped about 20% since the start of March, as cutters, polishers and traders struggle to source stones outside Russia.

State-owned Alrosa (MCX: ALRS), the world’s top diamond producer by output, was hit with US sanctions following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Since acquiring Letšeng in 2006, Gem Diamonds has found more than 60 white gem quality diamonds over 100 carats each.

Rio Tinto unveils changes following workplace survey that uncovered racism, harassment

 
Naimul Karim | June 13, 2022 |

(Stock Image)

Rio Tinto (NYSE: RIO; LSE: RIO; ASX: RIO) is designing new reporting mechanisms for its employees and training modules for top leaders to spot “unacceptable” behaviours in the workplace, the company said four months after the release of a report that revealed patterns of racism, sexism and harassment among its global workforce.


Carolyn Chisholm, director of Rio Tinto’s external affairs, said that the company made a “conscious effort” to assess the situation before beginning to fix the issues brought out by the report.

“As a company made up of engineers, we want to get stuff done…but it was conscious on part of the team that we take our time and that we are uncomfortable with the uncomfortable because that’s when we are going to do something about it,” said Chisholm in a session at PDAC 2022 on June 13.

“We are in the process of really trying to figure out a thoughtful, comprehensive, and inclusive way on how we act on the 26 recommendations (from the report),” she added. “It’s like designing engagements on projects with First Nations and making sure you do it right and it takes time. We are trying to co-design those elements right now.”

Rio Tinto launched a survey in March of last year that was answered by about 10,000 employees. Released in February, the results showed that about 30% of women and 7% of men at the company had been sexually harassed at work. Of them, 21 female workers also reported cases of actual or attempted rape or sexual assault. 

Nearly half of all employees who responded to the Rio Tinto-commissioned external review of the miner’s workplace culture said they had been bullied, while racism was found to be a common issue across several areas. 

The move was part of an ongoing effort to clean up the company’s tainted image following its destruction of two 46,000-year-old sacred rock shelters in Western Australia in 2020 while working to expand an iron ore mine. 

Chisolm said that the company plans to make changes through three pillars, the first of which will require the company’s leaders to go through an “extensive leadership program.”

“They pull us apart and put us back together again… to make that cultural change you have to have leaders that have the skills to pick out the behaviours that are unacceptable and to be in a position to create that sense of trust and safe space to have those difficult conversations,” she said.

(Continue reading at The Northern Miner)