8 March, 2010
Efforts to end the stalemate in the Canadian nickel strike between the United Steelworkers (USW) and Vale through independent mediation failed yesterday, with the USW giving a practical solution to the 239-day strike: a return to work offer and unresolved issues between the two parties submitted to binding arbitration.
The Brazilian mining company rejected the union’s attempt to resolve the dispute, which is marked this Saturday, 13 March, by 3,400 union families being on picket lines for eight months.
Now, global trade unions will ramp up strategic plans on behalf of the USW, first by riding into Sudbury, Canada, in two weeks time to reinforce support to striking nickel miners of the USW. A two-day “Bridging the Gap” manifestation, 22-23 March, will bring trade union leaders from the Brazilian mining company’s world-wide operations to northern Ontario province.
The unionists, to include ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda, will join the strikers of USW Local 6500 and their families in a march down Sudbury’s main street on 22 March, with a global strategy forum scheduled the next day. That forum will include plans for “Global Days of Action” against Vale, due to occur 5-11 April.
Delegates from Vale and other worksites affiliated with the world’s second largest mining house could come from as far away as Brazil, Mozambique, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Norway, and South Africa to attend the event. The early April days of action are meant to give a visible display of disgust inside Vale operations, as well as in front of Vale offices, over the company’s insistence that the USW give it unprecedented contract concession in negotiations with Local 6500 of Sudbury, Ontario, and Local 6200 of Port Colborne, Ontario, two unions that share a common labour agreement.
Vale’s bargaining intransigence again stood out, after a flicker of hope late last month when the company agreed to sit down with an independent mediator for exploratory talks to end the strike. Those talks began at month’s end, but failed on 7 March when mediator Kevin Burkett declared, “I am disappointed to report that agreement is not possible at this time. I have therefore broken off discussions.”
The mediation did produce an unprecedented offer by the USW to return to work in Sudbury and Port Colborne, with a three-member binding arbitration panel to hear the unresolved issues. The USW proposed that Burkett chair the arbitration panel, with the union and Vale each selecting the other two panel members. Vale adamantly rejected the proposal.
In Labrador/Newfoundland Province, meanwhile, a provincial conciliator will again attempt to reconcile differences between USW Local 9508 and Vale in a return to bargaining on 15-16 March. The union and its 250 members in Goose Bay and Voiseys Bay, Labrador, began a strike against Vale’s copper and nickel operations in Canada’s maritime province on 1 August 2009. Local 9508 and Vale did attempt to resolve differences through provincial mediation in late January, but those efforts broke off on 24 January in St. Johns, Newfoundland.
The breakdown of talks between USW Locals 6500 and 6200 and Vale in Toronto yesterday come just a few weeks before a scheduled 30 March hearing before the Ontario Labour Relations Board on a charge brought by the USW that the company is guilty of bad-faith bargaining. Vale had insisted it would not resume bargaining until USW Locals 6500 and 6200 made a willingness to accede to the concessionary demands of the company.
Wayne Fraser, USW District 6 Director
Those concessions – common before Local 9508 as well – include retirement decreases, creation of a two-tiered pension scheme, with a defined contribution plan for new hires, steep downgrades to a production bonus, and unilateral company discretion concerning outsourcing. USW has insisted throughout that it wants a return to bargaining under no pre-conditions.
The charge before the Ontario Labour Relations Board claims Vale has prolonged the strike by its refusal to bargain, and USW is asking the agency to order the company to pay lost wages and benefits to workers, as well as reimburse the union for strike benefits.
This strike of 239 days likely now will surpass the longest mining strike in Canadian history. That occurred from September 1978 to June 1979 – 267 days – between the USW and Vale’s predecessor in Sudbury, Inco Mining. The one distinction between this strike and several skirmishes between the USW and Inco, however, is that Canadian-based Inco never attempted to operate the mines, smelting, and other operations with replacement workers, as Vale is doing now.