13 July, 2009
With 95% and 85% strike votes over the weekend, 3,500 Canadian miners of two United Steelworkers (USW) branch unions voted to take joint strike action beginning early today against Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (Vale-Inco).
The strike started in northern Ontario province and at a southern Ontario refinery and port. Production from Ontario accounts for 10% of the world’s nickel supply, and the Vale-Inco assets in Ontario are considered among the world’s richest nickel and plating resources in the world.
The strike came after the USW, in late May, gave the Brazilian-based company a ten-week extension to complete talks. Management continued pressing for a concession-ridden collective agreement in that period, and Canadian miners spoke with one voice and multiple strike lines in total response to the company’s social cuts.
Picket lines went up at midnight on 13 July at mines, a smelter, and processing plants in the copper-nickel belt surrounding Sudbury, Ontario, and at Port Colborne, some 400 kilometres south on Lake Erie. USW represents some 3,300 miners in northern Ontario, while USW Local 6200 represents 200 workers at Port Colborne. A strike website has been created, and is here.
“We have spoken to all the unions that work in the global operations of Vale and we have their unanimous support as well,” said USW President Leo Gerard, himself a native of Sudbury and a member of Local 6500.
Leo Gerard
“This is a global fight and we are a global union and we will use our global power to fight these concessions.”
Vale-Inco’s concessionary proposals are many, including a new and reduced pension scheme for new hires, reductions to production bonuses, loss of value in cost-of-living increases, and amendments to contracting-out provisions, which will decrease job security for Vale-Inco workers.
The company is attempting to supplant a defined benefit pension plan with a defined contribution plan for new hires. Other concessions proposed to the pension benefit include removal of the indexing provision and deep cuts to the disability pension. Regarding outsourcing, Vale-Inco seeks to give outside contractors’ use of the company’s moving equipment, a serious threat in mining to full-time, permanent jobs.
In a solidarity letter to nickel miners and smelting and port workers of USW Locals 6500 and 6200 in Canada, the ICEM wrote, “ … the fact that young workers and old workers at Inco are standing tall and standing together to preserve future incomes” is highly commendable.
“We must not let corporate greed and a rush to the bottom stop us from choosing the correct path out of financial malaise,” said the ICEM letter. “In this fight, in a strategic nickel-processing area of the world, union members of Locals 6500 and 6200 have chosen the correct road.”
Vale is the world’s second biggest mining company. It bought Canadian-based Inco late in 2006. Also in Canada, at Vale-Inco NL, members of another USW branch local are braced to strike on 1 August at Voisey’s Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador province. The company takes nickel, copper, and cobalt reserves from northern Labrador. Similar to Ontario, USW Local 9580 had given Vale-Inco a temporary contract extension to resolve bargaining issues, but little positive movement has come from Inco.