17 January, 2011
The attack by U.S. Steel against 900 members of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1005 and even more retirees – 9,000 in total – will receive a boost 29 January when thousands of Canadian trade unionists converge on Hamilton, Ontario, for a Day of Action. A lockout was derisively imposed by the American steelmaker there on 7 November after Local 1005 refused to vote on steep cuts proposed in a renewal contract. (See prior ICEM report here)
The manifestation, organising by the Ontario Federation of Labour (CLC), will begin with speakers at 13h00 on Saturday, 29 January, at Hamilton City Hall, 71 Main Street West, and then a march will wind through the streets of the city centre.
The lockout ten weeks ago became the latest affront by a multinational to the Investment Canada Act. When U.S. Steel received Canadian government approval to buy Ontario-based steelmaker Stelco three years ago, it pledged to maintain job and production levels. But within a year, it had levied layoffs on USW members at both of Stelco’s mills, in Hamilton and Nanticoke, Ontario, and began supplying Canadian customers with products made in its US mills.
The Canadian Attorney General in 2009 brought a lawsuit against the company for failing to comply with the Investment Canada Act. U.S. Steel’s obstruction and delay in addressing the suit was set back late last month when a federal appellate court judge upheld the right of the union and other parties to intervene in the breach of the Act.
In bargaining last autumn, U.S. Steel pressured Local 1005’s bargaining committee to accept a two-tier pension scheme in which new hires would be closed off from a longstanding defined benefit plan. The company also proposed de-indexing the pension benefits for retirees, a losing proposition for 9,000 retirees against inflation. U.S. Steel sought as well cuts to active workers’ cost-of-living adjustments, and proposed cutting two weeks of vacation time.
When the steel producer demanded the bargaining committee put the concessions to a vote of active members and union leadership refused, the lockout began. U.S. Steel immediately cut off all health and disability benefits. Under Ontario provincial labour law, a company has the right to mandate a one-time only vote on a final contract offer. But U.S. Steel has not exercised that option, knowing full well that Local 1005’s 2010 contract mobilisation campaign would produce a decisive “no” vote.
In fact, at a union meeting on 8 December, when a motion was put forward to put the company’s proposals to a vote, a full 90% of Local 1005’s members defeated it.
The union already has received overwhelming support from Canadian unions, including the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) Union. At a Hamilton picket line on 5 January, CUPE National President Paul Moist presented the locked-out local with C$10,000, and said, “Defending Steelworker pensions is a fight CUPE and the entire labour movement must be part of. If private sector pensions are eroded, the public sector will be next.
CAW also has contributed to USW Local 1005 and President Rolf Gerstenberger addressed the CAW National Council of Delegates in early December. Gerstenberger called for a nation-wide campaign to resist the growing strength of international corporations in Canada and a political overhaul in order to revamp the loopholes in the Investment Canada Act.
(See the mobilisation call for the 29 January Hamilton Day of Action here.)