14 December, 2009
With pressures mounting on Brazilian-based Vale to return to bargaining in the Canadian nickel strike now entering its sixth month, the company and United Steelworkers (USW) are fighting battles in the courtroom and before the public in what has become a pitched, bitter dispute between working-class Canadians and a rich, profitable multinational.
If the public war of words over who first must amend its position so bargaining can resume is not enough, the two sides are now belligerent combatants in face-to-face side dramas, including changes to a picket line protocol agreement and grievances and unfair work practices before the Ontario Labour Relations Board. The latter is over Vale’s intent to make non-striking USW members perform struck work.
Canadian management of Vale has also deployed divide-and-conquer tactics by trying to drive a wedge between striking steelworkers, as well as giving the false public perception that its social rollback proposals to USW branch unions are a necessary ingredient to sustainable mining in Canada.
Some 3,250 miners and metalworkers went on strike at Vale’s nickel mining, smelting, and processing operations in Sudbury and Port Colborne, Ontario, on 13 July 2009, while another 350 copper and nickel miners from Goose Bay and Voiseys Bay, Labrador, joined the strike on 1 August. Vale, which bought Canada-based Inco’s assets late in 2006, is seeking to strip away a production bonus from Canadian steelworkers, impose a two-tiered pension plan, and gain contract language to allow it greater flexibility on using sub-contractors, which ultimately jeopardizes job security and the sustainable future of workers themselves.
For ten weeks now, Vale has made threatening moves that it would re-start production at its mines and processing facilities in northern Ontario near Sudbury, something never before done in a labour dispute at Sudbury. The company most recently posted notices that it will re-start the massive Copper Cliff smelter using a selected contractor.
The union has filed an unfair labour practice with the Ontario labour board because Vale insists on using USW Local 2020 members – clerical, admin, and technical workers – to perform mining and processing work. Local 2020 itself has filed serious safety grievances against Vale for assigning its members work they are not trained for.
A picket-line protocol agreement signed on 29 July has been a subject of contention, primarily due to Vale’s desire to amend it. The company wants to include in the protocol the transfer of buses carrying replacement workers across strike lines. This courtroom conflict also involves how long USW Local 6500 strikers can delay vehicles upon entry to company property, as well as lesser issues such as Vale’s failure to supply strikers’ firewood, as stipulated in the original agreement.
Those and other picket-line issues are before an Ontario Superior Court justice, who is expected to rule on revised picket-line conduct before the end of December.
Vale has also made an overture to the 200 USW Local 6200 members in Port Colborne, 400 kilometres south of Sudbury, to resume negotiations without Local 6500. This move is a blatant effort to divide the two workforces. Locals 6500 and 6200 share the same labour agreement. Local 6200 President Wayne Rae says separating the two workforces will never happen.
And last week, Vale’s Canadian managers circumvented official union structures by sending a letter directly to all workers on strike. The letter urged workers to call on their unions to return to bargaining and accept Vale’s concessions because the company intends “moving ahead on business,” meaning a return to production using replacement workers and contractors.
The USW responded in an 11 December press release, stating that it has already put forth a good-faith invitation to Vale to return to talks under no pre-conditions. "We are publicly reiterating our position today because Vale's letter attempts to misrepresent our willingness to resume meaningful discussions," read the statement.
"We are ready and willing to get back to the bargaining today, unconditionally. Given the impact this dispute is having on our working families and our community as a whole, it is incumbent on the union and the company to drop all preconditions and start talking to each other again.
"Unfortunately, Vale Inco continues to stick by its preconditions and its argument that it needs concessions to maintain its 'sustainability,' when its demands such as cutting the nickel bonus do not affect its sustainability whatsoever. Vale had to win a bidding war to purchase this profitable company. Inco made profits each year with nickel prices lower than today's. Vale has reaped huge profits under the current contract. No one can say Sudbury's rich nickel mines are not sustainable."
USW branch locals in Ontario and Labrador have been buoyed by a private member’s bill in the Canadian Parliament by MP Claude Gravelle. The proposed legislation would give transparency to all deals made within the Investment Canada Act, a haunting lesson on democracy to many Canadians since details between the federal government and Vale were kept secret when the company bought Inco.
Gravelle has also submitted two additional bills aimed at making public all facts surrounding Vale’s purchase of Inco and Xstrata’s buy-up of Canadian-based Falconbridge, a deal that also included valuable copper-nickel assets in northern Ontario.
For Sudbury Local 6500, the 3,100-member union continues promoting solidarity within its own ranks through unity, fraternity, and an acute community awareness that says successfully resisting Vale’s take-aways is the real path for a sustainable future.
From 10 to 15 December, Local 6500 embarked on a Week of Action that include several activities in Sudbury. Those activities included a 10 December, International Human Rights Day candlelight vigil and march done in unison with the Sudbury District Labour Council of the Canadian Labour Congress. The next day, 11 December, students and the faculty union association of nearby Laurentian University conducted “Out of the Classroom and Onto the Picket Lines,” in which class sessions were moved to the picket lines of the Copper Cliff smelter in order to study the causes and effects of the strike.
A Families Supporting the Strikers’ fundraiser was held on the weekend, 12-13 December, while a Steelworker Solidarity Support caravan from Toronto also visited picket lines on 13 December. Today, 14 December, union veterans and retirees will conduct a symposium entitled “Lessons From the Past – What We Have Won,” complete with reflections on a strike in 1978 and the necessity to retain what has already been gained.
And tomorrow, 15 December, Local 6500 members and their families will hold a “Fair Deal for Our Families” march and manifestation at Vale-Inco’s Copper Cliff offices.
On 3 December, in another outpouring of support for the striking Canadian miners, scores of members from the US-based union Unite-Here joined Local 6500 and Local 6200 members who bused to New York City to protest an award by the Business Council for International Understanding to Roger Agnelli, Vale’s CEO.
The joining of hands by Unite-Here, who recently returned to the AFL-CIO, with the USW was symbolic of renewed unity inside the American trade union movement, solidarity now extending into Canada.
The ICEM has been joined by the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF) in waging a global campaign in support of Canadian miners. The miners’ own English-language website gives complete and up-to-date details of the bitter strike. It can be found here.