2 February, 2011United Steelworkers win bitter 18-month battle in Canada. Unionized workers at Voisey's Bay nickel mine in Labrador, Canada vote 88 per cent for approval of the tentative five year agreement with the Brazilian transnational giant Vale.
CANADA: On January 31, 2011 members of the IMF affiliate the United Steelworkers at the Voisey's Bay nickel mine in Labrador, Canada have ratified a new five year collective agreement, ending a hard 18-month strike against Brazilian mining multinational Vale.
Members of United Steelworkers Local 9508 voted 88 per cent in favour of the tentative deal reached by their negotiating team and Vale representatives. The results of the vote were released on February 1, after voting in a number of communities held over the last several days.
The received approval ends a bitter strike started after Vale purchased all mining assets of Canadian-based Inco in 2006 and tried to roll back living conditions and terms of employment for 3,500 steelworkers in Voisey's Bay/Goose Bay, Labrador, and in Ontario.
The Eastern Canadian agreement came following intense pressure placed on Vale from a special provincial Industrial Inquiry Commission. That independent inquiry issued recommended solutions to end the strike early in January. View an ICEM report on the inquiry here.
The company has been operating nickel, copper, and cobalt mining and processing operations with scab replacement workers. On January 22, a leak from a retention pond in Voisey's Bay went undetected for eight hours, causing a processing plant there to stop production for nearly five days. On the last day of that shut-down, Vale managers called Local 9508's bargaining committee into talks and the two sides and with the aid of mediator Bill Wells struck a compromise deal.
The new contract begins on February 1, 2011 and expires in January 2016. A back-to-work protocol was also adopted in which all striking workers will be recalled to their jobs within a maximum of seven weeks. Workers returning will receive an immediate C$2,000 retention bonus and another such C$2,000 bonus after completing seven days of work orientation and training.
USW Local 9508 achieved adequate wage increases, retained cost-of-living increases, and won excellent language regarding contracting-out practices. A compromise was made on a production bonus, the so-called nickel bonus. Although still achievable, several Vale-demanded components were added such as cash flow return on site investment and overall operational efficiency that are generally out of workers' hands.
The union's contracting-out language was expanded positively to prevent Vale from using outside contractors for the purpose of reducing full-time staff. Other details of the agreement are on the USW website.
The International Metalworkers' Federation (IMF) and International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), Geneva-based Global Union Federations, have supported Canadian steelworkers in the long-running Vale disputes in Newfoundland/Labrador and Ontario, congratulate the members of Local 9508 for their resilience, as well as USW District Six in Canada for exemplary worker representation in facing off with an extremely adversarial mining house.