2 June, 2010A representative from a Brazilian missionary group and shareholder of Vale SA, expressed his concerns at the Vale shareholder meeting in Rio de Janeiro on 19 May. Vale's executives not only discarded his concerns they also refused to have them documented in the meeting's minutes.
BRAZIL: At Vale's general meeting of shareholders in Rio de Janeiro on May 19, Danilo Chammas from the Northeast Brazil Combonian Missionaries expressed not only concerns on the company's ongoing conflict with Canadian workers, who have been on strike now for over ten months, but also the social and environmental damages it has caused in Brazil, and its plans to invest and operate in Liberia.
Vale's global corporate practices and its agenda of aggressive expansion has had major environmental and social impacts in Brazil. To stress this issue Chammas offered each person present at the meeting a copy of a 76 minute DVD documenting the impact of the company's schemes on communities along the Carajás Axis, in Maranhão and Pará, Brazil. Chammas then summarized the letter sent to the Liberian President by the General Secretary of Forestry and Industrial Workers' Union of Liberia (FLIWUL). The letter strongly advised that the president take into consideration Vale's continuing violations and conflicts with workers.
Lastly he reminded shareholders of the impact that Vale's conflict with the 3'500 Canadian workers out on strike has on production, which has in turn lead to financial loss. Chammas stated that, "it was not advisable for Vale to be hiring non-union workers to replace strikers, because the jobs in question require qualification and experience."
According to Cammas' Report on the Shareholders meeting, published here, after requesting his remarks be recorded in the meeting notes, the meeting's secretary Mr. Fabio Eduardo de Pieri Spina stated that his remarks "would not appear in the minutes, above all because it was inconceivable that in a meeting such as that one there could be any information raised by a shareholder that might constitute an obstacle to the company's involvement in a business deal that had an immense profitability potential, such as the one to be developed in Africa, involving Liberia."