The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.
Philosopher-poet George Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” Sudbury’s largest employer and its largest trade union haven’t forgotten the past, but they are determined to leave it behind.
Last week, the president of United Steelworkers Local 6500 and the Canada/UK vice-president of Vale Ltd. held a news conference. Rick Bertrand and Kelly Strong sat side by side in the Steelworkers’ Hall, in itself significant, and signalled their intention to settle a new contract in 2015.
The former Inco and the union for production and maintenance workers historically made a show of exchanging proposals three months before a contract expired. That was all the public knew until they reached a tentative deal or the union went on strike.
Sudbury held its collective breath in contract years, getting antsy the year before. When the local had 12,000 members, the city’s economy rose and fell with its labour status. Decades of hard bargaining earned Steelworkers solid wages and good benefits, the spinoffs of which kept many of us working.
Advances in mining technology have decimated the miner’s blue-collar workforce to 2,700 members, and the city isn’t as dependent now on the labour fortunes of Vale and its union.
That doesn’t mean people aren’t still intensely interested. The last round of bargaining between Steel and its employer didn’t end well. The union was negotiating with an unknown, Brazil-based Vale, then CVRD, which bought Inco for $17 billion in 2006.
In 2009, they clashed and clashed hard. As tough as the old Mother Inco had been, Steelworkers had never encountered anything like the iron ore company.
Failed talks would result in the longest strike in the company’s and union’s history, from July 2009 to July 2010. It was largely over defined benefit pensions, which paid miners a guaranteed $3,400 monthly. On that point at least, Vale won. It replaced the plan with a defined contribution pension for new hires that gave workers a contribution from their employer, but no guarantee of what their pension would be.
Vale resumed production during that strike, something Inco had never done, using non-union staff and replacement workers. Rumours abounded Vale was flying in helicopters full of Brazilian workers to replace Canadian ones.
For the rest of this article, click here: http://www.thesudburystar.com/2014/12/17/sudbury-column-big-mining-still-tests-citys-mettle