This article (original title – Hacks, Flacks and Superstacks) was first published in the August 1976 issue of Content magazine. Mick Lowe is a well-known retired Sudbury journalist with a keen insight on labour issues. From 1975 to 1988 he worked as a freelance journalist, becoming a frequent contributor to the Globe and Mail.

In 1977 he became a staff reporter for CBC Radio News where he helped to open the network’s Northeastern Ontario News Bureau. From 1995 – 2002 Mick Lowe was a regular columnist for Northern Life.

I make a point of watching both local TV newscasts tonight. CKSO has Steelworker president Mickey Maguire on first. Shot in his office with available light, Maguire appears angry and concerned for the safety of his members at Frood. Convincing. Hoskins follows, reading the same statement I heard earlier at CHNO, relying heavily on Harvey Judges to back him up.
With his heavy beard, bad studio lighting, and rehearsed delivery, Mr. Inco presents a haggard image, remindful of the Nixon-Agnew talking heads staring hypnotically into the cameras during the 1972 U.S. presidential campaign.

On CKNC, Hoskins appears again in the studio, though with better lighting, reading the same statement. The Steelworkers have declined an opportunity to reply, but the reporter has located sources willing to give “the other side” of the story.

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This article (original title – Hacks, Flacks and Superstacks) was first published in the August 1976 issue of Content magazine. Mick Lowe is a well-known retired Sudbury journalist with a keen insight on labour issues. From 1975 to 1988 he worked as a freelance journalist, becoming a frequent contributor to the Globe and Mail.

In 1977 he became a staff reporter for CBC Radio News where he helped to open the network’s Northeastern Ontario News Bureau. From 1995 – 2002 Mick Lowe was a regular columnist for Northern Life.

Dropped into the safety office at the Steel Hall this afternoon. Tempers thee were high and rising over the death of James Cullen. I talked with John Higgison and Tom Gunn, the co-chairmen of the Local 6500 inquest committee. Both men really feel the rising fatality rate because theirs is the grim responsibility of investigating the accident scene, interviewing eyewitnesses, and doing what they can for the widows. (Cullen had a wife and four children.)

They show me colour Polaroid snaps of the accident. About all I can make out is the tram, a squat mining vehicle with the wheel-base of a five-ton truck, nearly buried under muck. Higgison tells me that Cullen was not crushed by the ore. He died of asphyxiation when the muck covered the back of his neck, forcing his chin against his chest and cutting off his wind. He died at the wheel of the scoop, pinned into the driver’s seat.

Higgison is shaken because a witness that he interviewed told him that Cullen was still alive after the cave-in. The witness came running when he heard the roof come down and he called out to Cullen in the darkness and the dust. Cullen revved the scoop’s engine three times to show that he was still alive. It took 10 minutes for the rescue party to clear a way into the tram. Cullen was dead when they got to him.

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This article (original title – Hacks, Flacks and Superstacks) was first published in the August 1976 issue of Content magazine. Mick Lowe is a well-known retired Sudbury journalist with a keen insight on labour issues. From 1975 to 1988 he worked as a freelance journalist, becoming a frequent contributor to the Globe and Mail.

In 1977 he became a staff reporter for CBC Radio News where he helped to open the network’s Northeastern Ontario News Bureau. From 1995 – 2002 Mick Lowe was a regular columnist for Northern Life.

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus; and we petty men walk under his huge legs, and peep about to find ourselves dishonorable graves. Men at some time are masters of their fates; the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,but in ourselves, that we are underlings.
-Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 11

Sudbury, Ontario – Early on Good Friday morning, April 16, 1976, James D. Cullen was killed while working the graveyard shift at Sudbury’s Frood Mine. In itself, there was nothing unusual about Cullen’s death. He was, after all, the fifth worker to die on the job at Inco since the first of the year. But the cave-in that killed James Cullen triggered a chain of events that few could have foreseen.

The Good Friday accident, an angry union, and an alarming injury rate (3,000 reported accidents in the first half of the year) combined to touch a raw nerve somewhere in the upper regions of management at Inco, a company that is acutely sensitive to its public image, especially in Sudbury. The result was a bitter, behind-the-scenes battle for the hearts and minds of the people in this city.

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With 35 years of institutional investing and money management experience in the United States and Canada, Donald Coxe has a unique background in North American and global capital markets  http://www.coxeadvisors.com  This was originally written in May, 2007.

We have been asked by several Canadian clients for clarification about our strong opposition to some of the takeovers of Canadian resource companies. This is our detailed response. (The opinions contained herein are those of Donald Coxe and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BMO Capital Markets.) The material is primarily for Canadian clients, but others who were forced to tender their Inco or Falconbridge shares, or who fear being forced to sell their oil sands holdings, should find the analysis of interest.

We opposed the takeovers of Inco and Falconbridge, and have for two years expressed strong concern that Big Oil’s Reserve Life Index problems would lead to takeovers of publicly-traded oil sands companies at unrealistically low prices—because they tend to trade in line with spot oil prices.

Last September, we gave a speech to the 30th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (whose membership includes the CEOs of Canada’s biggest companies) in which we ridiculed the prices at which Inco and Falconbridge were sold and warned that takeovers of oil sands companies would probably be next. (We had a polite exchange of views with the Brazilian Ambassador about his government’s holding in CVRD during the question period.

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The Advent of Nickel: From Discovery to Mid-20th Century

Canadian Business History Professor Joe Martin

This reading was prepared by Joe Martin to supplement the class discussion on the Inco case. All charts have been omitted.

Re-incorporation in Canada

In 1928, Inco was re-incorporated in Canada. There were claims that the main motivation behind the re-incorporation was to evade American anti-trust laws. In the 1920s, the American trust-busting movement had gathered momentum and was turning to the Morgan trusts. Inco’s lawyers, Sullivan & Cromwell, are said to have advised on relocation to Canada in order to escape antitrust regulation. Once Inco became a Canadian corporation, it was no longer subject to U.S. jurisdiction. In Canada the U.S. anti-trust laws and the reach of American authorities were not an issue.

At that time Inco established dual headquarters in Toronto and New York City, although New York remained the home of headquarters for top management, marketing and finance.

Another important development occurred at the Company in 1928. For the first time, Inco was included in the newly-expanded Dow Jones Industrial Average, consisting of 30 companies, just thirteen years after (24) the company first listed on the New York Stock Exchange.(25)

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The Advent of Nickel: From Discovery to Mid-20th Century

Canadian Business History Professor Joe Martin

This reading was prepared by Joe Martin to supplement the class discussion on the Inco case. All charts have been omitted.

The Armament Boom and ‘The Nickel Question’

The 1905 Commercial Gazetteer of theWorld states that “there are along the district North of Georgian Bay great deposits of nickel and copper …the only important supply of this metal so far known in America, and probably the most extensive in the world;” and went on to add that New Caledonia “abounds in minerals: nickel is very important.” (13)

But as Viv Nelles writes in The Politics of Development, Canada had permanently overtaken New Caledonia as the world’s most important source of nickel by 1905, and by 1910 Canada was producing three times as much as its rival. Nelles goes on to point out that the ‘poisonous pall that weighed down upon Sudbury’ could not ‘hide the fact that the really important jobs were being exported, with the semi-finished matte, to the United States….popular opinion was summed up in the Toronto Telegram’s tart observation: “A few boarding houses around two or three holes in the ground, plus Sudbury, represents all that Ontario has to show for a monopoly of 90 per cent of the
world’s nickel supply.” (14)

Shortly after the creation of the International Nickel Company, war clouds gathered, and World War I eventually broke out. As well, new applications for nickel were introduced in the various armed forces, including the new Air Force. By 1913, Germany accounted for 57% of International Nickel’s sales outside the United States.

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The Advent of Nickel: From Discovery to Mid-20th Century

Canadian Business History Professor Joe Martin

This reading was prepared by Joe Martin to supplement the class discussion on the Inco case. All charts have been omitted.

The International Nickel Company (Inco) is one of Canada’s oldest mining companies and the only Canadian company ever to be part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). Nickel was discovered by accident in the Sudbury basin in 1883 when the rail lines for the CPR were being driven through the hard rock country.

Despite the discovery two decades earlier, the company was not formed until 1902. J. Pierpont Morgan, one of the richest and most powerful men in the world, had recently created US Steel in the world’s first billion-dollar deal. Morgan decided he wanted to control his major supplier of nickel. In the late 1920s Inco became part of the DJIA and was re-incorporated as a Canadian company.

Back in those days, Inco was not really a Canadian company. Although it was true that Inco had a major refinery at Port Colborne in Ontario’s Niagara region, in addition to the mines in the Sudbury area, it should be remembered that the refinery only came to Canada for two reasons. The first was due to intense lobbying on the part of the Ontario government.The second was known as the Deutschland Incident of 1916, when it was suspected that Canadian nickel was being shipped to Germany via the United States and being used to kill Canadian soldiers during World War I.

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Canadian Business History – Professor Joe Martin

This case was prepared by Anne-Mette de Place Filippini and Professor Joe Martin as the basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a managerial situation. All charts, photos, questions and exhibits omitted.

A Successful Break from the Past?

By the end of 1974, the Grubb regime had enjoyed three strong years of performance with net sales more than doubling to upwards of $1.7 billion. Meanwhile net earnings had more than tripled to nearly $300 million with the return on shareholder’s equity jumping to over 20%. Rebounding demand and cost cutting efforts had restored financial health at Inco with profitability levels now back above the levels not seen since the 1960s.

In the 1974 annual report, Grubb and President Carter wrote proudly “The year covered by this report was marked by a record level of sales and earnings, by your company’s first diversification into a completely new line of business and by continued expansion in Canada and abroad….the company acquired ESB Incorporated, one of the world’s leading battery companies, with a sound growth record and a reputation for good management….We intend to seek planned and orderly diversification…. Our criteria in making acquisitions are a good earnings potential, the capacity to offset cyclical swings in earnings in the primary metals industry and a broad compatibility with our own skills and assets.”

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Canadian Business History – Professor Joe Martin

This case was prepared by Anne-Mette de Place Filippini and Professor Joe Martin as the basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a managerial situation. All charts, photos, questions and exhibits omitted.

Times Had Changed

The nickel industry was just not the same, Grubb thought as he settled into his new office in 1972. He believed that the turnaround would be even tougher to achieve than the cost-cutting measures he had implemented in Hereford. He thought back wistfully to an earlier, simpler time. And he asked his Secretary to pull out some old annual reports. At random he picked up the 1955 annual report.

Grubb read the stirring words of John Thompson, the legendary former Chairman after whom Thompson, Manitoba, is named. Grubb also looked at the words of his predecessor Henry Wingate, who was the brand-new President back in 1955 (before Wingate was promoted to Chairman in 1960) and who had just come through a level of prosperity that warranted an upbeat annual report.

The words were buoyant, and revealed to Grubb the contrast between the company’s past and present fortunes. Wingate’s message began, “In 1955 the Company achieved the largest production of nickel and realized the highest earnings in its history. A new record was made for dividend payments to shareholders.(6) Disbursements for wages were larger than ever before.”

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Canadian Business History – Professor Joe Martin

This case was prepared by Anne-Mette de Place Filippini and Professor Joe Martin as the basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a managerial situation. All charts, photos, questions and exhibits omitted.

What a Difference a Year Makes

In October 2005, Inco announced that it had reached a merger agreement with its long-time Canadian rival, Falconbridge. If approved, the $12.5 billion sales entity would have been a diversified mining giant and the world leader in nickel production. It would also have been third in zinc and eighth and rising in copper. The new company would also enjoy a more diversified revenue stream, with about half of its pro forma revenues from nickel, a third from copper, 10% from aluminum and the balance from zinc, precious metals and cobalt.

The combined entity would become the world’s largest producer of nickel with a 25% share, ahead of Russian-based Norilsk, which boasted a market share of 18% at the time. Some observers saw the proposed merger as a way for Inco to fend off the attentions of Xstrata,(1) the Swiss company that bought 20% of Falconbridge in August, 2005.

In a conference call following the merger announcement, Inco CEO Scott Hand said:

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This backgrounder was written by Ken Cherney and researched by Ron Orasi for Inco Limited employees worldwide in August 1989. Please note that this backgrounder is from the company perspective. Many controversial issues have been omitted however it is still a valuable historical document.

Mond Nickel

Outstanding in Stanley’s program was the consolidation with The Mond Nickel Company, Limited, early in 1929, to form The International Nickel Company of Canada, Limited. The marriage made for an efficient development of ore reserves and the economical treatment of the ore mined. It also brought into a single unit, one organization to satisfy some 75 per cent of the world’s annual nickel consumption.

During this period, Stanley and his colleagues had succeeded in establishing a market for a product that had little demand when they stared. It was time for him to change the character of the corporation. In his 1931 speech to a gathering of shareholder he said: “The Company’s main activity has ceased to be that of mining. Its works and business are day by day becoming more commercial and widespread throughout the world, and the Company’s success now depends less on the ore reserves than on the ability to find, or make, markets which will take the manufactured product of the Company.”

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This backgrounder was written by Ken Cherney and researched by Ron Orasi for Inco Limited employees worldwide in August 1989. Please note that this backgrounder is from the company perspective. Many controversial issues have been omitted however it is still a valuable historical document.

It is rare for history to record the accomplishments, drive and leadership of a single person in the development of an industry. Robert Crooks Stanley was such a man.

His achievements, spanning 50 years form the turn of the century, led to Inco’s emergence as one of the world’s leading mining and metallurgical enerprices.

Stanley’s energy, ingenuity and expertise steered Inco and its predecessor companies through the development of nickel and nickel alloys in an era that initially viewed nickel as a troublesome contamination of the copper ores of Sudbury rather than a useful commodity. In fact, nickel has come to take its place on both industry and consumer fronts as a metal that is integral to today’s high standard of living.

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Most of your readers will have sensed that they were being given a fevered caricature of Inco and the international mineral market in Mick Lowe’s Podium piece “Why Inco Must Be Nationalized”, in the July 19, 1982, issue of Maclean’s. Mr. Lowe is a Sudbury-based freelance journalist, well-known to us for his numerous Inco-related articles of the past, and we question his qualifications as a commentator on the international marketplace.

For example, a key statement in Mr. Lowe’s article is that Inco was debt-free in 1972 and now owes $1.1 billion. He also charges that “Inco’s profits in recent years have been invested everywhere but in Canada.” In fact, Inco’s debt in 1972 exceeded $500 million. This money, as well as profits, was used to finance an investment program of more than $1 billion undertaken in Ontario and Manitoba from 1967 to 1972. Inco has continued to invest in Canada, but did indeed invest outside Canada for two reasons: because Canadian nickel supplies were seen to be inadequate to meet market demand; and to diversity the company’s revenue sources so as to be less dependent on the world metal cycle.

Regrettably, there is no basis for any assumption that Inco’s shareholders have realized more from Inco’s Canadian operations than others. For example, from 1970 to 1980 the tax take from Inco by Canadian governments increased from $54 million to $260 million, or by 382 per cent, and our Canadian unionized workers’ hourly wage rates and related fringe benefits increased from $5 million to $15 million, or by some 200 per cent. Read the rest of this entry »

Inco must be nationalized, and the sooner the better. The need is pressing not because the firm’s management has squandered the immense Canadian wealth of the Sudbury, Ontario, and Thompson, Manitoba, ore bodies in ill-advised adventures in Guatemala, Indonesia and the United States. Nor is it because Inco’s management has exercised almost legendary arrogance and callousness with regard tot eh Canadian environment and in dealing with its Canadian work force (this summer’s strike at the company’s Sudbury operation was the third in seven years).

Inco must be nationalized for strictly economic reasons: it may be necessary in order to save the Canadian nickel industry, for never before has it been threatened at it is today. As stated in World Mineral Markets Stage II, a report recently released by the Ontario ministry of natural resources, North American nickel production will actually decrease over the next 10 years, even though total world nickel demand should increase moderately.

The projections on world nickel production made in the report should be disquieting  to all Canadians, and a truly national debate over its pat management and future development is long overdue. The sad truth is that, despite the projected increase in demand for nickel during the next decade, Inco’s share of the market will continue to decline because of the nature of its competitors: most of the newer nickel-producing companies tend to be in the Third World and state-owned. Read the rest of this entry »

Sudbury’s labour movement had its official birth on March 10, 1944, with the certification of Mine Mill Local 598, after a tumultuous gestation that was not without bloodshed. According to local labour lore, the triumph of union organizers after decades of failure stemmed directly from an equally historic and bitter defeat only a few years earlier: the crushing of the Mine Mill certification strike in the Kirkland Lake gold camp during the winter of 1941-42.

Several of the union’s key organizers headed south to Sudbury following the failure of the four month strike at the fabled Golden Mile in the hopes of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, and, in the event, they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

The 11,000 hardrock miners, mill, smelter and refinery workers who became trade unionists that March were the newest members of a union with a long and storied history in the hardrock mining camps of North America. Founded originally as the Western Federation of miners in 1893, the union was renamed the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW) in 1916, but it was known to friend and foe alike as simply “The Mine Mill”.

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