Steelworkers in Sudbury Continue to Man the Picket Lines

The summer is over and the strike by the USWA - Local 6500 against Vale Inco drags on in Sudbury. (The company's other operations in Port Colborne, Thompson Manitoba, and Voisey's Bay are also affected). This wasn't perhaps the best time to go on strike, but, their collective agreement has expired, and when the economy is slumping, as it has been for a year now, employers will attempt to claw back any gains, made by labour, in the name of cost control, economic distress or whatever excuse happened to spring into the fevered minds fomenting a company negotiating strategy in the board room. In the instance of Vale Inco, they had the “benefit” of a federal cabinet minister, Tony Clement, attempting to sway public opinion by suggesting, that had CVRD not purchased INCO when it did, Sudbury would be a ghost town and the mines would be soon closed as uneconomic. I have to wonder what that statement has to say about the business acumen of Roger Agnelli and his cronies in Brazil. After all, they paid $17 billion dollars for INCO. Thats a good sized chunk of change in anybody's book. Clement further went on to state that, ”There was going to be no buyer, there were going to be no jobs, there weren’t going to be any capital investments, there was going to be no employer. That was the Valley of Death that Sudbury faced.” Clearly he had failed to remember the bidding war that went on between Teck Cominco, CVRD, and Phelps-Dodge for the so called, “Valley of Death”. In the end, Tony Clement, Industry Minister in the Federal Government headed by Stephen Harper, had to admit that he had made, “a pretty bone-headed remark”. That stands as one of the few times I have stood on total agreement with anyone in our current federal government.

In today's Northern Life, there is an article, (Steelworkers blockade contractors' trucks at picket lines),
that is highlighting some of the tactics that are currently being used by the Union in its struggle to achieve a fair and equitable contract with their employer. The company is attempting to resume production at some of its operations, partially in order to keep some of it customers in spite of having earlier declaring “force majeure” on it contracted deliveries of nickel. Given that these are tactics that were used by Falconbridge in 2000-2001 during that dispute with Mine Mill/CAW, there is clearly another motive in play here. This is a naked attempt by management to break the will of the Union's Rank and File and deliver a substandard collective agreement. Many of those in positions of influence in the Vale Inco management team locally are former Falconbridge management types eight years ago. This is clearly going to be a protracted dispute. Unfortunately, there is a good deal of anti-union sentiment being expressed by some in the comments sections of the local media online. The peanut gallery making these statements don't matter. What matters in this dispute is the resolve of those on the picket line. In any strike, no matter how long, or how bitter the feelings become, there will come a time when the “worm turns”. There will be a time when the company is no longer dictating the terms and conditions, and it becomes the Union's strike. The issue right now is can they last, “One Day Longer”...