The Globe and Mail: Glencore, Vale discuss merger of nickel operations in Ontario

ERIC REGULY AND MARTA LILLO

Source: The Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Oct. 11 2013, 10:39 AM EDT

Glencore Xstrata PLC and Vale SA have convened “exploratory” talks aimed at combining their respective nickel operations in Sudbury, Ont., in a move aimed at cutting costs, sources close to Glencore said.

Declining nickel prices have forced the companies to consider the move, the source said. Prices for nickel traded on the London Metal Exchange have fallen by more than a quarter from this year’s high of nearly $19,000 (U.S.) a tonne in February to less than $14,000 a tonne now.

Vale has controlled its share of nickel operations in the Sudbury Basin, several hundred kilometres north of Toronto, since the Brazilian company bought Inco Ltd. for $20.3-billion in 2006. Xstrata, which was bought by Glencore earlier this year, paid $18.2-billion for Falconbridge Ltd. the same year, in order to bolster nickel holdings as the metal was hitting record highs.

Vale’s nickel operations generated $983-million out of a total $11.3-billion in operating revenue in the three months ended June 30, according to the company’s most recent earnings report. The nickel revenue fell from $1.08-billion in the last quarter of 2012.

Baar, Switzerland-based Glencore Xstrata’s nickel revenue fell to $1.7-billion in the six months ended June 30, down from $1.6-billion in the year-earlier period, according to the company’s most recent earnings report.

“The consolidation of Sudbury is way overdue,” Terrence Ortslan, managing director at TSO & Associates, said in an interview. “The time has come to look for how the negatives can be avoided,” he added, referring to nickel mining costs relative to prices.

Efforts to merge Sudbury nickel operations date back decades, the most recent of which started in 2003, when Inco and Falconbridge started talks to merge the two companies. Those talks led to a failed attempt to combine the two after Xstrata and Vale began bidding for the two Canadian companies.

Many of the Sudbury nickel mines are so close to each other that some operate side-by-side, with shared shafts and elevators.

“Nickel has become a financial catastrophe for Vale in Canada,” said John Tumazos, research analyst at Very Independent Research LLC. “Also, the CAD has strengthened since Vale acquired Inco, making it more expensive to pay wages. Meanwhile, nickel prices have fallen about 75 per cent since 2007.”

Strike on the frontline

Written by  Jennifer Brown December 06, 2010 

Peter Kavanagh had been on the job with global mining giant Vale Inco as its director of emergency management and security about a year when he faced one of the biggest challenges of his career.

The former submarine captain and marine counter terror expert had managed a lot of crisis situations in his career but a violent, year-long strike with steelworkers wasn’t something he had tackled before.

On July 13, 2009 more than 3,000 United Steelworkers from Locals 6500 and 6200 representing production and maintenance employees in Sudbury and Port Colborne, Ont. went on strike at Vale Inco.

And while Kavanagh had met with his security partners, AFI International based out of Milton, Ont., six months prior to the strike, he says he was one of the few at Vale Inco who had a feeling it was going to be a long, hard fight. In the end, the strike would become a multi-million dollar security operation.

“In the past, the union won. It’s as simple as that — the company always caved,” says Kavanagh. “They thought two-to-three weeks. Boy were they wrong.”

But the will of the company was just as steadfast as that of the miners.

Vale decided it could afford to operate through a strike and that decision significantly changed the dynamics of how the action played out.

At the peak of the strike there were 200 AFI personnel in Sudbury. Kavanagh also ramped up his own in-house team of protection services officers from 57 to 110.

“We had more security personnel than the City had police officers (there are 280 police officers in Greater Sudbury Regional Police Service),” says Kavanagh.

It was a massive departure from what security looked like prior to the strike as Inco had not made security a priority prior to the work stoppage.

The challenge was to protect over 20 locations, some of them over 100 km away from Sudbury.

“I personally thought the strike would last a year and it did. Many others were talking months. Strikes in the past were only weeks (the longest one being nine months). I thought a year because I knew Vale was not the old Inco and they would not approach things in the same way,” he says.

Massive plan adjustments were necessary throughout the strike because originally Vale Inco had not planned to operate the mines while workers were striking.

“Everyone in Canada assumed we would not operate during the strike — it had never happened in the past,” Kavanagh says.

However, months into the strike the company decided to proceed with operations. This decision multiplied the security challenges 100 fold, Kavanagh says.

“We had to move people, assets and product across numerous picket lines daily. The decision to continue to operate the mine inflamed striking workers.”

Kavanagh’s portfolio at Vale includes establishing a corporate-wide emergency management plan and the maintenance and audit of all security functions in the eight countries in which Vale Inco operates. But in 2009-2010 his biggest challenge was the situation in Sudbury — typically considered the least of his concerns in a global operation.

He says the contingency planning for the strike took about a year and included engaging a third party security service and doing threat risk assessments.

“We did the threat risk assessments about three months prior to the strike start date,” he says.

But all the planning in the world would not have prepared Kavanagh, Vale Inco management or the town of Sudbury for what was about to transpire.

Violence and confrontation became a significant problem and required alternative tactics the company wasn’t initially ready to accept.

“There were times when management was having a hard time understanding some of the things that could happen and did happen on picket lines. On one occasion we put AFI directly in front of them to explain what had happened in recent labour disruptions at other companies, why they had developed tactics as they had (access teams escorting vehicles across picket lines, evidence gathering requirements etc.) and the advice turned out to be a very accurate prediction,” says Kavanagh.

Once that trust was gained, AFI was consulted regularly for comment on what tactics Vale Inco might see as the strike unfolded.

“It really helped in our strike management and tactical planning,” says Kavanagh.

Jim Rovers, vice-president of crisis and disaster response at AFI International headed up the strike operation for AFI. He says it became a battle of hearts and minds — one the union was determined to win.

“Union leader Leo Gerard realized he had an international stage to show just how strong the union could be,” says Rovers. “As companies globalize, there is more at stake for the unions too — if you look at the Steelworkers, how do they get a guy or girl to sign a union card if they get bowled over by a multi-national? You have to be able to show a big union can fight a big company.”

The year-long strike, which ended July 8, 2010, would test the will of all involved.

“I’ve been at this 20 years and it was by far the most challenging project I’ve worked on,” says Rovers.
He says his most trying day was in February of last year when there were picketers showing up in balaclavas, slashing tires and people were being assaulted.

“Out of the 3,000 people on strike 2,950 were just good hard working union folks and the other 50 were what the union calls activists. We knew if we could manage to diffuse those 50 the other 2,950 would be easy to manage,” he says.

They soon realized local police were not going to step in to address the violence or other tactics happening on the picket lines.

When called into question in court, police said they were more concerned about officer safety.

The duration of the strike was one factor that made it unique, the other, Rovers says, is that most had forgotten just how confrontational and ugly a strike can be.

“It was old school, and once management they got their head around the fact it was not going to be a love-in it went pretty well.”

Rovers and the AFI team met with Kavanagh about six months prior to the strike.

“We worked hard very hard behind the scenes to get an emergency service agreement in place and we had a series of meetings and discussions about what it would look like and we cemented exactly we were going to do for them about a month out,” says Rovers.

The week before the strike deadline AFI got the notice to move forward and 48 hours prior to the strike they started moving people to the sites in Sudbury.

The strike started with just 14 people from AFI and it ballooned to more than 200.

It went from care and maintenance mode — meaning the mine was shut down with some managers coming and going — to a plan to process raw material into finished goods and a plan to go into partial production, then full production.
“Then they decided they had every intent to run business full tilt regardless of what the union threw at us,” says Rovers.

When they went back into production they had people crossing the picket line and that caused problems.

“There were flashpoints throughout the strike — what you saw was calm, then you would see it building and you knew a flashpoint was coming. There were certainly a number of flashpoints throughout the strike.”

As Vale decided to change its plan of action in terms of production, that caused a change in plan on the frontlines of the strike for Kavanagh and AFI. “A lot of those additional phases unfolded along the way and weren’t originally laid out as concrete steps.”

“Given the size of the company Vale is and how they make decisions we made sure we put our seasoned project coordinator on the ground, knowing it was going to get larger,” says Rovers.

The AFI project coordinator and supervisor stayed for the duration of the project for the full year in the command centre AFI set up. Most of the other AFI security personnel spent one month on, one month off in Sudbury.

When violence escalated on the picket lines Vale Inco management was reluctant to react back. They were concerned about what would it do to their image, the brand.

“Certainly there were a number of meetings I attended where we had to tell them, ‘Guys, you’re getting eaten alive, here’s what you need to do.’ They really struggled with that.”

The advice from AFI was to bolster the numbers as it was apparent the violence was going to get worse, but once the bubble burst calm and order would be restored.

“The message we gave to Vale was that until people felt safe and secure they weren’t going to want to come to work — it’s going to be tough to operate your mine and we’re going to have to go through some rough days to get there,” he says.

However, when the AFI numbers increased, the union did push back.

“The response was, ‘Are you guys trying to pick a fight?’ Imagine that you’re walking a tight rope — you’re trying to manage a client and you’re managing the pickets too,” says Rovers.

Rovers admits that adding resources to bolster a client’s position sometimes seems heavy handed, but is often necessary.

“We needed to establish control and ground rules at the picket line and eventually we got to where we needed to be,” says Rovers.

Even the City of Sudbury tried to curtail what Vale and AFI were doing.

“Because of the violence on the picket lines Vale had started housing people on the premises more and more. The City said they were in violation of city bylaws, however Vale was able to point out that union was in violation of several city bylaws including open fires, burning of tires, blocking of roads, building encampments, the list went on,” says Rovers.

In the end, getting court injunctions against certain activities proved to be the ultimate way to curtail the violence.

“You can’t get your private security to push picketers out of the way and you can’t rely on police. The only real tool you have is your legal strategy,” says Kavanagh.

Matéria revela táticas de segurança privada da Vale, durante greve no Canadá

O artigo abaixo descreve o papel da AFI e da segurança na greve da Vale. Ele demonstra que a empresa já realizava seu planejamento a todo vapor com um ano de antecedência. O artigo saiu numa revista sobre o segurança no Canadá.

Greve na linha de frente

Jennifer Brown 

Canadian Security Magazine 

6 de dezembro de 2010

Peter Kavanagh trabalhava na gigante global de mineração Vale Inco como diretor de gestão de emergências e segurança havia cerca de um ano quando enfrentou um dos maiores desafios de sua carreira.

O ex-capitão de submarino e perito em contra-terror marinho havia administrado muitas situações de crise em sua carreira, mas uma greve violenta de um ano de duração não era algo com que ele tivesse lidado até então.

Em 13 de julho de 2009, mais de 3.000 membros do sindicato United Steelworkers das seções locais 6500 e 6200, que representam trabalhadores de produção e manutenção em Sudbury e Port Colborne, província de Ontario, entraram em greve na Vale Inco.

E embora Kavanagh tivesse se reunido seis meses antes da greve com seus parceiros de segurança, a AFI International, sediada em Milton, Ontario, ele diz ter sido um dos poucos na Vale Inco que teve a sensação de que seria uma luta difícil e demorada. A greve acabou se tornando uma operação milionária de segurança.

“Antigamente, o sindicato ganhava. É simples assim — a empresa sempre recuava,” diz Kavanagh. “Eles acharam que duraria de duas a três semanas. Rapaz, como estavam errados.”

Mas a determinação da empresa foi tão firme quanto a dos mineiros. A Vale decidiu que tinha como manter as operações durante a greve, e esta decisão mudou significativamente a dinâmica de como a ação se desenvolveu.

No ápice da greve, havia cerca de 200 funcionários da AFI em Sudbury. Kavanagh também incrementou sua equipe interna de agentes de serviços de proteção de 57 para 110. “Tínhamos mais seguranças que a cidade tinha policiais (há cerca de 280 policiais no Serviço de Polícia da Grande Sudbury),” diz Kavanagh.

Foi uma mudança radical com relação à segurança que se tinha antes da greve, já que a Inco não havia priorizado segurança anteriormente.

O desafio era proteger mais de 20 locais, alguns deles a mais de 100 km de distância de Sudbury. “Pessoalmente, eu achava que a greve duraria um ano, e ela durou. Muita gente falava em meses. Greves no passado duravam apenas algumas semanas, sendo que a mais longa durou nove meses. Eu achava que seria um ano porque eu sabia que a Vale não era a velha Inco e não lidaria com as coisas da mesma maneira,” diz ele.

Ajustes enormes nos planos foram necessários ao longo da greve porque originalmente a Vale Inco não havia planejado operar as minas enquanto os trabalhadores estivessem em greve. “Todo mundo no Canadá presumiu que nós não operaríamos durante a greve — nunca havia acontecido antes,” diz Kavanagh.

Entretanto, passados meses, a empresa decidiu ativar as operações. Segundo Kavanagh, esta decisão multiplicou os desafios de segurança por 100. “Tínhamos que transportar gente, equipamento e produto por vários piquetes todos os dias. A decisão de continuar a operar a mina inflamou os grevistas.”

Entre as responsabilidades de Kavanagh na Vale está o estabelecimento de um plano de gestão de emergências para toda a empresa e a manutenção e auditoria de todas as funções de segurança nos oito países em que a Vale Inco tem operações. Mas em 2009-2010, seu maior desafio foi a situação em Sudbury — normalmente considerada a menor de suas preocupações numa operação global.

Ele conta que o planejamento de contingência para a greve levou cerca de um ano e incluiu o envolvimento de um serviço de segurança terceirizado e a realização de avaliações de riscos de ameaças. “Fizemos as avaliações cerca de três meses antes da data em que a greve começou,” diz ele. Mas nem todo o planejamento do mundo prepararia Kavanagh, a direção da Vale ou a cidade de Sudbury para o que estava prestes a acontecer.

A violência e a intimidação se tornaram um problema significativo que exigiu táticas alternativas que a empresa não estava disposta a aceitar inicialmente. “Às vezes, a direção da empresa tinha dificuldades para entender algumas das coisas que poderiam acontecer, e aconteciam, nos piquetes. Numa ocasião, nós botamos a AFI diretamente na frente deles para explicar o que havia acontecido em conflitos trabalhistas recentes em outras empresas, porque eles tinham desenvolvido as táticas que desenvolveram (equipes de acesso escoltando veículos ao passar pelos piquetes, requisitos de coleta de evidências etc) e os conselhos acabaram sendo previsões muito precisas,” diz Kavanagh.

Uma vez obtida essa confiança, a AFI passou a ser consultada regularmente sobre as táticas que a Vale Inco poderia encontrar se a greve fosse adiante. “Ajudou muito em nossa gestão da greve e planejamento tático,” diz Kavanagh.

Jim Rovers, vice-presidente de respostas para crises e desastres da AFI International, chefiou a operação da greve pela AFI. Ele conta que a coisa se tornou uma batalha pelos corações e mentes — uma que o sindicato estava determinado a ganhar. “O líder do sindicato, Leo Gerard, percebeu que ele tinha um palco internacional para mostrar o quanto o sindicato poderia ser forte,” diz Rovers. “À medida que as empresas se globalizam, há mais em jogo para os sindicatos também — se você olhar os Steelworkers, como é que eles fazem para convencer um moço ou uma moça a se sindicalizar se eles podem ser dominados por uma multinacional? É preciso mostrar que um sindicato grande pode lutar contra uma empresa grande.”

A greve de um ano de duração, concluída em 8 de julho de 2010, testaria a determinação de todos os envolvidos. “Estou nisso há 20 anos e este foi sem dúvida o projeto mais desafiador em que trabalhei,” diz Rovers. Ele conta que o dia mais penoso foi em fevereiro do ano passado, quando havia piqueteiros mascarados furando pneus de carros e batendo nas pessoas.

“Dos 3.000 grevistas, 2.950 eram pessoas boas, trabalhadores sindicalizados, nada mais; os outros 50 eram o que o sindicato chama de ativistas. Sabíamos que se conseguíssemos desarmar aqueles 50, os outros 2.950 seriam fácies de administrar,” diz ele.

Eles logo perceberam que a polícia local não interviria para lidar com a violência ou outras táticas que aconteciam nos piquetes. Quando questionada num tribunal, a polícia disse que estava mais preocupada com a segurança dos policiais.

Rovers relata que um fator que tornou a greve única foi a sua duração; outro, foi o fato de que a maior parte das pessoas havia se esquecido de quão acirrado e desagradável o confronto pode se tornar. “Foi uma greve do tipo ‘velha guarda’, e assim que a direção da empresa entendeu que não ia ser um mar de rosas, aí as coisas correram bem.”

Rovers e a equipe da AFI se reuniram com Kavanagh cerca de seis meses antes da greve. “Nós nos empenhamos muito no trabalho de bastidores para chegar a um acordo de serviços de emergência, fizemos uma série de reuniões e discussões sobre o seu formato e acordamos exatamente o que faríamos para eles com cerca de um mês de antecedência,” diz Rovers.

Uma semana antes da data-limite da greve a AFI foi notificada para fazer seus preparativos, e 48 horas antes do começo da greve ela começou a enviar seu pessoal para os locais indicados em Sudbury. Quando a greve começou eram apenas 14 pessoas da AFI; esse número acabou chegando a mais de 200.

Passou-se do modo de operação ‘cuidados e manutenção’ — o que quer dizer que a mina estava fechada, com alguns gerentes entrando e saindo — para um plano para processar matéria-prima em ritmo de produção parcial, passando em seguida para produção total. “Aí eles decidiram que tinha a plena intenção de conduzir o negócio a todo vapor independentemente do que o sindicato fizesse,” diz Rovers.

Quando eles retomaram a produção, houve gente atravessando os piquetes, o que causou problemas. “Houve episódios tensos ao longo da greve — o que você enxergava era calmaria, mas em seguida vinha um acúmulo, e você sabia que um desses episódios estava por vir. Houve vários ao longo da greve, com certeza.”

Membros do USW ratificam Acordo Coletivo de 5 anos com a Vale

Trabalhadores aprovam novo contrato com 75% de votação, encerrando a greve de um ano.

8 de julho de 2010


Sudbury, Port Colborne - Membros do United Steelworkers (USW) em Sudbury e Port Colborne (Ontario) aprovaram o novo acordo coletivo hoje, encerrando a greve de um ano de duração contra a mineradora Vale,.

Membros do sindicato USW Local 6.500 em Sudbury votaram 75% a favor do novo contrato, enquanto membros de Port Colborne (USW Local 6.200) ratificaram o acordo com uma margem de 74%.

"Nossos membros têm falado e eu acredito que todo mundo respeita as decisões que eles fizeram em circunstâncias extremamente difíceis", disse Wayne Fraser, diretor do USW do distrito de Ontário e da parte atlântica do Canadá.

"Nós parabenizamos nossos membros pela determinação, espírito e solidariedade que demonstraram ao longo do ano passado numa a luta sem precedentes contra esta enorme corporação multinacional", disse o presidente do USW Local 6200, Wayne Rae.

"Nós também estendemos nossos sinceros agradecimentos a nossa comunidade pela grande apoio durante ao longo de todo o ano passado, e às incontáveis pessoas, sindicatos e outros grupos ao redor do mundo, que demonstraram uma solidariedade internacional incrível com os nossos membros", disse John Fera, Presidente da USW Local 6500 .

Os destaques do novo acordo coletivo, que decorre até 31 de maio de 2015, incluem:

- aumento do salário-hora para todos, com aumento da ajuda de custo de vida a cada cinco anos. Assim, elevando o reajuste salarial para entre $ 2,25 e US $ 2,50 por hora dentro da duração do contrato.

- Melhorias para o atual Plano de Pensão de Benefício Definido, aumentando para $ 41.400 por ano, com a indexação de ajuda para o custo de vida para toda a vida, junto com um plano de saúde para todos durante o tempo de vida.

- O Plano de Previdência de Contribuição Definida para os novos contratados, que prevê contribuições da empresa igual a 8% do salário base regular dos trabalhadores. Além disso, os funcionários serão capazes de fazer contribuições adicionais que variam de 2% a 6% do salário regular, combinando com as contribuições da empresa dentro de certos limites. O novo plano também incluirá a cobertura em caso de invalidez de longo prazo para os trabalhadores.

- Como resultado das negociações bem firmes e sustentadas, o programa de bônus de níquel irá permitir que os funcionários ganhem até US $ 15.000 por ano, além de salário regular.

"Nos últimos 12 meses, nossos membros permaneceram unidos frente a uma adversidade incrível", disse Fraser. "Eles demonstraram grande caráter e podem manter a cabeça erguida quando retornarem ao trabalho."

"Como os nossos irmãos e irmãs em Voisey's Bay NLF seguem em negociações, nossos membros em Sudbury e Port Colborne manterão solidariedade a eles, pois continuam a lutar pelo tratamento justo que eles merecem", disse Fraser.

Contatos: Wayne Fraser, District 6 USW Director, 416-577-4045;
John Fera, USW Presidente Local 6500, 705-561-3093;
Rae Wayne, USW Presidente Local 6200, 905-941-6200.

Nota da Vale sobre o fim da greve no Canadá

Vale ratifica acordo com trabalhadores no Canadá

Rio de Janeiro, 9 de julho de 2010 - A Vale S.A. (Vale) informa que ratificou novos acordos coletivos de cinco anos com os sindicatos United Steelworkers (USW) Local 6500 e 6200, que representam funcionários de produção e manutenção em Sudbury e Port Colborne, Ontário, Canadá. Os acordos marcam o fim da greve iniciada em julho de 2009.

"Nós estamos muito felizes com os resultados da votação de ratificação", disse Tito Martins, Diretor Executivo da Vale para Metais Básicos. "O acordo estabelece uma nova relação de trabalho com nossos empregados e o sindicato, e nos permite avançar com nossos planos de longo-prazo para o crescimento sustentável. Nós atingimos o que precisávamos alcançar para a saúde de longo-prazo do negócio, com a introdução de um novo plano de pensão na modalidade contribuição definida e com mudanças no sistema de bônus existente, incluindo um limite na remuneração variável e um novo ponto de gatilho mais realístico. Nós esperamos retornar a níveis normais de produção e construir o futuro junto com nossos empregados."

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Para mais informações, contatar:
+55-21-3814-4540
Roberto Castello Branco: roberto.castello.branco@vale.com
Viktor Moszkowicz: viktor.moszkowicz@vale.com
Carla Albano Miller: carla.albano@vale.com
Marcio Loures Penna: marcio.penna@vale.com
Samantha Pons: samantha.pons@vale.com

Vale reaches tentative deal with Sudbury miners to end historic strike

July 4, 2010

Source: CTV News

The end to a long-running and bitter strike in Ontario is in sight as mining giant Vale announced it reached a tentative agreement with production and maintenance workers on Sunday.

The metals miner says the agreement involves a new five-year contract with United Steel Workers Locals 6500 and 6200, which represent production and maintenance employees in Sudbury and Port Colborne.

“It's been a long strike and I think that both sides worked hard,” said Cory McPhee, vice-president of corporate affairs.

“Both sides wanted a deal and that ultimately was the driving force to this outcome.”

Comprehensive memorandums of agreement are to be signed between Vale and the USW in Sudbury and Port Colborne on Monday.

The deal contains a return-to-work protocol, but Vale says it is still unclear when the employees will be returning to work.

“I can't comment on timing,” Mr. McPhee said. “Once the vote process is sorted out, we'll begin bringing people back to work.”

The union will now present the deal to the membership and ratification votes will be scheduled.

“Suffice to say, we're very happy to have a deal done,” Mr. McPhee said.

The announcement comes just days after Ontario Labour Minister Peter Fonseca said the two sides had agreed to resume bargaining.

Before reaching an impasse, the two sides had agreed on all issues except one – the firing of eight workers during the strike and whether they were entitled to arbitration.

A statement from Mr. Fonseca had said the impasse on the issue was not acceptable to the communities involved nor to the government.

Mr. McPhee wouldn't say how the issue was dealt with but confirmed that it had been resolved.

“We were able to come together and get over that hurdle.”

Vale says the settlements were reached with the help of mediators Kevin Burkett and Reg Pearson.

More than 3,000 production and maintenance workers at Vale's Ontario operations in Sudbury and Port Colborne have been on strike since July 13.

Key issues included a nickel bonus, job transfers, contracting out and pensions

Vale's nickel business employs more than 11,000 people worldwide and had net sales of $3.26-billion last year, accounting for 13.6 per cent of Vale's overall revenue.




Vale settles with Sudbury miners

Sunday, July 4, 2010

The Canadian Press

Brazilian mining giant Vale has reached a tentative agreement with the United Steelworkers to end an Ontario strike that has lasted nearly a year.

The metals miner, formerly known as Inco, said Sunday it settled on a new five-year contract with two USW locals representing 3,000 production and maintenance employees in Sudbury and Port Colborne.

Comprehensive memorandums of agreement will be signed between Vale and the union on Monday.

"It's been a long strike and I think that both sides worked hard," said Cory McPhee, vice-president of corporate affairs.

"Both sides wanted a deal and that ultimately was the driving force to this outcome."

The announcement comes just days after Ontario Labour Minister Peter Fonseca said the two sides had agreed to resume bargaining.

Firings caused impasse

Before reaching an impasse, the two sides had agreed on all issues except one — the firing of eight workers during the strike and whether they were entitled to arbitration.

A statement from Fonseca had said the impasse was not acceptable to the communities involved, nor the government.

A statement from USW local 6500 said an agreement had been reached with Vale to have the firing issue heard by the Ontario Labour Relations Board, beginning Friday.

"This removes the remaining obstacle in the long struggle with Vale," the statement said.

The union said ratification votes have been scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday in Sudbury and Thursday in Port Colborne.

The tentative deal contains a return-to-work protocol, but Vale says it is still unclear when the employees will be back on the job.

"Once the vote process is sorted out, we'll begin bringing people back to work," said McPhee. "Suffice to say, we're very happy to have a deal done."

Key issues included a bonus, job transfers, contracting out and pensions.

Vale's nickel business employs more than 11,000 people worldwide and had sales of $3.26 billion US last year, accounting for 13.6 per cent of the company's overall revenue.

The workers have been on strike since July 13, 2009. Vale said the settlements were reached with the help of mediators Kevin Burkett and Reg Pearson.

At one point during the strike, the union accused Vale of bad-faith bargaining and the company had accused the union of "unlawful thuggery" over a variety of incidents on the picket lines.

Mediated talks between USW, Vale continue today in Toronto

Posted By Carol Mulligan, Sudbury Star (Tuesday, May 4, 2010)

It is now confirmed.

Members of the bargaining committees for United Steelworkers and Vale Inco Ltd. will continue talks mediated by arbitrator Kevin Burkett today (Tuesday) in Toronto.

Burkett met with representatives of the two parties April 26 and 27, and May 1 and 2, and will pick up where the parties left off today, according to his assistant, Fiona Ho.

"I am sure he will issue a statement to the press in due course," Ho said of Burkett in an e-mail to The Sudbury Star late Monday night.

Speculation has been rampant in Sudbury in recent weeks that the two parties have been meeting in an attempt to end the bitter strike by about 3,000 Steelworkers in Ontario.

USW District 6 director Wayne Fraser told The Star on Monday that the parties had talked in recent days, but denied discussions were ongoing.

Well-placed union sources told The Star that discussions with Burkett have been going on for some time, but that Burkett had imposed a media blackout on them.

About 3,000 members of United Steelworkers Local 6500 in Sudbury and Local 6200 in Port Colborne went off the job July 13 over pensions, the nickel bonus, seniority transfer rights and contracting out.

There has been little discussion between the two parties since then although Burkett did hold 10 days of mediated talks, adjourning them March 7 because the parties were too far apart.

Legal counsel for USW and Vale Inco appeared before the Ontario Labour Relations Board in Toronto on Monday regarding a bad-faith bargaining complaint filed by the union Jan. 13 on the six-month anniversary of the strike.

Oral arguments were heard by a panel of three OLRB members, led by board chair Kevin Whitaker, about the union's request to obtain documents from Vale that might support USW's complaint.

Greve em mina canadense da Vale completa nove meses

Fonte: Portal dos Metalúrgicos do Brasil
(28/04/2010)

À frente de uma fila de caminhões carregados com minério de cobre, junto ao portão da usina Clarabelle, da Vale Inco, cinco grevistas famintos cercam um fogareiro a gás no seu abrigo improvisado, assistindo à fritura de um enorme omelete.

Faz nove meses que 3.100 trabalhadores abandonaram as operações de mineração e fundição em Sudbury e Port Colborne, na província canadense de Ontário, e não parece haver razão para duvidar de que a paralisação irá prosseguir por um ano, diante das posições inflexíveis da empresa e do sindicato.

"Depois de seis meses, virou uma coisa pessoal", disse Rob, operário da fundição Clarabelle, que funciona desde outubro com operários substitutos e não-sindicalizados. "E agora já estamos com nove meses", acrescentou ele, estendendo um prato de papel para que um colega servisse sua refeição.

No lado de fora, um caminhão ronca após os 15 minutos obrigatórios de espera no portão, enquanto seguranças monitoram os grevistas e anotam as placas dos veículos.

A greve - a primeira desde que a brasileira Vale adquiriu a mineradora canadense de níquel Inco, em 2006 - ultrapassou recentemente os 261 dias da greve de 1978-79, a mais longa na história do complexo minerador de Sudbury. É um recorde do qual ninguém se gaba.

Em outra mina da Vale no Canadá, a de Voisey Bay, que produz níquel, também há uma greve se aproximando dos nove meses. As duas paralisações já reduziram em 10% a oferta global de níquel, mas graças aos estoques elevados os preços se mantiveram estáveis.

Como Rob, outros mineiros dizem que a disputa vai além das questões econômicas, embora o dinheiro - em particular as propostas de mudança na aposentadoria da categoria e um limite aos lucrativos bônus vinculados ao preço do níquel - seja uma preocupação a respeito da qual ninguém parece disposto a ceder.

Os trabalhadores temem que a Vale tente reverter 65 anos de sindicalização, para operar essa mina nos moldes de outras do mundo. Em comparação com elas, Sudbury tem melhores salários e mais segurança trabalhista.

"Eles nos odeiam. Realmente acho que eles nos odeiam", disse Chris, um robusto operário da fundição Copper Cliff, à sombra da chaminé de 380 metros de altura.

"Não se trata de economia. Se fosse, isso aqui acabaria agora mesmo. Eles querem quebrar o sindicato."

Steve Ball, porta-voz das operações da Vale em Subdury, negou que seja assim, e disse que a viabilidade de longo prazo dessa operação depende de um "fundamental" corte de gastos.

"Há 30 ou 40 anos, a Inco era a Sudbury, e a Sudbury era a Inco, e a Inco era níquel. Não é mais", disse ele, em um edifício longe dali, sem identificação (por razões de segurança), que lhe serve de escritório durante a greve.

There Is Such a Thing as Too Much Publicity

Tuesday, March 16, 2010 Source: Money Show, Jubak's Picks

I always wonder what’s up when I see a normally quiet company begin tooting its own horn in ads. It’s almost never a good sign. Tuesday’s (March 16) Financial Times has a full-page ad from Vale (NYSE: VALE) headlined “Vale also transforms minerals into awards.” The text notes that Euromoney has just selected Vale as the best managed company in Brazil and then goes on to list other awards from Euromoney and the FT. The ad couldn’t have had anything to do with Vale’s decision to bring in strike breakers (AKA “replacement workers” or “scabs,” depending on which side of the labor/management divide you stand on) to resume production at its Canadian copper and nickel mines, could it? Workers at those mines, acquired when Vale bought Canada’s Inco in 2006 for $18 billion, have been on strike for eight months. Vale Inco workers rejected the company’s latest contract offer over the weekend. In January, Vale resumed nickel production at one smelter using already-mined inventories of nickel and non-striking workers and managers. But the company’s goal now is to resume full nickel production by the end of the second quarter. For their part, unionized workers aren’t likely to go quietly. “Vale can go and get stuffed,” Wayne Fraser, a United Steel Workers union representative, told the FT. “We are sick and tired of foreign capitalists coming in and undermining the Canadian way of life.” The strike is ostensibly about economic issues such as the company’s proposal to reduce a bonus tied to the price of nickel and a plan to exempt new hires from its defined-benefit pension plan. It hasn’t gotten any easier to sell those reductions when soaring iron ore prices have bulked up profits at Vale. But the strike is also about a clash of cultures and nationalities. Vale has created problems for itself by trying to impose a top-down management style that may have worked well in Brazil, but ran head on into a work force accustomed to a more consensual management approach. The acquisition was also part of a pitched battle over the fate of Canada’s two largest mining companies, Inco and Falconbridge, which saw both go to foreign bidders in 2006. To say that there’s lingering resentment (over the) foreign takeover of one of Canada’s key industries is a gross understatement. Vale’s troubles with what was (at the management level anyway) a friendly takeover should raise a red flag for investors looking at the rising tide of acquisitions of developed economy companies by emerging market corporations. The last six months of 2009, according to a March 15 KPMG survey, saw 102 deals in which emerging-economy companies acquired developed-economy corporations. That was a big increase from the 78 such deals in the first half of 2009. In contrast, the number of developed-economy companies acquiring emerging-market companies dropped to 216 in the second half of 2009—the fourth straight six-month period of decline in the number of such acquisitions—after having peaked at 463 in the second half of 2007. (Of course, it’s not just emerging-economy corporate managers who can destroy value for shareholders through an acquisition. For more on how acquisitions can destroy value, see this recent post.) But the Vale-Inco experience does suggest that investors looking at any company about to make such an acquisition should look for signs that the acquiring company knows how to deal with a foreign work force and management culture. A track record of a successful integration or two would be reassuring. That’s what we look for when a developed economy company does a deal in the other direction, isn’t it? The stock traded below $31 Tuesday afternoon. Full disclosure: I own shares of Vale in my personal portfolio.

Vale sues striking union, alleging ‘unlawful thuggery'

Source: The Globe and Mail

By Allison Jones
Published on Saturday, Feb. 27, 2010

Striking union members in Sudbury have engaged in “unlawful thuggery” by threatening personnel during a bitter seven-month strike at Vale Inco, the company alleges in a lawsuit.

United Steelworkers Local 6500 and some of its members have posted personal information about people who are continuing to work during the strike, which has led to intimidation, threats and an assault, the mining giant alleges in its more than $1-million lawsuit.

“This has not been a peaceful strike,” the company writes in a statement of claim, filed in Superior Court in Sudbury.

“Masked picketers have engaged in criminal conduct, including an assault of a Vale Inco employee and the sabotage of Vale Inco property.”

People on the picket lines have set large fires so trucks carrying explosives and fuel can't cross, hydro wires have been cut, rail equipment has been damaged and roads have been littered with nail spikes to puncture truck tires, the statement of claim alleges.

The allegations have not been proven in court.

“The defendants' conduct is unlawful thuggery, which has nothing to do with legitimate trade union activity,” the lawsuit says. “This conduct should not be tolerated in a liberal and civilized society.”

Wayne Fraser, a director for the union in Ontario and the Atlantic provinces, called the lawsuit an “antagonistic measure.”

“It's a nuisance,” said Mr. Fraser, who is not one of the 25 people directly named in the suit.

“[The allegations] are not true. They're unsubstantiated and it's just a way of Vale trying to divide the membership from its rank and file activists.”

A statement of defence has not yet been filed but is in the works, said Mr. Fraser, who also said the union plans to countersue the company for defamation.

The lawsuit comes as the two sides met with a mediator over the weekend for exploratory talks in a bid to find a way to ending a seven-month-old strike. The two sides have not formally met since the strike started.

More than 3,000 employees at Vale's mill, smelter, refinery and six nickel mines in the Sudbury area have been on strike for seven months.

At issue are proposals by Vale Inco to reduce a bonus tied to the price of nickel and to exempt new employees from its defined-benefit pension plan, moving them instead to a defined-contribution plan.

Workers complain they shouldn't have to give concessions to a company whose parent, Brazil-based Vale S.A., earned $5.35-billion (U.S.) in 2009.

The people named in the lawsuit have been targeting Vale employees who have returned to work during the strike, as well as contractors and personnel responsible for picket line security, the company alleges.

Pictures and personal information such as addresses and phone numbers have been posted on a union website and a Facebook page.

Those singled out have had their property and homes vandalized, received anonymous phone threats at home and one employee was assaulted while jogging, the statement of claim says.

Three people named in the lawsuit were criminally charged in that attack.

After that particular assault an altered picture of the man was posted on the Facebook site showing him with scars, a throwing star embedded in his torso, other “cutting weapons” in his torso and arms and his throat slit, as well as the words “Who's Next” on his shirt, according to the lawsuit.

While he was at work one day the same man's vehicle was vandalized, with his tires slashed and the word scab spray-painted about 12 times on his car. Union placards were found on and around the car, the company alleges.

Vale to restart some Sudbury production despite strike

February 3, 2010

Source: Reuters

Brazilian miner Vale will restart one nickel mine and boost production at another at its Sudbury, Ontario, operation despite a seven-month strike at the complex, a company spokesman said on Wednesday.

Vale will restart its Creighton nickel mine and run it up to full production, and will also move to full output at its Coleman mine, which has had partial production since October. The company's Garson mine has also been running at partial output since October.

Processed ore from the operations will be used to feed Vale's Copper Cliff smelter in Sudbury, which recently began operating at 50 percent capacity with nonunion workers and has been eating through stockpiled ore.

"We're just looking longer term that a source of feed will be needed," said Core McPhee, spokesman for Vale's Canadian nickel and copper operations, which the company acquired when it bought Inco in 2006.

Vale will staff the mines using workers provided from a contractor, he said.

More than 3,100 workers at Vale's operations at Sudbury and Port Colborne, Ontario, went on strike in July. On Aug. 1. workers at Vale's Voisey's Bay mine in Labrador on Canada's East Coast also went on strike.

Vale's move to partially restart the Sudbury operations last year increased tensions between the company and the United Steelworkers Union, which represents the workers.

The union was not immediately available for comment.

NO TALKS

The two sides have not returned to the bargaining table since the strike began, and they are far apart on several issues, include reforms to the company's pension plan and proposed changes to a potentially lucrative worker bonus tied to the price of nickel.

That bonus boosted miners' salaries well into six-figure territory when nickel prices jumped on 2006 and 2007, eventually hitting a record high of just under $25 a pound in May of 2007.

The lack of progress at Vale contrasts with labor relations at rival Sudbury nickel miner Xstrata, which averted a strike when it reached a last-minute deal with unionized workers early on Monday.

That deal included modifications to workers' nickel-price bonus and a negotiated restart of the company's Fraser nickel mine in Sudbury, where operations were suspended a year earlier due to weak nickel demand. Workers ratified the new three-year contract on Tuesday.

Nickel was hit hard by the 2008 economic downturn, and the price bottomed at around $4 a pound in December of that year. Nickel was trading around $8.20 a pound on Wednesday.

Vale vai retomar operações no Canadá

Fonte: Valor Econômico - 04/02/2010

by Cameron Francês e John Bowker, Reuters, de Ontário e Moscou

A Vale irá reiniciar a operação de uma mina de níquel e impulsionar a produção em outra, na sua operação de Sudbury, Ontário, no Canadá, apesar de uma greve que já dura quase sete meses, disse um porta-voz da empresa ontem. A mineradora brasileira vai voltar a operar na mina de níquel de Creighton e levá-la até a produção plena. Também disse que irá aumentar a produção na sua mina Coleman - que tem funcionado parcialmente desde outubro - para ritmo total. O minério beneficiado nas operações será usado para alimentar a fundição Copper Cliff, em Sudbury, que recentemente começou a operar com 50% da capacidade, usando minério estocado. "Nós estamos olhando apenas a longo prazo que uma fonte de alimentação será necessária", disse Core McPhee, porta-voz da subsidiária canadense de níquel e cobre da Vale, adquirida em 2006. A Vale vai operar as minas usando trabalhadores fornecidos por uma empresa terceirizada. Mais de 3,1 mil trabalhadores das operações da Vale em Sudbury e em Port Colborne, Ontário, entraram em greve em julho. Ela reiniciou parcialmente as operações no ano passado, aumentando as tensões entre a empresa e o sindicato que representa os trabalhadores. O crescimento econômico na China e na Índia deve dobrar a demanda global por alumínio, minério de ferro e cobre nos próximos 15 anos, exigindo uma grande reação das mineradoras, disse uma autoridade da Rio Tinto. A demanda no curto prazo foi mais difícil de medir, afirmou o diretor-financeiro da Rio Tinto, Guy Elliott, por conta das preocupações com os pacotes de estímulos do governo e da atividade especulativa ligada à queda das taxas de juros. "No longo prazo, eu sinto que a intensidade do uso de algumas matérias na Índia e China vai elevar ao dobro a demanda global por alumínio, minério de ferro e cobre nos próximos 15 anos", disse Elliott durante fórum de investimento Troika Dialog. "A demanda será forte a longo prazo, e isso vai requerer uma grande reação de oferta. É possível prever que essa combinação de demanda e oferta vai elevar os preços", acrescentou. A Rio Tinto é a segunda maior mineradora de ferro do mundo e deve aumentar a produção em 6% em 2010, encorajada por preços à vista muito maiores à medida que a indústria de aço da China - a maior do mundo - está devorando mais matéria-prima. No entanto, a Rio Tinto está operando parte de suas operações de fundição de alumínio em baixa capacidade. Embora os preços para o alumínio tenham se recuperado do agravamento da crise financeira global, os estoques mundiais ainda estão acima de 4,6 milhões de toneladas. Elliott disse que a política monetária dos Estados Unidos está criando "algumas preocupações" sobre a falta de crescimento da China na demanda por metais industriais. "Portanto, trata-se de uma figura mista a curto prazo", disse ele na conferência, "mas a longo prazo, o cenário é de forte aumento da urbanização da China e da Índia."

Vale-INCO: Some in Canada Say Strike Shows Risk of Foreign Control

By IAN AUSTEN
Source: The New York Times

Published: January 13, 2010

SUDBURY, Ontario — Last July, the 3,300 unionized workers who normally work deep below this city in the vast nickel mines owned by Vale Inco did something unusual: they went on strike even though they had already been laid off temporarily.

Even by the standards of a mining city with a long and often bitter history of labor strife, the nearly six-month walkout by the Canadian arm of the United Steelworkers of America is exceptional, and not just because of its length. To many in Canada, particularly those in the labor movement, the strike has become a symbol of the pitfalls of allowing large corporations to fall under foreign control.

Even before Vale, an iron ore miner based in Brazil that was once state-controlled, completed its acquisition of Inco in 2006, there was a widespread debate in Canada about the “hollowing out” of the country’s corporate sector. Inco had tried to create a Canadian mining giant by offering to buy Falconbridge, a rival that also has extensive operations in Sudbury. But the unsuccessful effort touched off a series of maneuvers that resulted in Inco, one of Canada’s most prominent corporations, being owned by a Brazilian company few Canadians knew and many distrusted.

For Inco’s unions and their supporters, the unusually protracted strike is confirmation of those suspicions.

“This is all about trying to change the community to fall in line with the communities around the world where they do business,” said John Fera, a third-generation Inco worker who is president of Local 6500 of the steelworkers union. “As much as we always fought with Inco, people were always proud to work in the mining industry. That pride just doesn’t seem to be there now.”

Many predictions made by critics during the debate surrounding the takeover of Inco and other prominent Canadian resource companies like Alcan, the large aluminum producer based in Montreal, have not come to pass in Sudbury, which literally grew around Inco’s nickel operations during the 19th century.

John Rodriguez, the mayor and a strong supporter of the strike, acknowledged that Vale had not reduced charitable donations. The company pressed ahead with significant investments in Sudbury’s mines and smelters planned by Inco. And it even won favor with many locals by planting grass on some of the black slag heaps that make vast sections of the otherwise attractive city resemble the surface of a barren planet.

But Jean-Charles Cachon, a management professor at Laurentian University in Sudbury, said that he had observed one significant change since Vale took control of Inco — a reluctance to share information about its books.

After a particularly bitter series of strikes, Inco took a new approach beginning in 1985. Professor Cachon and Mr. Fera said that the company began sharing internal accounts with the union, a move that averted at least one strike. Similarly, Inco opened its books to suppliers. Not long after Vale’s acquisition, however, Professor Cachon said that “they reverted back to what I would call the old-fashioned Inco way. That is: ‘We don’t tell anyone anything.’ ”

Mr. Fera said that the union not only lost its dialogue with the company, it also noticed an increase in disciplinary actions against its members. The two factors, Mr. Fera said, combined to create a tense environment when negotiations began in the spring of 2009. Early last year, Vale Inco announced that it would extend a previously scheduled one-month shutdown of its Canadian nickel operations for two more months, a move that left up to 5,000 employees on temporary layoff beginning in May.

The company cited growing nickel inventories and low nickel prices. After peaking at about $20 a pound in 2007, a year after Vale paid $19.4 billion for Inco in a heavily leveraged deal, nickel had fallen to about $7 a pound. It is trading for about $8 a pound now.

On Wednesday, the union filed a formal complaint against Vale Inco accusing the company of bargaining in bad faith. It asks the Ontario Labor Relations Board to order contract talks restarted under a mediator and to require that the company present new proposals on key issues. It also requests that Vale Inco be required to reimburse the strikers for lost wages.

“The bargaining-in-bad-faith claim is baseless,” Cory McPhee, a Vale Inco spokesman based in Toronto, wrote in an e-mail message. He added that the company had approached the steelworkers “on numerous occasions asking them to sit down with us and explore a path forward. They’ve rejected the idea at every turn.”

Two demands from Vale Inco are, in the union’s view, responsible for the ultimate collapse of the talks. Like some other employers in Canada, the company wants to change its pension plan from one offering guaranteed benefits — the dominant model for many large Canadian plans — to a defined-contribution plan with variable benefits.

Arguably more provocative is Vale Inco’s proposal to modify a profit-sharing plan linked to the price of nickel. Before the current recession, when high demand for stainless steel brought high nickel prices, miners at Inco earned 20 Canadian dollars an hour through the nickel bonus. When nickel prices were low, however, the bonus payments have amounted to as little as 500 Canadian dollars a year. If the miners were working now, the bonus payment would be about 6 Canadian dollars an hour.

Vale Inco wants to raise the minimum nickel price that initiates the bonus — an idea the union accepts, although the two sides disagree on the amount — and set a limit on the maximum payment, which the steelworkers reject.

Mr. McPhee, a longtime Inco employee himself, dismissed union suggestions that the strike was a clash between Brazilian and Canadian business cultures. Instead, he criticized the union for holding what he considered an unrealistic view of Vale Inco’s situation.

“We did not want to be in a strike, but the business has fundamentally changed,” Mr. McPhee said. “We’re in a 100-year-old-plus operation here. It brings challenges in terms of investment in the business.”

Out at the picket line near the Vale Inco Copper Cliff smelter — its 1,234-foot smokestack is something of a national landmark — most of the strikers viewed the situation as a power play by the their new Brazilian owners.

“The other owner, you knew where they were coming from,” said Chris Schroer, a millwright. “These ones just want to show us that they’re the boss.”

The union, however, is not without an international dimension itself. To start with, Mr. Fera’s local is part of an international union based in Washington. Its president, Leo W. Gerard, is a former Inco employee and member of the local Mr. Fera now heads. And throughout the strike, the steelworkers have been working with unions in Brazil and Europe to organize anti-Vale protests and to press other companies not to buy copper concentrate from Sudbury.

While the union’s continental membership has allowed it to endure a long strike financially, Vale’s global nature has also given it a similar advantage. In the past, a shutdown in Sudbury as well as the smaller Vale Inco mine in Labrador in the province of Newfoundland, where 150 to 170 workers also remain on strike, would have virtually eliminated the majority of the old Inco’s revenue. At Vale Inco, by contrast, nickel is only 15 percent of the business.

Professor Cachon views the strike as being more of a clash between mining cultures than one pitting Brazilian values against those of Canadians.

Vale’s iron ore business is based around open-pit mines staffed with large numbers of relatively low-skilled workers. In deep rock mines like Sudbury’s, most low-skilled labor has been replaced by sophisticated machinery. The miners, while well paid, are mainly technicians with several years of training and apprenticeship behind them.

“These people are already trying to find employment elsewhere and won’t be interested in coming back unless they have very good working conditions,” Professor Cachon said. “You just can’t replace people like that.”

Strike at World’s Largest Nickel Mine - International Solidarity

Source: The Bullet

International solidarity organizes against Vale Inco, 2nd largest transnational mining giant in the world

Marc Bonhomme

In France’s south Pacific colony of New Caledonia, a small delegation of Vale Inco strikers from Sudbury, in Northeastern Ontario, most of them Franco-Ontarians, met in October with the union at the island’s Vale Inco nickel mine, due to open in 2010 although it threatens a UNESCO nature reserve. The newspaper Nouvelles calédoniennes reported the encounter, in its October 31 edition:

“In the face of the global economy, the labour movement is looking to internationalize. In Canada, 3,500 workers at Vale Inco are currently on strike. Their union, the United Steelworkers, has launched a crusade to visit every Vale Inco site on the planet, for the purpose of forging alliances. In New Caledonia, union representatives met with the unions that represent the workers at the plant located in the south. ...

For the past three and a half months, ...workers at Vale Inco in Canada have been engaged in a test of strength with the Brazilian multinational that absorbed Inco, the Canadian nickel giant which initiated the Goro Nickel project in Caledonia. ...

They are accusing the Vale group of taking advantage of the global crisis and lower profits to make underhanded cuts in employees’ wages, pension plans and social assistance programs. They are also organizing visits to all of Vale Inco’s sites in Brazil, Indonesia, Australia and New Caledonia, to create a sort of worldwide alliance between the various unions that represent the multinational corporation’s employees.”[1]

The strike at Vale Inco began in mid-July at Sudbury, a city of 150,000 inhabitants, one third of them Francophone. In early August the strike was joined by workers at the Vale Inco refinery in Port Colborne, on Lake Erie, and the mine at Voisey’s Bay in Labrador. Vale is engaged in a frenzied competition with BHP-Billiton, an Australian-British company and the world’s largest, Rio Tinto, the third largest, and other mining giants in a process of concentration and centralization of the international mining industry. They are seeking to profit from the exponential rise in metal prices in recent years as a result of the explosive growth in demand in the emerging economies, and to strengthen their position with the major purchasers, above all the Chinese government and the big new producers in those countries.

Vale, too big to be defeated in a single country

In a push for diversification, Vale, a leading iron ore producer, purchased the Canadian nickel transnational Inco two years ago. The current economic crisis suddenly forced down raw materials prices, particularly for nickel. Vale, which had earlier settled for contract improvements with its employees in Thompson, Manitoba, is now demanding that its other workers agree to a three-year wage freeze, a defined contributions pension plan for new hires (the current plan is defined benefits), a major reduction in the annual production bonus (which has averaged 25% of the base wage), now to be pegged to the firm’s profitability, and a weaker wage indexation clause.

But unlike its major rivals, who have experienced liquidity problems resulting in major layoffs – Rio Tinto-Alcan in Quebec, for example – Vale has remained quite profitable despite the collapse in prices and has not carried out massive layoffs, although it did dismiss a few hundred Inco employees after buying this company. In Brazil itself, it plans to increase its workforce by 12% in 2010 following major investments demanded by the Brazilian government; the state-owned banks are significant financiers of Vale. In Brazil, as in New Caledonia, wages are lower, and perhaps the environmental constraints as well.

In 2008 Vale made a profit of US$13.2-billion. Its subsidiary Vale Inco made more profits in two years (2006-2008) than Inco did in ten (1996-2006): US$4.1-billion. In the third quarter of 2009, together with the new rise in nickel and iron ore prices, its profit doubled from the previous quarter although it was only a third of what it was in the same period in 2008. The company was so proud of this result that its directors had planned to go to the New York and London stock exchanges for media events in late October. Unfortunately for them, they had to cancel when small delegations of strikers came to disrupt the events with the help of local union members linked with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) – about twenty strikers in New York supported by U.S. steelworkers but also some teachers.

Vale was so optimistic at that point that it announced it would be distributing $2.75-billion in dividends in 2009 – more than the cost of the wages and benefits of its 100,000 plus employees in 35 countries worldwide. But the strike has been relatively effective. Nickel production in the third quarter of 2009 is down by 45% from the second quarter and by 55% from the equivalent quarter in 2008, not to mention the direct cost of $200-million for the strike. However, the new rise in nickel prices has somewhat offset the lower volume, and the production of nickel (and copper, which Vale Inco extracts concurrently) is a marginal component of the transnational’s overall operations, while it was central for the old Inco.

Vale profits from the severity of the crisis in Ontario

Since its privatization in 1997 – it was a state-owned corporation in Brazil, founded during the Second World War – Vale has been systematically fighting its workers. In Brazil, its employees have no job security; the company dismisses them without cause and fires most once they have three to five years seniority in order to hire at a lower wage, which explains why the majority are on fixed-term contracts. In the current strike in Canada, Vale has hired strikebreakers and required its other workers to do the work of the strikers. The New Democratic Party (NDP) sought unsuccessfully in the Ontario legislature, with the applause of strikers in the visitors’ gallery, who were expelled, to present anti-scab legislation like that in Quebec. The NDP, a social-liberal party linked to the trade-union movement, is the most left-wing party in the Ontario legislature. It divides the northern and northeastern seats, which are very blue-collar, especially outside the few major urban areas, with the governing Liberals, although it has only 10 out of the province’s 107 MPPs.

The relative isolation of the strikers from the major metropolitan centers in the south of the province has not facilitated efforts to build solidarity. However, it is worth noting the solidarity of other Steelworkers locals and the Ontario branch of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), known for its vanguard role in the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign in support of Palestine, and for its municipal worker locals in Toronto and Windsor, which waged hard-fought strikes this summer to fend off concessions demanded by the municipal authorities including the so-called progressive city council in Toronto. These politicians sought to benefit from the crisis in the automobile, steel and financial industries that has hit hard at the Ontario economy, which accounts for 40% of the Canadian GNP. It is no accident that the conflict at Vale Inco began this summer while these major strikes were taking place.

Nevertheless, this solidarity consists at best in visits by a few leaders, sometimes with cheques in support, and the mobilization of limited pockets of militants when strikers visit Toronto, for example to agitate at Queen’s Park, the site of the Ontario legislature, or to respond to the invitation of the iconoclastic film director Michael Moore when he was in Toronto for the premiere of Capitalism, a love story. Until quite recently the international mobilization has remained quite modest: letters of support from unions in less than a dozen countries and tours in Germany and Sweden accompanied by international leaders to convince certain companies not to import nickel ore from Vale. Even the big rally in late September with international guests, including the president of the CUT, the major Brazilian trade-union central, drew only 3,000 persons, slightly less than the total number of strikers in Sudbury.

A possible turning-point in October

It appears, however, that things took a turn for the better in October. The women’s strike support committee, which played such an important role in the very militant nine-month strike in 1978-79, was re-established with the help of former activists. Working with the recently constituted support committee, it will be organizing a series of family activities in November. The Ukrainian community in the region has also become involved. The spirit of 1978-79 could be regained. There appear to be some changes as well in terms of international solidarity. In addition to the trip to New York, a small delegation has returned from Australia, where Vale purchased several coal mines in 2007, and New Caledonia, where Vale Inco will soon open a new nickel mine. Dozens of Australian miners expressed their sympathy with the delegation, as did their leaders. But their contract terminates only in 2011.

In New Caledonia, there was remarkable media coverage and a warm reception from the Kanak elected representatives. The Kanaks are the first nation in this French colony, although they now make up only 45% of the total population. Did the Kanaks sense they had a lot in common with the Franco-Ontarians in the delegation – two nationalities suffering oppression of their language, their economic conditions and their lack of territorial autonomy? Oddly enough, the Steelworkers web site devoted to this conflict, from which most of the information in this article is derived, is bilingual – in English and Brazilian Portuguese. And the publication materials are English-only. But the Sudbury region itself is strongly Francophone, and is not far from the Quebec border. Will this uniform and formal unity strengthen the capacity for mass mobilization? Is this the best way to build a pan-Canadian movement? Internationalism, to be effective, must begin at home.

It is in Brazil, Vale’s economic base by far, where the situation is most promising. The miners in the company’s largest Brazilian mine, and two other mines, staged a two-day strike, October 26-27, around their own demands. A few days later, at two other mines affiliated with the smallest union central, Conlutas, which is known for its militancy, the bargaining committee symbolically invited the woman representing the Canadian steelworkers to be part of their bargaining team, to the anger of the employer’s negotiators who threatened to break off the talks. And 700 workers in these two mines signed a letter to the company calling on it to settle the strike in Canada, where negotiations have not resumed since the strike began. In a release issued November 4, the union’s leaders said:

“Vale fears more than just the possibility of victory in the strike by Canadian brothers and sisters, a possibility strengthened by this gesture of solidarity. It also fears the growing international unity which is being built among Vale workers and also people in communities around the world where Vale’s profits have resulted in environmental disasters, degradation of the natural environment and community disintegration.”

Internationalist optimism and bureaucratic contradiction

This optimism is justified. But so far the development of international links has been primarily at the initiative of the union bureaucracies. Their willingness to develop an internationalist response should not be under-estimated. They have been caught off guard by this strike and the membership’s willingness to take on a powerful transnational corporation capable of holding out through even a militant strike as long as the workers are isolated. They realize that the usual bureaucratic methods of bargaining supported by a national strike limited to picketing and controlled from above will inevitably result in some setbacks. When the union ranks hesitate to fight back in the face of a difficult objective situation, as in the automobile industry, the leaderships can force through some concessions. But there may be a high price to pay in terms of credibility once the threshold of an unlimited strike has been crossed. To defeat Vale, there must be a certain degree of international coordination in strikes, except perhaps in Brazil, where a national inter-union coordination might suffice.

The need for the union bureaucracy to mobilize the ranks to some degree, or to let them mobilize themselves without too many impediments, opens the door to self-organization. Has the women’s committee given the cue? The need to develop international links and an openness toward working-class internationalism, particularly with the Brazilian unions, forces the bureaucrats to restrain any temptation to engage in the kind of chauvinist language characteristic of a small imperialist power that we hear so often in Canada – “defending our middle-class, anti-ecology status” while allowing Vale to chip away at the wage scales and working conditions of its employees elsewhere.

The Steelworkers are styled an “international” union, although they have locals only in the USA and Canada. So when the “international” president of the union called for nationalization of Vale at the big strike support rally in late September, to the standing ovation of the strikers, there was a note of ambiguity. If nationalization means a takeover by the capitalist state in order to escape Brazilian living conditions, that is a setback for internationalism – and an economic illusion, for the nickel market is worldwide. A state corporation would do as Vale does. However, nationalization can signify the first step in the takeover by the workers collectively, as the Zanon workers took over their plant in Argentina.[2] The self-managed collective would confront the state with the need to provide financing, technical assistance and guarantees of international markets, if not conversion of the company and retraining of the workers. It would make the undertaking an integral part of the community, and in the case of a firm that is intrinsically an exporter, would also link with the workers in client and competitor firms abroad in support of their demands and their struggles, within a perspective of collaboration for joint marketing in the context of a levelling upward of living conditions. It would be a first step toward internationalist self-management.

Irrespective of whether it goes forward or is worn down, this strike against Vale gives some idea of what the strike movement will be like in the 21st century. Global strikes against transnational corporations will be an essential pillar of internationalism. They are just beginning. •

Marc Bonhomme is an economist and member of Québec solidaire. Translated from the original French by Richard Fidler.

Footnotes

1. www.fairdealnow.ca/?cat=17. Retranslated from the French.

2. A strike made famous by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis in their film The Take. For recent coverage of the Zanon struggle, see “Zanon workers win major legal battle”

Resources

• The web site of the Vale Inco families and community members may be accessed at www.fairdealnow.ca
• Bullet #253: Down in the Vale, by Petra Veltri