The strikers are refusing to give in to the company's demands for concessions that would gut seniority, health and safety, and union representation on the job, as well as increase the use of nonunion labor.

The miners, members of Mine Mill/Canadian Auto Workers Local 598, are winning some ground in this fight. On September 15 a Superior Court justice in Sudbury denied Falconbridge's attempt to get a court injunction limiting the union's ability to hold up vehicles of supervisors crossing the picket line who are working in the smelter during the strike.

According to the company Local 598 had agreed to a "picket line protocol" before the strike, agreeing to a 10-minute maximum delay for vehicles crossing the line. A supervisor testifying against the union at the court hearing said strikers held up a bus he was on for three hours at the picket line and eventually company officials gave up and ordered the bus to turn around.

Falconbridge is the world's third-largest producer of nickel, behind Russia's RAO Norilsk Nickel mines in Siberia and Inco Ltd., in Sudbury. To become more competitive against these rival nickel producers, Falconbridge is planning to develop the world's deepest base metal mine, called the Onaping Depth project, beneath its current mines in Sudbury, which would extract ore from depths of more than 10,000 feet.

Falconbridge has boasted it could withstand the miners' strike "indefinitely," but the potential closing of its refining capacity in Norway and the fact it has been forced to cancel all cobalt deliveries to its customers in Europe and the United States by November 1 tell a different story.

Rosemary Ray is a member of United Steelworkers of America Local 5338.