Vol. 74/No. 28      July 26, 2010

About 125 members of USW Local 6200 at Vale’s facility in Port Colborne, Ontario, who work under the same contract, approved the agreement by a 74 percent vote. This leaves 120 strikers a Vale’s Voisey Bay Mine in Newfoundland still on the picket line.

The workers were fighting against company concession demands. During the strike the unionists faced efforts by the bosses to resume full production with scab labor. While there were a number of modifications to the company’s take-back demands, the new contract is in many ways similar to the proposed contract that the workers initially rejected.

New hires will have a defined-contribution pension plan instead of the defined-benefit plan current employees now have. This is less expensive for the company and shifts investment risks to the workers. The defined-benefit plan for current employees was improved.

The bonus workers receive based on the price of nickel has been adjusted, reducing their income.

Wages will increase by 90 cents an hour over the five-year contract. With cost-of-living increases in each of these years rolled into the base rate, the total wage increase over the life of the contract will be between $2.25 and $2.50 an hour. The deal includes cutting 113 jobs.

All lawsuits on both sides that have been filed since the beginning of the strike have been dropped.

The cases of nine union members fired during the strike for alleged violations of Vale’s “code of conduct” were referred to the Ontario Labour Relations Board. Hearings on the firings began July 9.

The workers are being called back over a period of up to six weeks. Vale says that it will keep personnel from the strike-breaking security service it hired “for a while.”
 
 
Related articles:
On the Picket Line
Teachers facing mass layoffs and wage cuts  
 
 
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