Vol. 78/No. 20       May 26, 2014

First Nickel employs 150 unionists and 100 nonunion contract workers at the mine.

“ALL workers (both unionized and nonunionized) deserve the same protections that allow each of us to go to work and return home each day to our families and communities,” said Anne Marie MacInnis, president of Sudbury Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers Union Local 598/Unifor, in a press release May 6. Union representatives will be part of a joint investigation with the company.

The deaths bring to six the number of miners killed on the job in the Sudbury Basin over the past three years.

On April 6, millwright Paul Rochette, 36, a member of United Steelworkers Local 6500, died from a severe head wound from a malfunctioning ore crusher at Vale Ltd. Copper Cliff Smelter. In 2012 Stephen Perry, 47, was killed by a 14-ton rock at Vale’s Coleman Mine in Levack.

In 2011 miners Jason Chenier, 35, and Jordan Fram, 26, were buried alive by an uncontrolled run of muck at Vale’s Stobie Mine.

“Conditions have gotten worse” since workers at Vale, the largest mining company in the region, approved a concession contract in 2010 following a one-year strike, Seepo Vataja, a millwright and Steelworkers Local 6500 steward at the company’s Totten Mine, told the Militant in a phone interview. Under previous contracts there was a buddy system. But among the concessions on safety, miners now often work alone.
 
 
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