Anarchist Black Cat

USW and Brazilian Union CUT Join Forces to Support Vale Workers

TORONTO, July 22 /CNW/ - Last Friday, Artur Henrique da Silva Santos,
President of the CUT Brazil, and Leo W. Gerard, International President of the
United Steelworkers (USW), the largest industrial union in North America
formed a strategic partnership to support workers in their negotiations with
the Brazilian multinational Vale. The main objective is the renewal of
collective agreements in Canada and Brazil.

After months of negotiation, Vale refuses to renew contract provisions
covering retirement and other benefits that were part of the agreements for
more than 20 years. The workers in Canada rejected the company's demands and
went on strike on July 13. The two idled Canadian sites are Sudbury and Port
Colborne, and employ some 4,600 workers. The Brazilian workers organized in
the Vale Union Network, part of nearly 150,000 Vale employees in 35 countries
in five continents, are extremely concerned about the fate of the negotiations
in Canada, since the outcome could have an immediate impact in the renewal of
the collective agreement in Brazil.

"The growing international support for the Canadian Vale Inco workers
sends a strong message regarding the importance of this fight," said Ken
Neumann, United Steelworkers National Director of Canada.

"With the current international financial crisis, workers don't need to
pay for a crisis they didn't create," said Artur. The unions of Vale Network
related to the CUT Brazil and other unions demand that the company immediately
returns to negotiations in Canada, and submits an acceptable proposal to the
workers. "A multinational that has $22 Billion of cash flow, and shows a $13.2
Billion in profits in 2008, while supposedly caring for its image as socially
responsible company, doesn't need to squeeze workers and their communities,"
said Arthur. Six high-level executives earned $33 million in 2008 and had
their pay increased more than 120% between 2006 and 2008, added Arthur. To
support this fight the CUT and the USW have signed a Solidarity Agreement and
are organizing an international campaign to be launched at the 10th Concut
(CUT's Congress). Trade unionists from several countries where Vale has
operations have committed to attend. The unions will also include the fight of
Vale's workers in the National Day of Struggle on August 14th 2009 and promote
actions of solidarity in Brazil, Canada and other countries.

More than 3300 employees of mining giant Vale Inco are on strike in Sudbury, Ontario, and in other Canadian communities to defend decades' worth of gains. Beyond that, the strike by members of Locals 6500 and 6200 of the United Steel Workers of America also raise important questions about how unions orient themselves towards their communities and towards the nation-states in which their members live.

We have a new article on the Vale Inco strike up on Linchpin.ca



Continue reading at http://www.linchpin.ca/content/left/Nic ... ationalism

It is, of course, disturbing that the Steelworkers initially adopted a very nationalist tone in their statements, especially considering that this is hardly the first strike against Inco and that the company was just as rapacious when it was Canadian owned. Personally, however, I think I detect a softening of this attitude as the fact of international solidarity on the part of workers from Brazil has become more prominent. The Steelworkers are actually party to international agreements with unions in countries other than Brazil that call for mutual support in disputes in one country or the other. As to expecting the Canadian government to do anything, not just in terms of the present Harperites but even with Iggy at the helm- well that is a forlorn hope. Personally I think that the nationalist tone will recede even further as the strike goes on. It's unrealistic. What was even more unrealistic, in my opinion, were pronouncements by the union at the beginning of the strike that it would be short because Vale Inco's stockpiles of nickel were low. That little piece of optimism has flowed under the bridge and is already halfway to Hudson's Bay. As to the previous actions of the Steelworkers, well this strike will hopefully be a learning experience for the membership if not necessarily for the leadership. At least one public service union has already joined the Steelworkers on the picket lines. Such an example will hopefully be remembered and repaid in the future.

...wildcats often got even wilder as pent-up frustrations exploded in violence. The largest wildcat in the 1965-6 upsurge, the illegal walkout of thousands of Inco workers, was a key case in point. Workers in the Sudbury region had a long history of militancy, having fought a lengthy 119-day strike against the company in 1958. It ended badly, and to complicate matters union relations were embittered by a violent jurisdictional battle that pitted the communist-led International Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers Union against the United Steelworkers of America (USWA). The latter was successful in wrestling control of the huge Sudbury-area membership away from one of the few radical holdouts in postwar trade unionism. Some Inco workers' memories were nevertheless long in their recollection of the USWA's misdeeds. As contract negotiations faltered in the summer of 1966, the wildcat spread from one operation to another and eventually, outside of all official union control, it took on the trappings of a 'wartime military machine.' Illegal strikers used 'walkie-talkies' to communicate and threatened to disable a transport helicopter Inco was using to get supervisory personnel into company facilities. With provincial police appearing on the scene, the wildcatters armed themselves with lengths of pipe, baseball bats, steel bars, and ominous clubs. Roads were blockaded, hydro and telephone lines sabotaged, and a supply truck en route to the plant was stopped, overturned, and rolled down a hill. Shipments of nickel to the United States were stopped dead in their tracks. The Toronto Telegram reported that some pickets carried shot guns and were prepared 'to take on all comers.' One Steelworker official confessed his wonderment at the wildness: 'I saw the Molotov cocktails, the guns, and the dynamite. The union lost control of the situation. Eventually we took truckloads of arms of one kind or another away from the picket lines.' When a settlement was finally reached, and the dissident wildcatters tamed, worker discontent was barely assuaged by the company's wage concessions, which saw increases of almost 30 per cent for skilled tradesmen, a bonus of five-week vacations on top of regular holiday time for all workers with half a decade of service under their belts, and greatly enhanced indemnity benefits for those unable to work because of sickness or accident.

- Bryan Palmer, Canada's 1960s, pp. 226, 231