14 March, 2012
At a general membership meeting and news conference today in Québec, 780 union members of Syndicat des Métallos d’Alma were told that the lockout imposed on them – in its 11th week – by Rio Tinto’s Alcan aluminium subsidiary now has the undivided attention of key workers’ groups connected to the mining giant.
United Steelworkers (USW) Local 9490 President Marc Maltais and USW Deputy District Five Director Guy Farrell told a packed news conference of their two-week mission through the US West and then on to Australia and New Zealand, where the trade union Mining and Maritime Initiative brought this piece of corporate terrorism front and centre before the company’s most militant workers and unions in Oceania.
Maltais and Farrell also laid out plans for the mass rally in Alma, a city of 30,000 in the Saguenay-lac-Saint-Jean region of Québec, a manifestation expected to draw 5,000 to 10,000. Earlier at the membership meeting, USW District Five Director Dan Roy told victimised metalworkers that they are up against one of the most egregious examples of corporate crime ever committed in Canada.
USW’s Guy Farrell Speaks at Brisbane Manifestation
The lockout came ostensibly over the union’s contract demand to stop the continual erosion of permanent jobs by establishing limits on outsourcing. And it occurred even before several other issues were tabled in bargaining. Alcan prematurely locked workers off their jobs on 30 December, a day before the prior five-year agreement had expired.
With aluminium prices on the London Metal Exchange down more than 25% from spring 2011 and inventories high, the opportunity to reverse that by bringing one of the world’s premier and low-cost smelters down to one-third operational capacity was too much to resist.
And Syndicat des Métallos d’Alma learned this month what they feared had been happening since the lockout began: Rio Tinto, under an opaque agreement signed with Québec in 2006 when Alcan was a stand-along Canadian company, is selling unused hydro-electric power back to the province of Québec because Alma is operating only 122 of 432 electrolytic production cells. The company is pocketing C$15 million per month at taxpayer expense, while holding a community’s top-paying jobs hostage with a lockout. Worse, the province does not need the excess power but is obligated to buy it due to the 2006 agreement.
“These are the people’s resources,” said Farrell. “The atrocities this company is committing against Québec and Quebecers is incomprehensible, yet they are happening right before our eyes.”
The 31 March manifestation will occur a day after the ICEM’s North America affiliates meet in Alma in the first of two bi-annual meetings. Protestors will assemble at 13h30 at the Galeries Lac St-Jean shopping mall and march to Parc le Festiv Alma for the manifestation that begins at 15h. (See full manifestation flyer here.)
Local 9490’s Marc Maltais at MUA Forum
Maltais and Farrell reported today on their two-week mission that saw them get support from Rio Tinto’s borax miners in Southern California. International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 30 faced its own lockout from the world’s second largest resources company, and USW Local 9490 was keen to learn their fightback strategy.
From those late February meetings both in Boron and Los Angeles, Maltais and Farrell journeyed to the state of Utah where they met with USW local union leaders at Rio’s Kennecott Copper mines. Some 1,000 steelworkers and members of other unions, including the International Association of Machinists (IAM), waged a bitter six-month strike there in 2002-03.
From 4 to 9 March, the Canadians were in Australia and New Zealand. In Australia, their message was heard by hundreds of delegates at separate forums of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) and the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU) in Brisbane. On 5 March, Australian supporters including members of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), the MUA, AMWU and Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) joined Maltais and Farrell in a protest against Rio Tinto on Queen Street in Brisbane.
At the mass MUA meeting there on 6 March, the two were surprised to see the MUA selling Syndicat des Métallos d’Alma’s trademark orange shirts, emblazoned “Australia and New Zealand Mining and Maritime Union Fight War on Rio Tinto’s Workers.” Proceeds and other donations were give the two, including from a stop at Rio Tinto’s Bell Bay, Tasmania, aluminium smelter that was hosted by the AWU, the union fighting for a first enterprise agreement there.
ICEM Turkish affiliate Maden-İşDisplays Long Distance Solidarity with Syndicat des Métallos d’Alma
In New Zealand, the visit from 7-9 March sponsored by ICEM affiliate Engineering Printing & Engineering Union (EPMU) and the Maritime Union of New Zealand (MUNZ), included a meeting with Rio Tinto aluminium producing workers at the Tiwai Point smelter in Invercargill. It also included another demonstration, this time on 9 March in front of Rio Tinto offices in Wellington.
Throughout the western US trip and the Australia/New Zealand union-building visits, Maltais and Farrell had along a union banner to which trade unionists signed their name and pledge to join the Alma lockout fight. That banner was unfurled and hung in Local 9490’s union hall this morning.
While the two were concluding their trip in New Zealand, back home in Alma, on 8 March, International Women’s Day, women’s-only forum was held attended by 100 spouses and women workers. The event was billed as a unique chance to share experiences of the then 68-day lockout, the hardships, the loss of income and the emotional turmoil inflicted by a rich multinational on citizens of Québec Saguenay-lac-Saint-Jean region.
With a call two weeks ago by provincial Premier Jean Charest to return to bargaining still unheeded by the company, the experience of pain, sacrifice and uncertain futures is sure to continue for the 780 families and for even more in the wider community who depend on the family-supporting pay days from the Alma smelter.
To read further information on this corporate attack on working families, click here, here and here.