4 April, 2012
Over 8,000 trade unionists and supporters rallied in Alma, Québec, Saturday, 31 March, on behalf of locked-out workers belonging to Syndicat des Métallos d’Alma Local 9490, an affiliate of the United Steelworkers (USW). Some 780 workers at an aluminium smelter of Rio Tinto’s Alcan subsidiary have been ruthlessly locked out of their livelihoods now for 14 weeks, and the economic stranglehold Rio Tinto has on the Saguenay-lac-Saint-Jean region of Québec is clear to all.
Bus-loads of union militants from across Québec converged on Alma, a community of 30,000, to stand with the victimised Alma steelworkers. And the USW organised convoys and buses as well from elsewhere in Canada, including Toronto, Hamilton and other industrial cities in Ontario province.
Some 50 international trade unionists also attended, representing workers employed at Rio Tinto or Alcan in Australia, France, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK, US, and other nations. A day prior to the manifestation, the ICEM held its bi-annual North American regional meeting in Alma as a global signal to the 780 Alma workers that they are not alone in their struggle for fairness on the job.
Manfred Warda, Jyrki Raina Address Rally
The well-organised rally started with speeches at an Alma shopping mall, before a march complete with sound truck playing working-class music wound its way through the streets of the city to an amphitheatre. There, political and union leaders continued to chastise the world’s second largest resources company for delivering economic devastation to workers’ doorsteps in central Québec.
ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda pledged that global labour will mobilise Rio Tinto workers across the globe in this struggle.
“If the ruthless social agenda of Rio Tinto cannot be defeated here in Québec, there will be little hope that it can be stopped when others face company attacks,” Warda said. Rest assured, “we will take the indignities committed by Rio Tinto Alcan here throughout the world until this company agrees to stop the attacks against your community and your union.”
Jyrki Raina, General Secretary of the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF), said, “If Rio Tinto wants to prosper, it cannot break the delicate balance that connects it to the community.”
ICEM Vice President and USW Canadian National Director Ken Neumann had a message for the Conservative government of Stephen Harper in his country, where the federal government has turned a deaf ear to several attacks by multinationals on Canadian workers.
“Stephen Harper clearly fell short of his task by failing to impose conditions on the sale of Alcan to Rio Tinto in 2007 and to protect jobs,” said Neumann. “For someone who is so bent on involving himself in labour relations, why doesn’t he intervene with Rio Tinto to put an end to this abhorrent lockout?”
That lockout was brought about by Local 9490’s rightful effort to stop erosion of permanent jobs that pay a living wage of C$34-an-hour against Alcan’s labour plan, which is aimed at replacing those jobs with outsourced work that pays half that amount.
Turkish Mineworkers Expressed Solidarity for Locked-out Steelworkers
By late afternoon on Saturday, about an hour after the final speeches were given at Parc le Festiv Alma, Rio Tinto Alcan issued a defensive statement criticising the USW event, and saying a “calmer climate” was necessary in order to carry on with negotiations.
But for nearly three months – until 19 March when Québec public pressure mounted primarily because Alcan was capitalising on the lockout by selling excess hydro-electric power back to the province – the company shunned bargaining, preferring instead to operate the modern and low-cost Alma smelter at reduced capacity while waiting for global aluminium prices to rise. (See ICEM report from 21 March.)
Syndicat des Métallos Local 9490 and Alcan did return to talks for two days in March, with the help of provincial mediators, and two more days of negotiations occurred on 28-29 March. The two sides will in all likelihood meet again this week.
But ever since the company prematurely halted negotiations and imposed the lockout on 30 December before a majority of workplace issues could even be tabled, Rio Tinto has been content to rob the Saguenay-lac-Saint-Jean region of C$1.8 million per week in lost salaries and benefits.
With or without a settlement to the Alma lockout, the 31 March manifestation will stand as the prelude to a global fight against Rio Tinto to resist its anti-social agenda that has become all too common everywhere it does business.