Striking Canadian miners take the struggle global

Nearly five months into a strike of 3,500 nickel workers at the Vale operations in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, the struggle is moving to New York City. The United Steelworkers is asking for everyone to join a busload of striking miners at a protest at the Waldorf Astoria, Park Avenue and 50th Street, on Dec. 3 from 6 to 8 p.m., when Vale CEO Roger Agnelli is receiving a “Global Citizenship Award” from the Business Council for International Understanding.

Brazil-based Vale is the second largest mining company in the world. It has $22 billion cash assets. Vale made $13.2

billion in after-tax profits and $4.1 billion in profits from the labor of the Canadian miners and processors (all in U.S. dollars).

The 30-degrees-below-zero temperatures in Sudbury will begin soon, but miners, families and communities are pledging to heat up the fight—globally. Thousands of other workers have lost jobs because the mining and processing operations are the center of the economy in Sudbury, Ontario; Colborne, Ontario; and Voisey’s Bay, Newfoundland.

Vale, which bought the operation from Inco several years ago, has attacked

seniority, wages, defined pension benefits and the “nickel bonus” and insists on a two-tier contract for newer employees.

The “nickel bonus” is a profit-sharing contractual benefit when profits rise above a certain percentage. This bonus got miners, their families and the communities through tough times over the decades. Though Vale was making a profit in Canada, workers were denied the bonus.

The workers and union have proven the issue is not profitability. Vale’s position is to decrease wages to workers in Canada to the lowest levels elsewhere. The union’s position is to raise Vale workers’ wages around the world.

This is the heart of capitalism’s drive: Raise productivity, reap huge profits, destroy workers’ living standards and run to any part of the world where they can maximize profits. If Vale succeeds in Canada it will begin a new worldwide assault to keep lowering wages and working conditions.

The stakes are big for all workers around the world as this strike is attempting to challenge that capitalist process, which has gone on unstopped for decades. The workers are not only fighting the Vale Co. but also the capitalist governments, federal and provincial, which have encouraged its attacks.

Vale is moving ahead with an unsafe, scab operation protected by the government. Union pickets have been targeted with investigations, subpoenas on 40 workers and firings. Strikers on sick leave have been told they will lose benefits unless they scab. Office workers have also been threatened to force them to scab.

Vale said miners from Brazil were coming up to scab. The USW knew this was a lie because it had been in communication with the Brazilian miners’ unions from the beginning and rejected the company’s attempts to whip up prejudice.

The USW is now an international union, having merged with UNITE, a union in England and Ireland. It has joined the International Metalworkers Federation and the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers Union, and works closely with CUT in Brazil. The USW is moving ahead with a still larger union federation called Workers Uniting that is building ties around the world.

USW President Leo Gerard—originally from the Sudbury mines—said: “Globalization has given financiers license to exploit workers in developing countries at the expense of our members in the developed world. Only global solidarity among workers can overcome this sort of global exploitation wherever it occurs.”

Derek Simpson, general secretary of UNITE, points out that Vale is backed by Wall Street. He said, “Our mission is to advance the interests of millions of workers throughout the world who are being shamefully exploited.”

There have been anti-Vale protests in Brazil, Mexico, Seoul, Madrid, Germany, Sweden, London, New Caledonia, Indonesia, Mozambique, New York and Australia. Information on the strike is posted in four languages on the IMF Web site. The USW Web site has resolutions against U.S. military aid to Columbia, to Free the Cuban 5 and many other issues.

There is no question this is a genuine attempt to break through the previous confines of narrow trade unionism in the U.S. and it and the Vale strike both deserve the support of all progressives. Such a breakthrough is inevitable as the global socialization of labor comes into sharper and sharper conflict with the private ownership of the means of production under capitalism.

If Vale and the banks refuse to resolve the strike and the capitalist state intervenes to protect private property and prevents the workers from stopping the scabs, new strategies and tactics will have to develop to meet that challenge. This could be sitting in, massive intervention by workers, coordinated strikes against Vale or other steps.

Information for this article came from FairDealNow.Ca (Vale strike), and the Web sites of the USW, IMF, the UCEM and Labor Notes.