Negotiations Restart between USW, Rio Tinto Alcan in Canadian Lockout

For the first time since the 30 December lockout by Rio Tinto Alcan of 780 union members of Syndicat des Métallos d’Alma in the Canadian province of Québec, bargaining got back on track this week. After a half-day delay caused by a different labour dispute at the Montréal airport on 19 March, provincial mediators Jean Poirer and Jean Nolan travelled to Alma where United Steelworkers (USW) Local 9490 leaders and six members of Alcan’s management met face to face that afternoon.

Mediation continued throughout the day yesterday, with Syndicat des Métallos d’Alma Local 9490 President Marc Maltais stating that both sides expressed a willingness to settle the 12-week dispute at the aluminium smelter. By late yesterday, the union and company – with the help of government mediators – were establishing a speedy timetable for further talks.

The resumption of bargaining came five days after a general union meeting and news conference where Maltais and USW Deputy District Five Director Guy Farrell reported on their two-week mission to the US West and Australia and New Zealand in order to ratchet up pressure on Rio Tinto with the company’s militant workers and unions.

Maltais said at the news conference that both sides needed to compromise on the single issue that caused the company’s lockout, outsourcing. The union seeks to stop the continual erosion of permanent jobs by establishing limits to outsourcing, while Alcan used that issue to lock-out the entire workforce before other bargaining issues were even tabled.

Farrell told the ICEM that pressure has mounted on the company to settle the dispute because of an escalating global campaign against Rio Tinto, and the realization across Québec that Alcan is cashing in handsomely during the lockout by selling excess hydro-electric power to the province.

Under an agreement with Québec dating to 2006 when Alcan was a stand-along Canadian company, Rio Tinto is selling its unused hydro-electric power back to the province while it operates the Alma smelter at only one-third capacity. Throughout the near four-month lockout, Rio Tinto Alcan has been enriching itself by C$15 million per month at taxpayer expense while holding a community’s top-paying jobs hostage. Meanwhile, the Saguenay-lac-Saint-Jean region economy of central Québec is losing C$1.8 million per week in lost salaries and benefits.

Another driving force that undoubtedly has pushed the company to return to the bargaining table is the current rise of aluminium prices on the London Metals Exchange. After dropping 25% from a high of US$2,500 per tonne in spring 2011 to the end of last year, prices have since rebounded by US$400 per tonne and aluminium is selling this week at US$2,245 a tonne.

The Alma smelter is one of the world’s most modern, low-cost operations and with access to cheap hydro-electric power, the facility is too valuable for Rio Tinto not to run at full capacity. In Europe, Rio Tinto Alcan will permanently shutter its North East aluminium smelter in Northumberland, UK, on 29 March, sacking nearly 500 workers. It also announced on Monday that it would sell or close the Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, Savoie, France, smelter because of inability to reach an electric-power rate deal with EDF.

Maltais said this week that despite talks resuming, a mass rally in Alma slated for 31 March will go ahead. The union is expecting to draw 5,000 to 10,000 at the manifestation, which will occur a day after the ICEM’s North America affiliates convene for its bi-annual regional meeting in Alma.

Protestors will assemble at 13h00 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.)

The solidarity-building trip by Maltais and Farrell through the American West and then on to Australia and New Zealand saw them get support from Rio Tinto’s borax miners in Southern California. International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 30 faced its own lockout by Rio Tinto from late 2009 to spring 2010.

From those late February meetings in both Boron and Los Angeles, California, 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 trademarked orange shirts, emblazoned “Australia and New Zealand Mining and Maritime Union Fight War on Rio Tinto’s Workers.” Proceeds and other donations were given the two for Local 94990 back home, including at 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.

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 names and pledged to join the Alma lockout fight. That banner was unfurled and hung in Local 9490’s union hall last week.

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’s Saguenay-lac-Saint-Jean region.