joe posts

I thought this was a refreshing article on the ongoing Vale Inco strike up in Sudbury.

Pathetic or powerful: Can politicians put an end to the Vale Inco strike?

excerpt:

[Professor David Leadbeater]  said he thinks major mining companies donate to the governing Liberals, which makes them hesitant to intervene.

“They basically agree with what the mining companies are doing. They think this is the way to have development. They think that communities and working people are a secondary consideration,” Leadbeater said.

“This has to be challenged. They have to take a position that’s more based on democratic needs of communities, of unions and the majority of the population. I don’t think it will happen, though, without a lot of protest.”

The province’s official line is that they are ready to intervene and that they have to be impartial – not favouring the striking workers or the foreign corporations demanding concessions – because of legislation that requires MPPs not take sides between employers and employees in labour disputes. Which makes government as useful as a wet paper machete when it comes to labour disputes. No matter what party is at fault, or how wrong they are, politicians can’t do or say anything about it. No wonder neither side wants their help, Bartolucci can barely say ‘boo’ about the scabs they’ve brought in to keep the mines running without real workers. The company benefits from provincial impartiality, and mediation would almost certainly mean significant concessions on the part of the workers – something they went on strike to avoid. Meanwhile the strike gets uglier and uglier.

I’m guessing Vale will win this one – nobody can stop them. They made over five billion in 2009, even with the strike and the global economic crisis. And they make money even though they’re spending more on running the mines now (scab and security costs) than if they had just kept the same old contract with the union. At this point it looks like they just don’t want the workers to come back without severe punishment.

A strike can’t stop Vale, because they can use scabs. Violence won’t stop the scabs, because anti-scab violence is hard to defend and the province and police will protect them. Vale’s HQ is on another continent, which makes it impossible to protest against, and the distance means the corporation has no reason to care about the people of Northern Ontario. The province brags to the world that it can’t do anything but mediate, meaning it will try to hammer out a centre position between a foreign company that doesn’t give a shit about Canadians and actual Canadians who depend on the work to keep them off of welfare rolls and out of food banks.

The Libs and Tories encouraged this kind of development through tax breaks, relaxed ownership rules, regressive taxation, cuts to government agencies and their hands-off approach to labour disputes. This dispute, I think, is just ‘globalization’ coming to Northern Ontario. And globalization is not about making it easier for people to live, it’s about making it easier for the wealthy to make money and it’s about making sure power is out of reach for the working class and the poor, because they’d probably do things differently. They might be more concerned with community.

“You can only push people so far. When you can’t feed your kids, you can’t put food on the table, you can’t put clothing on them, they come home from school and they can’t participate in what’s going on, you think that’s good for a community?” Steelworker Pat Digby