On March 22, Steelworkers Local 6500 will be holding a “massive rally to show the solidarity and support that our local has from our members, our community, our province and from around the world.”

The event starts at 4:30 p.m. at the union’s hall at 66 Brady St., according to an invitation to the event sent out on Facebook.

Thirty delegates from around the world will be attending the event.

“We are looking for community members, organizations, clubs, unions, political groups and community businesses to attend in large numbers and bring your banners, your flags and your signs,” the invitation said.

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Talks between Vale Inco and United Steelworkers reached an impasse on Sunday before 4 p.m. after about 10 days of discussions were called off by mediator Kevin Burkett.

Both parties sent out news releases expressing disappointment at not reaching a deal.

“We offered a five-year proposal … that addressed wages, pensions and reducing the trigger price on the nickel price bonus,” said Vale Inco spokesman Steve Ball. “It was not accepted as something that the Steelworkers were prepared to agree to.

“We are very disappointed that it has ended this way at this time,” he said.

About 3,000 members of Steelworkers Local 6500 in Sudbury, as well as Local 6200 members at the company’s operations in Port Colborne, have been on strike since July 13, 2009.

Steelworkers Local 6500 president John Fera and the union’s District 6 director, Wayne Fraser, could not be reached for comment on Sunday night.

In a press release, Fraser said the union “presented several new proposals and made genuine, significant compromises on the key issues.

“This was an all-out effort by our committee to reach a settlement, with the best interests of our members, our community and the company in mind,” Fraser said.

“Our committee is frustrated and angry that Vale Inco was not prepared to bring the same spirit of compromise to the table to resolve this labour dispute.”

“Vale did not come close to reciprocating on the many and substantial changes made by the union,” Fraser stated in the press release.

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Eight months after 3,200 mine, mill and smelter workers in Sudbury and Port Colborne, Ontario, struck against Vale Inco’s across-the-board concessionary demands, company and United Steelworkers (USW) officials met with a labour mediator this week. Meanwhile, the Sudbury Star has reported that Vale will begin negotiations with 450 nickel and cobalt miners at its Voisey’s Bay, Labrador, operations March 15. The Voisey’s Bay workers have been on the picket line since August.

Vale Inco is demanding a three-year wage freeze, the scrapping of the defined benefit pension program for new hires, the dilution of seniority rights, and the curtailment of a compensation program that ties bonus payments to the price of nickel. This “nickel bonus” was negotiated by the USW in the 1980s in return for surrendering annual wage increases. Under its terms, when nickel prices are high, miners share in the increased profits. During down years in the notoriously cyclical minerals market, no bonuses are earned. Vale has demanded that the threshold for nickel bonus payments be raised to near impossible price targets.

Headquartered in Brazil, Vale S.A. is the second largest mining company in the world. Vertically integrated, it owns its own transportation networks, ports and processing plants across the planet. Its mines and smelters can be found in Europe, Peru, Chile, Brazil, Indonesia, Guatemala, Mongolia, Congo, Guinea, Angola, Australia, New Caledonia, Mozambique and Namibia.

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Outstanding issues include wages, hours of work, sick leave, pensions, shift premiums and LTD benefits.

Halifax (5 March 2010) – Members of the Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union (NSGEU/NUPGE) who are employed in the union’s laundry services bargaining unit (Local 24) by Crothall Services Canada have voted 93% in favour of striking if necessary to reach a fair contract settlement.

The union says several key issues remain unresolved including wages, guaranteed hours of work, improved sick leave entitlement, establishing a pension plan, shift and weekend
premiums and better cost sharing of benefits and long-term disability (LTD) benefits.

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Frustrated former workers took over a central Newfoundland newsprint mill in Thursday, in a bid to win jobs as security guards.

AbitibiBowater shut down its mill in Grand Falls-Windsor last year, ending a century of newsprint production in the community and putting hundreds out of work.

On Thursday, about a dozen men snuck through a giant wire fence and into the mill.

“These people behind me are workers who worked here all their lives and they don’t see it as trespass,” said Gary Healey, a Communications, Energy and Paperworkers union official, who spoke to CBC News through the wire fence on their behalf.

“They see it as successorship and jurisdiction, and [that they] have a right to work.”

The former workers’ complaint is with the Newfoundland and Labrador government, which took control of AbitibiBowater’s assets when the mill closed.

The men are demanding that the government hire them for any work that involves the mill, including a handful of security positions. None of the people hired at the facility now is a former mill worker.

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(CNN) — Lufthansa pilots may have reported back to work at midnight, but labor unrest continues to roll across Europe Tuesday as French air traffic controllers are expected to go on strike.

Half of Tuesday’s flights at Orly Airport in Paris, France, were expected to be canceled, along with 25 percent of flights at Charles de Gaulle Airport, as a result of a planned strike by four civil aircraft staff, including air traffic controllers, for Tuesday through Saturday.

The action comes a day after German-based Lufthansa and its pilot’s union agreed to suspend its standoff and return to the bargaining table. The suspension will expire on March 8, barring an agreement before then, both sides said in a Frankfurt labor court.

Also on Monday, British Airways cabin crew voted to strike, although no dates were announced. A planned 12-day walkout by Unite, the union which represents the workers, during the Christmas holidays was blocked by a judge.

Are you fed up with all the strikes?

Unite said it is continuing negotiations with the airline. Like Lufthansa pilots, British Airways staff are concerned about wages and job security as larger, older airlines deal with the twin blows of the global recession and increased competition from low-cost carriers.

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A Superior Court Justice has made an interim decision regarding protocol on the picket line between striking local 6500 Steelworkers and Vale Inco.

“He’s just saying the terms of the existing injunction apply,” said Steve Ball, spokesperson for Vale Inco’s operations in Sudbury.

While The Sudbury Star has not obtained a copy of the ruling delivered Saturday afternoon, Ball did comment on Justice Robbie Gordon’s decision: “The interim decision from the court has made it clear that the maximum 12-15 minute delay for any vehicle must be upheld and that we have a right to conduct our business without being excessively delayed or blockaded from doing so. We are therefore satisfied with this interim ruling and expect that we will now be able to continue with our business within the terms of the original injunction.”

As for bussing people onto Vale’s property, no provision exists in the picket line protocol and the Justice did not tackle the issue in his ruling, Ball said.

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The province refused to wade into the driving examiners’ strike Monday as about 200 angry driving instructors – the latest group to call for an end to the 100-day strike – demanded politicians order DriveTest employees back to work.

“We are all suffering these last few months, and it’s not our fault,” said Baldev Gill, a spokesman for the demonstrators.

Ontario’s driving instructors are part of the collateral damage of the labour dispute between the United Steelworkers Local 9511, who represent the 590 DriveTest employees, and Serco DES, the private company that administers driving tests.

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The president of United Steelworkers Local 9511 is at a loss to explain why DriveTest opened its Chatham office Monday.

“I wish I knew the answer to that question,” said Jim Wilson. “If you find out let me know.”

Wilson said there are DriveTest locations across the province that serve a much larger population base than the Chatham location.

Chatham is the latest of eight driver examiner offices to be opened across the province during a 14-week-long strike.

Natalie Maier, owner of Four Seasons Driver Education in Chatham and Tilbury, is convinced she knows the answer.

Maier said it’s DriveTest’s way of “trying to appease us for launching the bus service to Toronto for G-1 students.”

Maier organized a provincewide rally in Toronto yesterday against the strike and spoke at Queen’s Park.

Maier, in prepared remarks given to The Daily News, planned to tell politicians the strike has gone on “way too long.

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OTTAWA

— The Harper government is prepared to introduce back-to-work legislation Monday to end the CN Rail strike, if the two sides don’t reach an agreement.

Sources say the government would like to pass the bill through the House and Senate as soon as possible, providing the Liberals support the move.

Labour Minister Rona Ambrose will hold a news conference to announce the back-to-work bill tomorrow.

A senior official told CTV the government says it can’t allow the strike to continue because of the potential damage to the economy.

About 1,700 locomotive engineers are on the picket lines, while qualified management personal are trying to keep the trains running.

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