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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