Ontario’s premier and Labour minister said Wednesday they would like to see Vale Inco and striking Steelworkers return to negotiations, but have no plans to ban the use of replacement workers.

On Wednesday, Premier Dalton McGuinty also said he would prefer it if Vale Inco did not hire replacement workers in Sudbury.

“To be perfectly clear, we strongly urge and encourage the employer not to hire replacement workers,” McGuinty told the legislature.

“It is not the kind of thing that we, in our government, would do. In fact, we specifically adopted that as a policy on our part.”

The premier’s staff later clarified he was talking about the government as an employer not hiring replacement workers.

Later, outside the legislature, Labour Minister Peter Fonseca refused to consider banning replacement workers, and urged both sides to return to the bargaining table.

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Reports of assaults, vandalism and failure to follow previous court orders on the picket line

Striking workers at an Ontario mining and smelting company have had their picketing significantly restricted by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

Workers at Vale INCO, a mining, milling, smelting and refining company in Sudbury, Ont., went on strike on July 13, 2009. From the beginning of the strike, Vale said picketers blocked the entrances to several of the company’s locations, illegally denying it access to its facilities. The union said it was acting within its rights to picket and delay traffic into and out of the workplaces.

Vale was able to obtain legal orders instructing the striking workers not to delay any emergency or environmental vehicles or key staff at the entrances to Vale’s property. Picketers were also limited to delaying other vehicles a maximum of 12 or 15 minutes, depending on the time of day and not to cause any delay for those leaving Vale premises.

The strike became more acrimonious and Vale claimed striking workers were violating the legal orders. It said masked picketers continued to delay all vehicles for between 27 minutes and seven hours and some of its staff were assaulted when they tried to enter the premises. The picket lines were also unsafe from large fires set so Vale trucks carrying explosives and fuel couldn’t cross the lines. Hydro wires were cut, rail equipment damaged and picketers littered the roads with nail spikes designed to puncture truck tires. Vale requested further orders to limit picketing.

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Down the road from the Copper Cliff smelter, where the Inco Superstack reaches 380 metres into a clear winter sky, striking Steelworkers stamp their heavy boots and feed a smoking fire pit with scrap wood. Massive ore trucks, engines growling, wait for permission to drive through the picket line. It is a familiar ritual; after 10 or 15 minutes, the picket captain signals the drivers to proceed and go about their business at the smelter-their business being strikebreaking.

When Local 6500 of the United Steelworkers walked off the job at the Vale Inco nickel mines, it was mid-July. The progression from agreeable summer weather to minus 20 C has been brutal. The best to be said about minus 20 is that it’s better than minus 30, just like strike pay of $200 a week is better than no pay at all. It’s hardly surprising that there’s little of the bravado that usually sustains picket lines.

The downbeat atmosphere may also reflect a sense among the strikers that the world has changed and that their strike has not been noticed by Canadians. There have been many strikes in Inco’s history-but every other one was decided in Canada. Now Inco is a subsidiary of a company based far away.

If the long stalemate in Sudbury had a sound, it might be that of the other shoe falling. When the takeover binge of the mid-2000s saw many of Canada’s pre-eminent companies disappear into foreign hands, the debate over the “hollowing out” of the domestic economy was muted. After all, Vale, like other acquisitors, made undertakings to preserve jobs and, in fact, to carry on much like before.

Now, it appears, things look very different to Vale.

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The intent of United Steelworkers Bridging the Gap Rally may have been to send a message about international union solidarity to strike-bound Vale Inco Ltd.

But for one single mother of three, it was an experience that empowered her to believe more than ever that the fight she has been waging for a long eight months can be won by workers like her.

Nancy Marchand, a 13-year employee on Frood-Stobie’s shaft crew, hoisted her daughter, Emily, 2, in the air and raised the girl’s tiny arm in victory with her own when speaker after speaker at the rally earned standing ovations for their powerful messages.

Marchand, her daughter, and sons Maxim, 8, and Gabriel, 10, were among a crowd of about 4,000 who took over Sudbury Communty Arena after marching and chanting from the Steelworkers’ Hall on Brady Street.

Organizers estimated as many as 5,000 placard-bearing, flag-waving strikers, family members, members of other unions and community supporters — hundreds bused in from southern Ontario — took part in the parade.

It could have been deja vu all over again because Bridging the Gap was similar to a rally organized by USW in September with an international solidarity theme, two months into the strike by 3,400 Steelworkers in Sudbury and Port Colborne, and in Voisey’s Bay, NL.

But Monday’s rally built on the momentum established by the Jan. 13 six-month rally that attracted more than 2,000 people, and demonstrated that strikers are more committed to winning their “fair deal” now than they were in the fall.

The rally was held 10 days after 88% of voting Sudbury Steelworkers and 98% of voting strikers in Port Colborne rejected an offer to settle the strike from Vale Inco.

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Talks between the United Steelworkers in Voisey’s Bay and Vale Inco aimed at finding common ground have failed, according to radio station VOCM.

The station says Steelworkers spokesman Boyd Bussey claimed the union offered to modify its monetary proposals to kick start talks, but the company insisted on concessions to the nickel bonus to restart discussions.

The station quotes Bussey as saying the government-appointed conciliators adjourned the meetings.

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