The Industrial Inquiry Commission on the Voisey’s Bay labour dispute is overwhelmingly damning of Brazilian mining giant Vale.

If Vale does not accept the commission’s recommendations to settle the 17-month strike, the Newfoundland and Labrador government must act immediately in the best interests of our province’s working families, the United Steelworkers (USW) union says.

“The inquiry commission’s report is unequivocal in its conclusions,” says USW staff representative Boyd Bussey. “The report confirms that the union made considerable efforts to reach a settlement, but those efforts were not reciprocated by Vale.”

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Brazilian miner Vale said on Friday that a government report on a 17-month strike at Vale’s Voisey’s Bay nickel mine in Eastern Canada reflects an “incomplete analysis” and that it will not agree to a contract expiration date proposed in the report.

Vale said that the report, which was ordered in October by the government of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador and released on Friday, was too rushed to be a full inquiry into the issues behind the labor dispute.

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Talks between union workers and Vale are scheduled to resume Wednesday, two days before a report on the labour dispute was scheduled to be publicly released.

On it’s website, devoted to the strike, Vale announced representatives from the company and the union will meet in Happy Valley-Goose Bay Wednesday.

On Dec. 23, the government received the first report from an industrial inquiry set up to examine the labour dispute.

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Striking Voisey’s Bay workers are heading back to the bargaining table with Vale in the new year.

Last week, the government released its report on Phase 1 of the industrial inquiry into the labour dispute to both sides, who are required to provide a response by mid-January.

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Brazilian mining giant Vale and the United Steelworkers union are blaming each other for failing to halt a long-running strike at the Voisey’s Bay nickel mine in northern Labrador.

Talks collapsed within an hour Wednesday in St. John’s, with Vale and the USW headed for an almost-certain industrial inquiry into why about 200 workers have been on picket lines since August 2009.

A commission of three lawyers is poised to start work on Friday in the industrial inquiry, which Premier Danny Williams said would start if the two sides could not meet a provincial deadline for a resolution.

The industrial inquiry cannot compel the two sides to reach a deal, but Williams has acknowledged that such inquiries can make public details that could be embarrassing for both sides.

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Both sides in a long-running strike at Voisey’s Bay Nickel’s mine in northern Labrador have adjourned talks for a week.

Independent mediator Bill Wells has been working with mining giant Vale and the United Steelworkers union to resolve a strike that started in August 2009.

Neither side is commenting on whether anything has been accomplished since Wells entered the talks earlier this month.

The Newfoundland and Labrador government hired Wells to help break an impasse that has kept the two sides apart, even after a similar Vale strike in Ontario ended after one year on the picket lines.

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Brazilian miner Vale SA ( VALE | PowerRating) will meet with officials from the United Steelworkers union Sunday in an attempt to end a strike at the company’s Voisey’s Bay operations in eastern Canada that has lasted almost 14 months.

The provincial government of Newfoundland and Labrador appointed an independent mediator late Thursday to assist in finding a resolution to the deadlock. The strike has been ongoing since Aug. 1, 2009.

The last round of contract talks between the company and the union broke off on July 20 in a deadlock over the proposed bonus structure. Vale says union demands would drive up labor costs at Voisey’s Bay by 45%.

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A spokesman for the United Steelworkers Union says he’s not surprised by Vale print ads criticising the union’s role in the Voisey’s Bay strike. The ad outlines several financial proposals, and says the union doesn’t understand the math involved. But Boyd Bussey says one of the company’s tactics since the beginning of negotiations has been to misrepresent the facts instead of returning to the bargaining table. He says his math is dead on, and Vale’s math is wrong. He says the company needs to give up this kind of tactic. He says it’s intimidation, and everytime the union makes statements in the press, Vale charges the union. He says they are making the union spend its money and are trying to bust it, instead of coming to the table and negotiating a fair deal.

The strike has been ongoing for more than a year, and Bussey says there is no end in sight. He says he’s asked Danny Williams to get involved. He says Williams is supposed to be looking at alternatives and getting back to the union. He says to this date, the company has not shown any interest in returning to the bargaining table.

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A long-running labour dispute at the Voisey’s Bay nickel mine in northern Labrador has spilled over into the courts.

Darren Cove, president of the United Steelworkers local at Voisey’s Bay, said he was served Monday with documents in a civil lawsuit.

Cove said a statement of claim filed by Vale alleges that Cove defamed the company when he recently said it was treating its workers like second-class citizens.

About 200 Steelworkers members in Labrador have been off the job since early August in 2009, in a strike over wages and benefits.

Cove said lawyers for the Steelworkers have told him they have never before seen an employer use such a tactic in a labour dispute.

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Representatives for United Steelworkers and Vale Ltd. met Friday to discuss the union’s complaint that contractors are doing work that 18 laid-off Steelworkers could be doing.

USW staff representative Myles Sullivan said the parties are trying to reach a resolution about the use of contractors as operations at the nickel company begin to return to normal after an almost year-long strike.

About 2,700 members of USW Local 6500 are back to work six weeks after they approved a new five-year collective agreement with the nickel company based in Brazil.

Vale spokeswoman Angie Robson said all employees except the 18 workers laid off are back on the job and all of Vale’s Sudbury plants are on their way to ramping up to full production.

Both furnaces have been fired up at the Copper Cliff Smelter Complex, and Vale is predicting it will return to full production in Sudbury by the end of September.

But Sullivan said life has not returned to normal for his 18 members who were told just after the strike ended that they no longer had jobs.

Tensions are also running high in many workplaces as Steelworkers off the job for more than a year, in some instances, reclaim their places in the company.

Sullivan said a “high volume” of grievances has been filed by the union on behalf of members in the six weeks since the new contract was accepted and Steelworkers began returning to work.

Under the terms of the return-to-work protocol signed by the two sides, Vale had six weeks to call Steelworkers back to their jobs.

Grievances have been filed relating to a number of issues, said Sullivan — such as discipline, hours of work, shift schedules and paid lunches.

In some cases, union members have complained that personal belongings such as tools and gear was missing when they returned to their operations.

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