USW Local 6166 members accept Vale’s final offer despite their bargaining committee’s unanimous recommendation to reject it

USW Local 6166 members yesterday voted to accept Vale’s final offer despite their bargaining committee’s unanimous recommendation to reject it.

Members at Manitoba Operations in Thompson ratified a five-year contract offer made Sept. 11, which essentially creates two tiers of employees – existing employees and new hires – and will extract significant concessions from current workers in terms of drug and dental benefits in terms of deductible co-pays, while new hires are now ineligible for both as retiree benefits. Current workers will continue to be eligible for them as retiree benefits.

The new contract, which expires Sept. 15, 2024, gives unionized workers a 1.25 per cent wage increase effective tomorrow, as well as further percentage increases annually over the life of the agreement.

The offer also  included a $4,000 ratification bonus payable Sept. 20 and a $2,000 benefits transition payment, also payable the same date.

The company said recently the retiree benefit liability for Vale’s Manitoba Operations is currently $163 million and is growing annually. Vale said the old healthcare plan design “had not been updated for over 50 years” and was not sustainable.”

This year’s contract talks mark the first round of bargaining between the company and the union since the Thompson smelter and refinery, which had opened in March 1961, were permanently shut down in July 2018. Since the previous contract was signed five years ago in September 2014, USW Local 6166 at Vale has lost about half the number of unionized workers it represented then – shrinking to about 600 members from around 1,200 in 2014.

There hadn’t been a lockout or strike at Vale’s Manitoba Operations here in Thompson in 20 years since September 1999 when Inco locked out its unionized workforce for 11 weeks between September and December 1999.

“Although you’re bargaining committee unanimously recommend that the membership strike down the company’s final offer, we understand the pressures that you have been under and accept your voice as our own” Local 6166 said last night in a statement posted on its website, adding “you’re bargaining committee and local union executive dedicate ourselves to standing with you 100 per cent going forward and representing your best interests in the future. We would like to thank all of you who showed support, voiced your opinion, attended meetings, read release’s, questioned the circumstances, cast your ballots and informed yourselves.

“It is time to set our sights on the implementation of this new contract and prepare for the next round of negotiations, remember with preparation and education we can achieve the best results for ourselves and our communities.”

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USW Local 6166 votes on Vale’s final offer: New hires would bear initial brunt of concessions

USW Local 6166 members at Vale’s remaining mining and milling operations in Thompson, Man. wrap up two days of voting today on the Brazilian mining giant’s final five-year contract offer made Sept. 11, which essentially would create two tiers of employees – existing employees and new hires – and demands significant concessions from current workers in terms of drug and dental benefits in terms of deductible co-pays, while new hires would be ineligible for both as retiree benefits. Current workers would continue to be eligible for them as retiree benefits. The current five-year collective agreement expires tomorrow.

Voting by USW Local 6166 members continues until 8 p.m. Remote voting is available through email and text for those who are unable to make it to the Steel Centre union hall at 19 Elizabeth Dr.

The retiree benefit liability for Vale’s Manitoba Operations is currently $163 million and is growing annually.

“While $163 million sounds like a lot of money, the union can assure you that your health while working and into retirement is worth more,” says the union bargaining committee. “This should never be a point of debate in the industry we work in. This is the cost of doing business for Vale. ”

The union bargaining committee has accepted all of the benefits changes the company proposed in its final offer except for the closure of the retiree benefits plan for new employees hired after Sept. 15.

The USW bargaining committee is not recommending members accept the contract. If members turn the proposed contact down, the bargaining committee plans “to request to continue negotiating a fair and reasonable contract that the parties can come to terms on while working under the current contract.” If members do turn down the company’s final contract offer, the company could agree to such a proposal from the union to continue working and bargaining under the current collective agreement, or they could alternatively simply lock workers out after the contract expires.

This year’s contract talks mark the first round of bargaining between the company and the union since the Thompson smelter and refinery, which had opened in March 1961, were permanently shut down in July 2018. Since the current contract was signed five years ago in September 2014, USW Local 6166 at Vale has lost about half the number of unionized workers it represented then – shrinking to about 600 members from around 1,200 in 2014.

There hasn’t been a lockout or strike at Vale’s Manitoba Operations here in Thompson in 20 years since September 1999 when Inco locked out its unionized workforce for 11 weeks between September and December 1999.

The Union of Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers was the first bargaining agent here in Thompson when Inco workers unionized and had negotiated a contract with Inco that ran through 1964. United Steelworkers of America Local 6166 received its charter of affiliation from the international on Jan. 3, 1962 and the USWA was certified by the Manitoba Labour Board as the bargaining agent for Inco employees in Thompson on May 31, 1962.

Vale outlined its final offer directly to employees in a memo released Sept. 13. “The old healthcare plan design has not been updated for over 50 years and is not sustainable,” Vale says. “The new plan design allows the company to provide generous benefits to you during your active employment and into your retirement.”

The offer includes a $4,000 ratification bonus payable Sept. 20 and a $2,000 benefits transition payment, also payable the same date.

In response, later in the day yesterday, USW Local 6166’s six-member bargaining committee, led by local president Warren Luky, issued its own update for members:

“We discussed at the table the benefits that Vale was offering the membership, the most contentious of all concessions they brought was the co-pay component and post-retirement benefits for new hires. The co-pay means that our members will now have to pay part of their drug costs. As discussed at the meetings held at the Royal Canadian Legion on Thursday, Sept 12, Vale wants to pass on the $163 million liability to YOU and renege on that same $163 million promise. We all know that this is a concession!  One, that we warned the company that we did not think our membership would accept no matter how much we attempted to reduce the out of pocket hit to our members.

“Vale seems to continue to mislead the membership with their statements, there is no secret Vale came to the table seeking changes to our benefits, there is no secret that the union bargaining committee discussed benefits at the table including co-pay, generic drugs, over the counter etc. to identify how far and how deep Vale was attempting to take from you. We understand they are fearful that this offer will be turned down and that the union will then request to continue negotiating a fair and reasonable contract that the parties can come to terms on while working under the current contract. At the end of the day, the Union has not agreed to the offer before you. That is why your bargaining committee has not recommended this offer to our membership. The ‘generous benefits’ Vale is offering is a concession of what we currently have. It is important to understand that this is Vale’s final offer, not a mutually agreed and negotiated contract that you are voting on.

“At no point did the union consider no post retirement benefits for new hires. It may not affect you now, but after time we will be sitting at the table bargaining and find more members that don’t have post-retirement benefits than those who do have them. Do you think they will fight for something that they don’t have? That we let the company take from them????

“At this point in bargaining we have to make a choice to try get the best overall deal we can at the table. A deal that puts enough money in our member’s pockets to offset the cost of the concessions, the rising cost of living and inflation, increasing tax base due to the shrinking of employment etc. We worked very hard to do this. We respected the process and maintain the moral high ground throughout. You now have the choice to take the final offer or have us get back to the table to get what is fair and reasonable for all.”

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‘Most Read Popular Thompson News’, Bill Comaskey and the Chief, Beer & Skits, and a salute to our favourite curmudgeons, Len Podbisky and Harold Kemp

While I’m still not entirely sure what I think of Glacier’s Oct. 16 redesign of the Thompson Citizen’s website, I can say the “Most Read Popular Thompson News” is an interesting revelation. While most newspaper stories are usually considered the next day’s fish wrap, a few (very few) stand the test of time. So it is we learn that the most read and popular story at the moment in the online edition of the Thompson Citizen, “Vale Inco restructures senior management: Position of Manitoba Operations president abolished” (http://www.thompsoncitizen.net/news/thompson/vale-inco-restructures-senior-management-1.1360946) ran … well, more than five years ago actually on July 22, 2009, the month after the paper first went online. Don’t get me wrong: I think it is a heck of a story; after all I wrote it. Same for the third of the five “Most Read Popular Thompson News”  stories today: “Canada’s most violent crime city: Thompson, Manitoba: Statistics Canada’s new rankings again paint a bleak picture (http://www.thompsoncitizen.net/news/thompson/canada-s-most-violent-crime-city-thompson-manitoba-1.1368767).  I wrote that one also in July: it ran on July 22, 2011, more than three years ago. Rounding out the top five list in Number 2, 4 and 5 spots  are three stories from last Wednesday’s Oct. 29 paper. Odd but interesting. I suspect the “Most Read Popular Thompson News”  list will very soon undergo some tinkering in terms of algorithms or delivery and my old Vale and Stats Can stories will be relegated to virtual fish wrap. C’est la vie. It was fun to see them again so prominently displayed in a vertical bar on Nov. 3, 2014 down the right hand side of the Thompson Citizen’s home page.

And not to carp (well, at least not too much), but are there any readers who actually find the digital ISSUU digital publishing platform edition easier to read online than the old-fashioned Adobe PDF of the weekly paper? Maybe. Let me know if you’re one of them. I’d be interested to know how that’s working for you.

Oh. And that hypertext link at the bottom left of the home page to the Flin Flon Reminder (www.thereminder.ca), as one of the Thompson Citizen’s “sister papers.” Dead (the link, not the Reminder).  Since about 2011 or even longer, if I recall correctly.

As for the main headshot or photo for someone appearing on the home page in the main story now in the new online version of the Thompson Citizen, think big, very big: Hello, Niki! That should make for some interesting pics and story choices to lead the home page as things unfold over on Commercial Place in the weeks ahead.

OK. I’ll stop. And dedicate this post to well-known raconteur Len Podbisky, a former Thompson Citizen reporter and former news director of Arctic Radio CHTM-610 AM, who wrote a very funny column intermittently, as both a staffer and freelancer, aptly named, “Tales from the Grumpy Old Men’s Club,” and the late Harold Everett Esson Kemp, who was the ripe old age of 93 when he died in 2011. Harold used to enrich and enliven the Page 4 editorial page in the Thompson Citizen from time to time with his letters to the editor.

I published Harold last letter to the editor on Dec. 1, 2010, and he was as blunt as ever. “Former Manitoba Operations Vale spokesman David Markham told me last June that the most recent information he had then was the mines here would close in 2028. Of course the life of the mines would be extended if any new discoveries were found. Diamond drilling underground is still being done. So far nothing new.

“Since I came here in 1967, nine mines have closed, some for lack of ore others due to content and prohibitive costs.

“For years now I have had general knowledge as to the life of these mines, maybe because I was a miner one time. When talking to Markham on this subject, I told him I was about to attend a meeting and advise the people the life of this mine is only till the year 2030 to 2035. It was then David corrected me by saying their estimate was 2028. His comment to me was, “Well, Harold, you weren’t out too much.

“Why bring this up! Because the mayor and others like Steve Ashton keeps talking about the great future for Thompson. UCN is a white elephant to begin with. Pick up your paper and you’ll read job ads for both campuses here and in The Pas looking for teachers and instructors. Another thing. Where are we to pick up 500 to 600 students to attend college when we don’t even have an industry here? Where is the tax money to be had? Down the line we’ll be lucky to have 4,000 to 5,000 people here. Looks to me Snow Lake is the place to be.”

Now, true enough, Harold was writing well before Vale’s “Thompson Foot Wall Deep Project,” at the north end of Thompson Mine, previously known as Thompson (1D), entered its current Front End Loading (FEL) 3 study stage, which looks at its feasibility, in Vale’s four-stage project development system, and may or may not amount to a big deal some day. But you’ve got to admire Harold’s directness and history may still prove him not far off on at least some of his observations. Time will tell.

As for Podbisky, long before he turned his pen to “Tales from the Grumpy Old Men’s Club,” he along with CBC Radio North Country host Mark Szyszlo, and now Winnipeg-based provincial civil servant Jim Stewart, were members of the boundary-pushing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Low Budget Trash Theatre triumvirate, from the original incarnation of Beer & Skits.

The original Beer & Skits, which had a long run at the Royal Canadian Legion’s Centennial Hall from the 1980s through the mid-1990s, was famous – or perhaps infamous – for taking on any number of sacred cows, including wickedly spot-on mimicking of former mayor Bill Comaskey, God rest his soul, or a monologue by Podbisky on just how aboriginal a certain local First Nations chief really was – while Comaskey and the chief were in the audience.

Unfortunately, it all ended rather badly in a legal debacle in the mid-1990s with a member of council – not Comaskey – among several people threatening defamation lawsuits.

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