By Roger Annis, July 3, 2012
750 Steelworkers union members will vote later this week on a new collective agreement to settle a six-month lockout* at the aluminum smelting operations of Rio Tinto Alcan in Alma (Saguenay/Lac Saint Jean), Quebec. The key issue has been job security. Rio Tinto has been cutting unionized jobs by contracting out work performed at the smelting operation. The company is a division of the British-Australian-owned mining and smelting behemoth Rio Tinto that purchased the Canadian-owned Alcan in 2007.
Rio Tinto has operated the smelter at one-third capacity during the lockout using management personnel. Quebec’s Ministry of Labour has twice cited the company for hiring outside labour for this work, a violation of Quebec’s anti-scab legislation.
A lucrative side of aluminum smelting in Canada is the sale of electricity. Historically, large resource companies such as mining smelters and paper mills were sited next to large rivers, from which they produced the large volumes of electricity required for their operations. Rio Tinto Alcan’s smelter operations in Alma are located on the Saguenay River, a major hydro-electricity source. Quebec’s state-owned Hydro Quebec has been purchasing the excess from the electricity that the company has continued to produce during the strike, angering workers across the province and drawing rebuke from elected officials, including the Parti québécois, the opposition party in Quebec’s National Assembly.
Rio Tinto Alcan also has a major aluminum smelter at Kitimat, on the northern coast of British Columbia. It employs approximately 1,000 workers. As in Alma, Quebec, workers there have been fighting to oblige the company to maintain its employment levels as it carries out major investments in expansion of production and technological and productivity improvements. The Kitimat operations profit handsomely from sale of excess electricity to the state-owned BC Hydro.
Union delegations from Alma (Steelworkers/Métallos) and Kitimat (CAW) held several exchanges during the lockout to express solidarity and to deepen their respective ties. The news bulletin of CAW Local 2301 in Kitimat published an article titled, ‘Truth, Lies and Solidarity’ in its news bulletin about a delegation visit to Alma at the outset of the lockout. It wrote:
The CAW and Steelworkers unions representing workers in RTA plants have forged a very strong relationship in recent months and will continue to do so as we now communicate via social media and have been set up for teleconferencing at the hall. These improved relations will further enable RTA’s unionized workers, regardless of union affiliation, to develop a unified, aligned approach to meeting challenges from our common employer.
Marc Maltais, the President of the Syndicat des travailleurs de l’aluminium d’Alma also expressed his satisfaction with the visit of the Kitimat workers. “Their presence is an important moral support for us,” he said. “Rio Tinto is experimenting on us and this is going to affect the Kitimat workers too. To share information on a strategic level is fundamental.”
* An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the January-July 2012 lockout of Steelworkers at Rio Tinto Alcan in Alma, Quebec as a “strike.”
Reference: Article from Alma, Quebec daily Le quotidien, July 3, 2012
