TORONTO - Nickel mining giant Vale Inco says it has the right to use non-striking workers to fill in at its operations in Sudbury, Ont., while the rest of its employees walk the picket lines.
Just as workers have the right to strike, companies have the right to replace them, a lawyer for the company argued at an Ontario Labour Relations Board hearing on Monday.
"This is an exercise of a managerial prerogative... management has the right to assign work," Tim Liznick said.
The United Steelworkers has accused Vale Inco - a subsidiary of Brazil's Vale SA (NYSE:VALE) - of undermining the union and creating an unsafe workplace by forcing non-striking members of Steelworkers Local 2020 to do the work of mine and mill workers represented by Local 6500, and threatening them with discipline if they refuse.
More than 3,000 workers represented by Local 6500 have been on strike since July. Vale has trained office, clerical and technical workers - including engineers and geologists - to fill in where needed as the company restarts some of its Sudbury-area operations.
To date, Vale has restarted its mill and smelter and is operating portions of its Coleman mine and Garson ramp. Company spokesman Cory McPhee said it is working to resume full production at Coleman as well as its Creighton mine to "facilitate an eventual return to full operations."
"Our preference, and our ultimate objective, remains to resume full operations normally with all employees returning. However, so long as the current impasse with the USW continues, we must and will continue to move forward with the business - providing meaningful work for employees not on strike," McPhee said.
Initially, members of Local 2020 didn't mind filling in for their striking colleagues, especially because management said there would be layoffs if they didn't, Local 2020 president Daniel Serre said Monday.
However, now that the strike has stretched to nearly seven months and the company has hired some contract employees to do skilled work, employees are saying they're reluctant to do manual labour indefinitely, Serre added.
The Steelworkers said Vale has an "anti-union animus" and is trying to create conflict between union members and their bargaining agents by forcing non-striking workers to do work for which they're not properly trained while their colleagues remain on strike.
"Strikers are concerned, to say the least, to see members performing struck work," said Steelworkers lawyer Rob Healey. "Part of the reason the company has done what it's done is to interfere with relationships between union members."
But Vale's lawyer dismissed that, saying the company's use of replacement workers is "part of the test of economic wills" that occurs in any strike. Liznick added that Local 2020's collective agreement doesn't allow workers to refuse to do striking colleagues' work and the company is right to threaten discipline if they do.
"It's not a debating society. The employer assigns the work and the employees have to do it," Liznick said.
It is up to labour board arbitrator Kevin Whitaker to decide if the Steelworkers' application should be dismissed, as the company has argued, or whether the hearings should continue. If the hearings do continue, both sides will be asked to call witnesses.
Besides the Sudbury employees, the strike affects Vale Inco in Port Colborne, Ont., and Voisey's Bay, N.L.
At issue in the strike are proposals by Vale to reduce a bonus tied to the price of nickel and to exempt new employees from its defined-benefit pension plan, moving them instead to a defined-contribution plan.
In Ontario, the two sides have not formally met since the strike started. Workers in Voisey's Bay briefly returned to the bargaining table last month but talks fell apart almost immediately.
On Monday, the Steelworkers said it met with striking Voisey's Bay employees across Newfoundland and Labrador to present the company's latest offer, which the union earlier described as "conciliatory."
A vote on the company's offer was taken at every meeting and it was rejected by 100 per cent of workers each time, the union said.
"The clear message is that the company needs to be talking to the workers' bargaining committee and must negotiate a fair deal," stated Steelworkers staff representative Boyd Bussey.