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March 1, 2012 - No. 27 Alma Workers Versus Rio Tinto Rio Tinto's Campaign of Lies and Disinformation   Alma
Workers
Versus
Rio Tinto Alma Workers Versus Rio Tinto Rio Tinto's Campaign of Lies and DisinformationRio Tinto, in pursuit of its disinformation campaign against the workers and the United Steelworkers which represents them, published a press release on the webpage for the Alma smelter entitled, "The Conflict Benefits No One." Rio Tinto turns truth on its head by portraying itself as the victim of the workers' "intransigence." It would have us believe that the work stoppage caused by the lockout of 780 Alma workers and any resulting damage is the sole responsibility of the union and its members. The Steelworkers are to be considered troublemakers while worldwide, Rio Tinto is a caring and responsible corporate citizen.
Let's continue. The press release says, "The purpose of the Alma plant is to manufacture aluminum products and when two-thirds of the tanks are inactive, that's 280,000 tons of aluminum annually that will not be produced and will not generate value." Hooray for Rio Tinto's lucidity. It therefore recognizes that it is the workers who create the wealth and without their work there is no aluminum or profits. The 780 workers are therefore the most valuable asset to sustain the company. So why the lockout, Rio Tinto? It was you who closed the plant, not the workers. The workers reported for work on December 31 before you locked them out. You're the one to blame for loss of income and production, no one else. The text continues. "That's why, for three months, Rio Tinto Alcan did everything possible to try to avoid this conflict. The offers submitted were rejected on two occasions by the union and its members, and the union then decided to break off negotiations. Since 1995, Rio Tinto Alcan has negotiated, without labour disputes and prior to deadlines, more than 70 collective agreements for its Quebec facilities [sic -- Rio Tinto only acquired Alcan in 2007]. Alma is the first labour dispute to occur in more than 15 years for the company worldwide, but the United Steelworkers has engaged in more than 70 conflicts during the same period in Quebec alone."
This is an amazing statement when one considers that the
success of the international solidarity with the Alma workers is
precisely because of the way Rio Tinto treats its workers around the
world. (See TML
Daily, February 16, 2012 - No. 19 on the recent
disputes in Australia (attempts to prevent unionization), California
(lockout of borax miners) and elsewhere.) And that's not counting
Alcan's own criminal history worldwide before it merged with Rio Tinto.
But one can assume that Rio Tinto doesn't want to take ownership of
Alcan's history, just its acquisition of cheap hydro-electricity and
its aluminum
plants
built by the Quebec workers. The press release is no doubt referring to
the
"conflicts" in Jonquière, Arvida and elsewhere, where the
company didn't "provoke" any "conflicts," it simply wanted to
throw workers out on the street, abandon the communities to their fate
and seize the hydro-electric rights. The workers have always opposed
these moves as they are doing once again in this case. According to Rio Tinto executives, the monopoly wants nothing more than to produce aluminum, while the producers of aluminum in Alma are responsible for the production stoppage. So why the conflict now? What happened? Why lock out the workers even before the end of their collective agreement? There are things Rio Tinto does not say in its press release. Namely that its offensive against the Alma workers is only the beginning of a worldwide offensive to try to recover the purchase price of Alcan off the backs of its employees. This is part of its restructuring and its objective to lower the "costs of production," i.e., to transfer to itself a larger part of the added-value the workers produce.
Rio Tinto accuses the United Steelworkers of causing over 70 labour disputes in Quebec since 1995. That's simply not true. According to Rio Tinto's self-serving definition, labour disputes occur when unions refuse to agree to extortion schemes in place of negotiations. The reality is that it is not the unions causing anarchy and disorder in the world, but interimperialist collusion and contention for sources of raw materials, cheap labour, zones for the export of capital and spheres of influence. By turning such an obvious truth upside down it directly criminalizes the entire working class and its fight to defend workers' rights. The workers' opposition must seriously discuss this type of political position taken by Rio Tinto and other monopolies. It is far from innocuous. It represents the desire of the monopolies, in this period following the collapse of the postwar social contract, to eliminate what's left of the workers' rights, including the right to bargain collective agreements in good faith. It's the "take it or leave it" dictate that the rich and ruling circles in Quebec want to impose. According to this dictate the workers must submit or suffer the consequences. This must not pass! Support the just struggle of the Alma workers for the
recognition of the rights of the working class! Reject Rio Tinto's lies
and disinformation! (Translated from original French by TML
Daily.)  Los Angeles, California, February 22, 2012 (Métallos)
Alma Worker Explains What's at StakeTML Daily is posting below an op-ed item by an Alma worker originally published in Le Quotidien, February 21, 2012, entitled "An Inside Look at the Conflict." ***Do people understand what's at stake in the labour dispute with Rio Tinto Alcan in Alma? I'm not sure! I will try to explain.
Personally, I will retire in six years. I only have to accept the offers and bide my time. My work is guaranteed, my pension plan is almost guaranteed as well. Why complain? What people don't seem to understand is that I'm not fighting for myself, but for future generations. People think we don't want any subcontractors. I have nothing against subcontractors -- they are family men who have the right to live like the rest of us. On the contrary, they have no protection, no pension funds and they do the same work as me, in worse conditions. If, unfortunately, they hurt themselves, they lose their jobs not long after returning to work. We've never kicked out a subcontractor and we've never claimed their jobs. There always have been and always will be subcontractors. But neither do we want to lose quality jobs for our children and those of the subcontractors. [The question is] what should be the minimum level of employment? It's not about being against subcontracting, but opposing this company that wants to reduce quality jobs all across Quebec. Let me explain. Currently, we are 780 workers earning an average of $75,000 per year. They want to replace each worker that retires with a subcontractor at $15, $16 or $17 per hour. In a few years many will retire and they want to reduce our numbers to about 200 or 250. (Where's the balance of power for future negotiations?) What we want is simply to preserve our gains for the region. What we are experiencing today during the lockout, the drop in consumption [in the local economy], will be our daily reality in five to ten years if the population does not wake up.
Remember not long ago, when RTA bought Alcan, they demanded that their suppliers reduce costs, and it was never enough. Once they've succeeded in breaking the union, who will be able to fight them? So they'll demand that the subcontractors reduce salaries. Who will be able to eat in restaurants, buy new cars, snowmobiles, ATVs etc? So the small businesses will also pay the price. It will lead to an overall impoverishment of the region. If salaries are lowered, what will keep the youth in the region? The exodus of youth will be even greater. It's all linked. Who wins? Only here in Quebec, does RTA have several companies. The outcome of this fight will affect Quebec as a whole for decades to come. The stakes are really high for RTA. Why would a company accept to lose a million dollars in production profits per day? Because they have more to gain in the long run. If they're ready to close their most profitable plant, what will happen to the others in the not so distant future?
RTA talks about globalization and says that if they want to remain competitive they have to fight. That's hogwash. Their objective is to make a 40 per cent net income. I don't know of many businesses in the region with that kind of margin. All the Alcan enterprises that they bought that couldn't attain that goal were sold or are for sale. If you want to see what's coming in the next few years, you need only look at what happened in forestry, and it's exactly the same with energy. When I started working in forestry in 1978, we thought at the time that there was enough wood for the next 100 to 150 years. Thirty years later there isn't enough for the paper companies to operate unless they demand guarantees before investing. Remember, it's not us who are on strike, they're the ones who brutally locked us out. We even went to the gate at midnight on January 1 to claim our jobs and they locked us out. It was never the employees who wanted to leave or refused to work. They hired 150 strong-arms, they went up to the employees at work, held out a garbage bag containing their clothes and told them to take them and kicked them out of the plant without even permitting them to decontaminate. They said there were pressure tactics, that bins were lit on fire. Come on. I work at the casting carousel and have to change the bin on average five times a run, and usually two of those times the bin is on fire. It's because we work with material that's between 800 to 965 degrees Celsius, not to mention the chemical reactions. If we wanted to use pressure tactics, our attack wouldn't be on stuff like that but directly on production. You've never heard the company once complain that production was reduced. Quite the opposite, it increased in the last few days, because management chose to empty the tanks while there were a lot of workers. They've been threatening to lock us out for a year now. I have a job I like with good working conditions, why would I mess with that? It's absurd. I've worked for this company for nearly 25 years and never caused any damage, I wouldn't start just before retirement. Currently the company owes $850 million to our pension fund and it refuses to immediately refund it or make the necessary arrangements, this at a time when metal is in very high demand. What will happen when demand falls? Not to mention that if the number of participants in the pension fund goes down, we'll lose because there will be no one left to contribute. This outlines our struggle.
The advantages granted by the government to [Alcan] allowed its shareholders to make more money by selling the company the following year. As the last straw, we learned through the denunciations of aluminum workers that, in a secret deal between Quebec City and Rio Tinto, the new acquisition could benefit from Alcan's continuity agreement, while retaining the freedom to close its plants without punitive sanctions from the government Today people have a choice: watch the train go by and lose everything or get on and win this provincial fight. Francis Ouellet (Translated from original French by TML Daily; Photos: STAA, L. Wiatrowski) Halifax Transit Strike Making Claims on Society "In This Economy"  Striking Halifax Transit workers rally on February 14, 2012. (Media Coop) No doubt every Canadian has heard the phrase "in this economy." It is used to explain why we should accept concessions, rollbacks, inflation, unemployment and job insecurity. We are even expected to accept that "in this economy" our claims on society will not be met and cannot be met. Apparently, there are more pressing needs from our economy than meeting the needs of those that produce the wealth in society or provide a valuable service! A case in point is the transit strike in Halifax, which began February 2. The Amalgamated Transit Union Local 508 and the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) are at loggerheads over scheduling -- with the HRM attributing the bus drivers and overtime as too much of a "cost." They are going so far as to say that "the public is being held ransom" and Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 508 is "holding [your] transit system hostage." Indeed, what the HRM is demanding is to have the ability to outsource any part of the system that is not part of the regular transit schedule -- which includes the ferries, maintenance and Access-A-Bus -- what the ATU says amounts to almost 200 jobs. In other words, the HRM is looking to auction off this public service to private interests at which time we will indeed be held ransom to the interests of some for-profit corporation. What is happening here is part of the arrangements being brought in on a larger scale in Canada -- which is to politicize private interests, depoliticize public interests and destroy public assets. In the scenario being played out between the HRM and transit workers, the HRM is claiming that the skyrocketing costs of providing transit service, including high overtime costs, are a justification for its demand for concessions and outsourcing. It even began a campaign saying that it is the taxpayers who will have to pay and it is the taxpayers' money they are trying to save! All for our sakes! How nice. What they don't explain is that the problem of overtime is due in large part to service and management demands. Also, that any for-profit service would be a complete drain as the cost of service would be higher and those profits would be lost to wherever the for-profit service provider decides. In other words, HRM is claiming it is providing a solution but in fact is just demanding concessions from those who provide the service and not resolving any problem at all! The fact that there is truth in HRM's claim that there is difficulty in providing mass transit in the region does not justify their perverse logic that the ATU should accept losing control over scheduling (seniority rules), more difficult working conditions and privatization. In fact, it is in the public interest to recognize the providers of transit service and their rightful first claim on the value they produce as part of providing these services to the people and improving them! So, it is true that "in this economy" it is the workers, our public healthcare, transit, schools and all other institutions that are being held ransom to the demands of the monopolies and those who do not recognize the need for a new direction of the economy that favours the people and puts their claims on it in first place. Any serious solutions to the problem of properly funding public services must begin with the recognition of the need for a human-centred alternative and a new direction for the economy. Forget "in this economy." The issue is "Whose Economy? Our Economy!"
Campaign to Destroy Universal Pension Regime Government's Self-Serving
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The press release begins, "A
labour dispute does not benefit anyone and Alma is no exception."
That's an absurd claim since Rio Tinto is the one that locked the
workers out. If Alma workers had accepted Rio Tinto's new
business plan without resistance, the monopoly would have benefitted
greatly while the consequences for the workers, the City of Alma and
the
Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean region, not to mention all of Quebec, would have
been negative. On the other hand, if workers are able to block Rio
Tinto's offensive, the opposite occurs and a new situation is created.
Moreover, the origin of the labour dispute is Rio Tinto's offensive to
seize a larger portion of the value
created by workers at their expense. Accordingly, Rio Tinto may
actually benefit from this conflict. Its assertion is therefore false.
Nothing is said about the
conditions that exist in
other plants worldwide. However, we know that on December 31, 2011, 150
company mercenaries handed the Alma workers their belongings in garbage
bags and brutally expelled them from the plant. Why? Because the
Alma workers refused to submit
to Rio Tinto's dictate. So, what does this suggest about how Rio Tinto
treats
its employees around the world if they don't accept company dictate?
As a start you should know
that the fight is not for
salaries, because those have already been negotiated. I already know my
raise for this year. The stakes are much higher.
Personally I think it's
better to suffer a bit today than
for the rest of our lives. The quicker the population rises up, the
quicker the contract will be signed. If you do the math you'll quickly
see that there's about $60 million less in wages in the region, leading
to the population's impoverishment. They say our
jobs are guaranteed, this is true, but not the positions, the location
and certainly not the next generation of workers.
The government is giving
them $500 million in
electricity benefits per year and a $400 million interest-free loan,
which largely covers our salaries. That means it costs them nothing in
salaries and they're making even more money with electricity. And its
the Quebec population as a whole that is paying for this.
There's not a single small or medium-sized business where the
government pays 100 per cent of the employees' salaries.
The people must absolutely
wake up because in ten years,
we'll be poorer than ever. When Charest modified Bill 45 of the labour
code, it brought us back 50 years, to the companies' benefit. Don't
forget that these companies (the Quebec Employers
Council) are financing Charest. Look at the last few years,
how many businesses left Quebec or negotiated lower salaries and then
gave their executives millions in bonuses.
Immediately after he
announced that public pension
benefits would be cut, Harper and the monopoly media launched their
political spin. The Globe and Mail
published an hysterical column with the headline, "The War Against the
Young." This column said, "The reduction
in the elderly poverty rate over the past few decades has been called
the major success story of Canadian social policy in the 20th century.
Now, our biggest social problem is not how to redistribute more money
to the needy old. It's how to protect everyone else from the tsunami of
geezers that's about to crash on
our shores and suck the wealth of future generations out to sea. The
war against seniors' pension reforms is a war against the young."
It is very significant that
both the politicians and the
media in their spin on pension reform attack the universality of
programs like OAS/GIS. They say OAS/GIS should be a kind of welfare
doled out to only the poorest of the poor based on whatever can be
spared
from the funds the rich are accumulating for their
"prosperity and growth" agenda. They oppose universality because it
moves society towards the recognition of the rights of all, such as the
right of seniors to retire in dignity and security and because it puts
on government the responsibility to ensure rights. Political
representatives of the rich reject any responsibility
for society and uphold their right to put the entire resources of
society at the disposal of their global competition.