What the Workers Have to SayWhen the Trudeau government handed over public funds to Algoma Steel in July, to their credit, United Steelworkers Local 2251 did not attend the photo op. Trudeau announced that the money was to help Algoma transition to electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmaking. Workers' Forum spoke to Mike Da Prat, president of USW Local 2251 to get his opinion on the deal. Mike Da Prat: The agreement with the government was reached without any consultation with the workers. We have collective agreement language that says we are supposed to be involved in a consultative manner from the very beginning. The federal government should have said we need to talk to the workers because they have been subjected to Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) bankruptcy protection three times. They owed us that. Why is the government jumping in without any thought about requiring the company to, at a minimum, protect jobs? There are some of us that are here now that have been through all three of those CCAAs.
This process is not like an on and off switch, that we are an integrated steel mill today, then that is switched off and the EAF is switched on. That is not how it works. There is going to be a transition period. They will need to run both processes simultaneously for a period. New people are going to come in to get trained in the new process. The older workers who are trained in the current process cannot be left out in the cold to be gotten rid of when the EAF is running at full speed. They will need a job. We are talking about a large number of workers. That could be a mess and the company wants to embroil us in this so that it can say that we were involved when they did not consult us about the project. Statements were made that we are going green, yet there is no evidence for that conclusion. If we want to talk about going green, what benchmark are we using? Are we using calculations of emissions made based on when Algoma was new? Are they measuring the actual emissions that they are producing now, when there are a number of pieces of equipment that are not optimally maintained? We are having a hard time keeping the environmental equipment maintained now. With the decision that has been made that we are going EAF, the chances of their pouring money into the existing equipment to prevent pollution are zero. Are we going to be belching even more pollution in the short term? We were not given an option to even have a discussion about why we are not upgrading our existing equipment. Now, when they say the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions that will be achieved by this project is equal to what is produced by 900,000 passenger vehicles, I do not think that they have actually measured anything. If we are talking about a theoretical gross emission reduction of x, is that really the net result if you have increased diesel emissions because scrap for the EAF is now going to be brought in by transport? You also have to take into account that increase in emissions. At Algoma, we have been through three CCAAs. We were presented by management with decisions we were told were for long-term solutions to our problems. Whatever management says is for our benefit, it is not. They make big money, they accumulate debt, they do not pay down the pensions and then they can't carry on. They can't pay what they owe, they say. Then the reset takes place at the expense of workers and taxpayers, and then we go through it all again. They are telling us that this new project will be good for the long term. That is the exact same thing that they have told us each time. Some of the people that were here through all of that are still here. Not the CEOs —- they moved on. In my opinion, this was a photo-op for election purposes. The company gets the money and the government gets the photo-op. That is the trade-off. That is why we did not participate.
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Right
now Algoma Steel is making money and they have decided that with the
government funding, this is the route that they are taking. What the
government should have done was contact us, hear our concerns. What we
could have done with the loans as leverage was get some guarantees on
work assignments and how movement of workers
within the changed operation will take place. That did not happen.
Minister Champagne was there at the announcement. He has no worries
about job reductions but we do. We didn't attend the announcement
because according to us it was a mere photo-op between the government
and the company.