Rio Tinto Workers on Strike in Kitimat, BC
Workers Stand Up to Rio Tinto'sAnti-Social Offensive and Nation-Wrecking
Since July 25 at 12:01 am, the 950 workers at Rio Tinto's aluminum
smelting plant in Kitimat and the Kemano Powerhouse which feeds the
smelter with hydro power have been on strike for their demands and
against the concessionary demands of Rio Tinto. Of the members of
Unifor Local 2301 who took part in the strike vote 100 per
cent were in favour.
The local reports on its website and a facebook page, Unifor
Kitimat, that workers entered into negotiations with Rio Tinto for a
new collective agreement with demands that they consider important for
the integrity of the union as an organized collective that can
effectively defend all workers, active and retired.
A July 27 post on their facebook page reads: "Unifor Local 2301
has been on strike at Rio Tinto Alcan since July 25, 2021. We are
fighting for our Retirees, good jobs, pensions, benefits, health &
safety, our future and our Community. We believe that Rio Tinto Alcan
is taking unfair advantage of the resources that the citizens of BC
provide them. This facility was built on the backs of our retirees and
we will not agree to leave them out in the cold. Young workers from our
communities deserve to earn the wages and benefits that our Union has
negotiated, not this two tier contractor system of inferior wages that
Rio has created. Come to the picket lines and support the local
workers that support our community."
A few days before the strike began, Unifor issued a statement which says in part:
"In talks with the company, the union has proposed reasonable and
long-overdue changes to workers' retirement income and benefit levels,
all of which have remained unchanged for more than a decade. Notably,
the union is seeking better retirement security for younger workers by
moving newer employees from the company's Defined
Contribution plan to a Defined Benefit plan.
"Negotiations are also focused on a backlog of more than 300
grievances, some dating back more than four years, created by the
company's unfair and unsafe use of contractors to perform union
members' work and its refusal to hire full-time workers leading to an
over reliance on temporary employees. Rio Tinto has been unwilling to
address
their aggressive, expanding use of contractors, making the issue a
focal point in negotiations."
Unifor also points out that "despite a global drop in aluminum
prices from April to June of last year, 2020 was Rio Tinto's third most
profitable year in two decades with net revenues exceeding $9.8 billion
(USD)."
Workers report that Rio Tinto is running the smelter in a
dangerously lean way, reluctant to hire full-time workers, pushing the
current full-time workers to their limit, overloading them and
exhausting them with overtime. It is also violating the current
collective agreement in hiring more contract workers who work side by
side with the
workers who are members of the local, doing the same work for much
lower wages and with working conditions inferior to those the union
workers have negotiated over the decades.
When workers gave their negotiating committee a mandate to put
forward their demands, Rio Tinto Alcan dismissed them out of hand.
It presented its own with an emphasis on imposing two-tier
conditions.
Following the start of the strike Rio Tinto's management launched a
public attack on the union, accusing the local leadership of
misinforming the workers and the public about the company's demands.
Management claimed that they are not proposing a reduction in
post-retirement or survivor benefits.
The union also went public and proved, with direct quotes from Rio
Tinto's written offer, that this is precisely what the company is
demanding. Among other things, Rio Tinto is demanding that, under
the
Vision Care Plan, no coverage for eye care be offered at
retirement to
employees hired on and after July 24 , 2021. Under the Dental Care
Plan,
no
dental coverage would be offered in retirement for employees hired
after July 24, 2021. If a retired worker dies before their 70th
birthday, eye and dental care coverage for their
surviving
spouse would continue for an additional 48 months. According
to the
company's proposal this coverage would not be provided to spouses of
workers hired
after July 24, 2021. As well, according to the company's offer,
temporary workers, who currently need to work 1,500 hours to get
benefits, would now have to work 2,080 hours to qualify. It
is also demanding that
temporary workers who worked less than 1,040 straight time hours in
a
six-month period would lose their benefits for the next six months.
Workers are waging the fight for all current active and retired
workers and for future generations of workers and the well-being of the
communities.  
Unions, local business and community organizations bring support to the Rio Tinto workers' picket line, August 3, 2021.By
pushing forward their demands in defence of the dignity and rights of
all workers and their community, workers are challenging Rio Tinto's
dictate. The company sees Kitimat and the region, its natural and human
resources, as an outpost in its global empire in which it can command a
global labour force which is disposable. Almost all the aluminum that
is produced at the Kitimat smelter is shipped to foreign markets,
mainly to the United States, Japan and south Korea. Alcan,
before it was purchased by Rio Tinto in 2007, made no bones about the
fact that it built its plant in Kitimat to have access to the water
resources of the region which it needed to produce electricity for its
aluminum production. The BC government gave Alcan land and water rights
so that it could build a dam and reservoir to divert the flow of the
Nechako River to feed the plant with hydro power. These
were extended to Rio Tinto despite court challenges by First
Nations and regional governments based on Indigenous title and rights
and environmental concerns. The Kemano Powerhouse
generates continuous low-cost hydro power that is sent to the smelter
via an 80-km transmission line. The Kemano Powerhouse is connected to
the Nechako reservoir by a tunnel that is more than 65 years old. In
2017, Rio Tinto announced an investment of CAD$600 million for a second
tunnel.
Both the federal and the BC governments signed agreements with
Alcan, which were extended to Rio Tinto, which allow the company to
divert water to produce what is called "excess power" that is then sold
to BC Hydro. It was estimated that in 2015 alone Rio Tinto made $130
million on the sale of "excess power."
With their strike, the Rio Tinto workers in Kitimat are challenging
the anti-worker, anti-social dictate of Rio Tinto as well as the
refusal of BC and federal governments to uphold the Indigenous peoples'
hereditary rights. The future of the workers and people of BC lies in
the fight for the rights of all. Only they can change the direction of
the economy so that it favours their interests, not those of an
international financial oligarchy that could not care less about the
people or the country.
Workers' Forum calls on all workers to firmly stand with the Kitimat workers and provide them with all the support they can.
This article was published in
August 9, 2021 - No. 67
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/WF2021/Articles/WO08671.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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