Clearly Vale has a stockpile they can rely on and the Thompson operation has been ratcheted up in anticipation of a strike in Sudbury.
However this set of negotiations is an attempt by the company to get a contract that allows for improved productivity and cost cutting.
I believe that we would be in exactly the same situation if the economy was not in recession and the price of nickel was over $10.
Over the years the previous operators of the Company have allowed themselves to be held at ransom by the Union with the result that the contract language adversly affected productivity.
The Company was almost as badly run as the Government.
Say what you will about foreign ownership, this is the first time I have personally seen a professional attempt to make the company more efficient through good collective bargaining.
Don't get me wrong, I believe workers should get a good days pay for a good days work. However it has been along time since the average worker at Inco actually put in a good days work.
Does this not sound like the Government????
I will not go into the details of the old agreement but if you saw some of the girations the Company had to go through simply to fill a job opening or hire a new employee, you would laugh. It made labour and training costs artificially high. It had nothing to do with paying a fair wage.
The old Nickel bonus was so high that even the people that cleaned the lunch rooms were earning over $100,000. I suspect there are a lot of people in Canada that have a lot more skill than an Inco worker that don't make that kind of money.
I read the company's proposed contract today and it is a vast improvement over the previous one from many points of view. Of course the union is not happy because for the first time in history they are not setting the agenda. Vale Inco will not be held for ransom as was the norm in the past.
As one 30 year old Inco employee told me recently, times have changed and it is a new economy today. He referred to the situation at GM and Crysler.
When I asked him if he would accept the new contract he said yes...we can not expect to continue to get such rich contracts in the future.
It was encouarging to hear that today's young workers are so well informed and mature. We are used to a culture of militancy. The old work force was uneducated and followed the union like sheep. Today's workers all have a college or university education and see the big picture and are more realistic.
Perhaps there is hope for Canada after all. If only the Government work force would learn the same lesson.
