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Hudbay and a pair of local unions representing Hudbay employees have come to terms on a new agreement.
The company announced Sept. 27 that new collective agreements between it and the final two union groups it had not previously - United Steelworkers Locals 7106 and 9338 - had been reached. Agreements with four other unions were reached last summer.
“This completes the collective bargaining process with all six of the company’s unions in Manitoba,” reads the Hudbay news release.
The deals with both USW chapters, as with the other union organizations, will be in effect for 42 months and will be up for renewal or renegotiation in 2025. USW 7106 members voted to ratify the new agreement in a pair of votes earlier this month - Sept. 14-15 in Flin Flon and Sept. 13-15 in Snow Lake. What percentage of union members had voted for or against the agreement is not known.
Terms of the agreements have not been released, either by any local unions or by Hudbay. When asked by The Reminder, a Hudbay spokesperson did not provide terms of the agreement, saying that information about how the agreement would affect Hudbay personnel would not be provided by the company “until closer to the closure date” of the company’s Flin Flon operations.
“We are pleased to have reached new three-and-a-half year collective agreements with all six of our unions in Manitoba. The new collective agreements appropriately meet the needs of both union members and the company, as reflected by the high acceptance votes,” reads a Hudbay statement to The Reminder.
“Finalizing our labour contract is an important step that allows us to set the stage for the transition of operations in Manitoba and will prepare our employees to make informed decisions as we get closer to the transition. We do not anticipate being able to provide additional details about personnel until closer to the closure date.”
The company also did not comment on how or if the union agreements would impact the pending closure of Hudbay’s Flin Flon operations. As of earlier this year, the company still plans to wind down operations in Flin Flon, including halting production at 777 mine, the zinc plant and oxygen plant and putting the facility’s tailings pond facility and concentrator on “care and maintenance”, by the end of the second quarter of 2022 - June 30 at the latest. Plans released by Hudbay in fall 2020 show that the company plans to go from having around 785 workers in Flin Flon to around 50 post-closure in 2023, while increasing jobs in Snow Lake from 505 to 730 over the same time period.
