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Jonathon Naylor Editor The largest union at Hudbay's Flin Flon and Snow Lake division has ratified a new three-year contract that boosts wages and benefits. United Steelworkers Local 7106, which represents between 600 and 700 workers, voted 74.9 per cent in favour of a pact retroactive to Jan. 1. Specific terms were not immediately released, but workers gave up no concessions while securing more pay along with improvements to their pensions and medical coverage. 'It's a good bad contract,' said Tom Davie, president of Local 7106. 'And that's exactly what we told our membership.' Matt Winterton, the union's recording secretary, said the contract is 'good by our standards here at Hudbay.' 'Sub-par' 'But as for standards across Canada in the mining industry, it's definitely sub-par,' said Winterton. Nonetheless, Winterton called the contract, which expires at the end of 2014, the best contract negotiated by 7106 in the last 15 years. While Local 7106 has reached an agreement with Hudbay, unions representing machinists, carpenters and boilermakers have yet to sign new deals. See 'Memb...' on pg. 7 Continued from pg. 1 Steelworkers members had been working under the terms of the previous contract, which barred them from striking. That meant that during negotiations for the new contract, hitting the picket line was never an option. 'I believe if we had a right to strike, (our concerns) would have been pushed because we are so far behind in our wages and our pension (compared to the mining industry as a whole),' said Davie. Davie said the union is now stressing to members to be ready for the next round of negotiations in 2015, when striking will be a tool at their disposal. 'What we've told our members is, yeah, their wages aren't where they should be and the pensions aren't where they should be, but under the 2012 umbrella, this is what it is,' he said. 'Come 2015, our members know that if they want something, we're going to fight for it. And 2015 will be a very interesting set of negotiations.' In the shorter term, Davie said there remain six to nine 'major issues' the union will discuss with the company outside of the collective bargaining process. 'We're confident we can come to resolve on our issues,' he said. Among those issues are concerns over how workers are demoted in the event of cutbacks. Davie said when the copper smelter closed in 2010, seniority did not determine who was 'bumped' or laid off. 'They kept junior employees working and laid senior guys off and that's unacceptable,' he said. Layoff concerns Davie said he has concerns over potential layoffs when Trout Lake mine closes this summer, but he believes those workers should be able to land positions at 777, 777 North and the Reed mine near Snow Lake. 'Our position is that there better not be any layoffs and hopefully we can work with the new HR (Human Resources department) and the new person looking after HudBay in Manitoba...to avoid any such layoffs,' he said. Hudbay CEO David Garofalo recently responded to concerns over the wages in Flin Flon and Snow Lake in part by noting the company offers profit-sharing to employees. But Davie and Winterton said the profit-sharing has only amounted to about an extra 55 cents an hour since the unions secured that contractual term in 1993. 'Even with our profit-sharing and the expected high payouts that are coming with Lalor, we are still (far) behind in wages, pension and benefits,' Davie said. Appearing at the R.H. Channing Auditorium recently, before the contract was ratified, Garofalo said he was 'confident that the agreement...is one that's in the best interests of both the bargaining committee on the union side and the bargaining committee on Hudbay's behalf.' In terms of the past bumping of employees, Hudbay has denied violating any contractual terms. Davie could not comment on where negotiations stand with the three other local unions at Hudbay. 'We have our own issues and they have theirs, and that's why we got an agreement,' he said. ' We had our issues settled to the best that we thought we could get without the right to strike. And the trades (unions) have their own issues, their own local issues, that they haven't dealt with yet.' Davie said Hudbay was better to negotiate with this contract than during previous negotiations, but the company still has 'a long ways to go.' Voting took place in Flin Flon and Snow Lake last Friday, with well over half of the membership casting ballots, according to Winterton. Tumultuous Recent years have been somewhat tumultuous for Hudbay-union relations. Workers did not take kindly to the way the company handled the 2008 shutdown of its Balmat zinc mine in New Year State. According to the Watertown Daily Times, miners were gathered the morning of the closure and told they would be losing their jobs immediately. As one of those miners, James J. Hatfield, told the newspaper: 'They did it in a dirty way. We kept asking what was going on and none of them had the guts to tell us.' Balmat may be thousands of kilometres away, but HudBay's workers in Flin Flon took notice. Several months later, in January 2009, Local 7106 felt 'low-balled' by Hudbay. The union said it was not involved in the decision to temporarily close all Snow Lake operations, nor were they asked to attend the meeting where workers were informed of the move. When the smelter blew its final puff of smoke in mid-2010, the company spent significant dollars on retirement incentives while offering transfers and retraining to further minimize layoffs. But the Steelworkers still had their concerns. In March 2010 they and their fellow unions exercised their contractual right to switch to eight-hour shifts. To the unions, it was a means to save jobs amid the smelter closure, as they said more shifts necessitated more men and women on the payroll.
