The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Jonathon Naylor Editor Unionized HudBay workers in Flin Flon and Snow Lake will vote Friday on a new contract that is already being panned as 'below standard.' USW Local 7106, the largest union at the company, announced last week it had reached a tentative deal with HudBay. Terms were not immediately available. 'I appreciate the efforts (that) both sides, Karl (Austman) from our side and his team, and the bargaining committee from the unions put forward,' said HudBay CEO David Garofalo. 'I know it's always a very arduous effort, the whole bargaining process, and I think everybody's acted in good faith and I'm confident that the agreement that we came together on 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.' Garofalo was responding to statements from a union bargaining committee member during last week's ceremony to announce all operations across HudBay Minerals would now be known only as HudBay. 'We just (came) to an agreement through bargaining and our membership is going to meet on Friday to pass this,' the worker, who did not identify himself, told Garofalo. While the worker described the tentative deal as better than previous contracts, he said area HudBay employees still have a contract that is 'substantially lower than anybody else in Canada that I can see' in terms of mining. 'We understand that your company's not hurting, but we are, and as you can see driving up and down Flin Flon, the community's hurting,' the worker said, adding that the new contract is 'a below-standard agreement.' But Garofalo said HudBay is 'one of the few companies' that offers profit-sharing to employees on a consistent basis. 'We do share the fruits of our success...so if we do better as a company, employees do better as well,' he said, speaking from the stage of the R.H. Channing Auditorium. Rumour denied Garofalo denied rumours the rebranding of HudBay would impact the Flin Flon-Snow Lake profit-sharing agreement by allowing local earnings to be offset by losses elsewhere within the company. 'The terms of our profit-sharing remain intact,' he said. 'What we do in Peru or elsewhere really has no bearing on profit-sharing formulas up here.' In terms of the tentative deal, Local 7106 had informational meetings for employees scheduled for yesterday in Flin Flon and today in Snow Lake. Voting on the deal will take place in both communities between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. this Friday. The last contract between HBMS and its workers, a three-year deal that expired with the arrival of 2012, gave employees raises of 2.5 per cent each year. That deal also boosted the defined pension plan by $1.50 per month per year of service in each of the three years, bringing the pension up to $49.50 per month per year of service. At the time, Local 7106 said it also 'bargained better language to retain its members for the 777 Mine to replace long-hole contract drillers.' And at Trout Lake Mine, the union said contract miners would be replaced by workers laid off from Snow Lake's Chisel North Mine. In this latest round of negotiations, union leaders were adamant about reclaiming their right to strike, something they forfeited in the late 1990s under pressure from Anglo American, which then owned HBMS. The tentative contract comes at a pivotal time for HudBay and its workers as the company prepares to shutter the Trout Lake and Chisel North mines this year but reopen the Lalor and Reed mines in the coming years.
