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.
Nickel giant Vale and its employees in Thompson have come to a tentative agreement on a new contract. This was announced Monday, just three days before the existing three-year deal is due to expire. The United Steel-workers planned to hold two meetings Monday to present the offer and "express its unanimous support" of the deal, Vale and union officials said in a joint news release. Members will have two days to review and consider the offer. The ratification vote will take place tomorrow. If ratified, the deal in Thompson will break a pattern of two long and bitter labour disputes, both now resolved, in Sudbury and Voisey's Bay. After almost a year on the picket line between July 2009 and July 2010, striking Steelworkers in Sudbury and Port Colborne, Ont., voted about 75 per cent to ratify a five-year deal with Vale. The last major labour dispute at Vale's Thompson operations was 12 years ago Ð an 11-week lockout by the company of unionized employees. Thompson Steel-workers had voted 95.3 per cent in favour of giving their negotiating committee a strike mandate Sept. 8. Seeking a strike mandate late in contact talks is an important but fairly routine part of the collective bargaining process, aimed at giving the union negotiating committee the strongest hand possible while talks go down to the wire, but not necessarily indicating one way or the other the likelihood of an actual strike. Ð Jonathon Naylor, with files from the Thompson Citizen.
