Solidarity? Whatever...

Recent Falconbridge strike shows the weakness of the CAW's "go it alone" strategy

By: Mick Lowe

SUDBURY: By the time it ended on the evening of February 20th, the strike at Falconbridge Ltd. here had become one of the nation's most closely-watched labour disputes.
  The nearly seven-month work stoppage by 1,250 hardrock miners, mill and smelter workers was widely regarded as a battle of heavyweights, pitting Mine Mill Local 598 of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) against the world's third-largest nickel miner.
  To say this company has deep pockets is to put it mildly. Falconbridge is 55 percent owned by Noranda, which is 40 percent owned by Edper Brascan. The latter corporation has assets totaling $11 billion Canadian.
 

The Falconbridge showdown cost the CAW close to $10 million in strike pay alone

  The CAW, on the other hand, is hardly chopped liver. With 200,000 members and a sizeable war chest/strike fund of its own, the CAW is Canada's largest private-sector union, and a good thing, too; the Falconbridge showdown cost the CAW close to $10 million in strike pay alone.
  Until 1993, Local 598 was an independent, stand-alone local, the last surviving remnant of the once-mighty Mine Mill and Smelter Workers, and direct descendant of the legendary Western Federation of Miners, the union of Joe Hill, Big Bill Haywood, and the Wobblies.
  But that small local, with its $1.5 million strike fund, would have been road kill within weeks of taking on the unholy trinity of Falconbridge/ Noranda/ Brascan. In this age of corporate globalization, size definitely matters.

Three other things we learned from this dispute:

Observation 1. A winner was hard to find
  Neither side was crowing in the wake of the settlement that ended the strike. The company failed to break the union, though it did win concessions on contract language. The union failed to hold the line on all concessions, but it did succeed in having some of the worst takeaways removed in the final agreement.
  Considering the forces arrayed against the union in the strike's dark final days - private paramilitaries, the Sudbury police, the courts, the Harris government, an ever-increasing number of scabs - Mine Mill was fortunate in the eyes of many observers to escape with any form of collective bargaining agreement.
  But the strike left the historic and scrappy little local alive and kicking - and then some. In one of their last acts of defiance before returning to work, Mine Millers voted unanimously in favour of a 12-cent-an-hour dues increase dedicated to replenishing a local strike fund that could come in handy when the new agreement expires in February, 2004.
  And, in a broader context, Mine Mill and the CAW should be applauded for mounting a handsome piece of working class resistance. Although it took nearly seven months, the strike was beginning to bite heavily into Falco's and Noranda's profitability.
  Even with its deep pockets and overwhelming advantages, Falconbridge failed to break its employees' fighting spirit or their union. Will a lesser company be tempted to follow the Falconbridge example and hire paramilitaries, run scabs, and forego millions in earnings only to settle for a less than partial victory over another union? The answer most probably is "no."

Observation 2. Buzz had left the building
  While Buzz buzz abounded around the strike, Buzz sightings were actually extremely rare. Although there was much speculation concerning Buzz Hargrove's motives/actions/role during the strike, the controversial CAW President was basically uh, somewhere else. . .
  Although he did appear in Sudbury for a brief cameo during a solidarity weekend in late January, Hargrove was a non-entity for most of the strike. In mid-October CAW strikers and their supporters were treated to the bizarre spectacle of now-Steelworkers' International President Leo Gerard addressing a CAW rally in Sudbury, while CAW President Hargrove was nowhere to be seen.
  Hargrove was spotted in Japan touring that country's auto industry for part of the strike. He also attended to his ailing mother in the Maritimes, who died late in the dispute, and he was forced to deal with the high-profile woes of Daimler Chrysler and its Canadian workforce. Although it was widely reported that Buzz would come to Sudbury to personally lead the last round of negotiations he ended up a no-show. "Scheduling conflicts," was the only explanation forthcoming from the union's Toronto HQ.
  Although Buzz haters and Buzz lovers (and you know who you are) will read much into these tea leaves, the fact is the CAW prosecuted a difficult strike quite well in Buzz's absence, except that. . .

Observation 3. Picket? Forget it!
  The Falconbridge strike sent a cautionary signal to all other Ontario unionists about the weaknesses of traditional picket line strategies in the era of Mike Harris.
  Right from the outset the company announced its intention to maintain partial production at its strikebound plants, an audacious departure from 50-plus years of union experience in Sudbury's nickel industry.
  At first the union responded with restraint, delaying, but not turning away, production vehicles, and school buses loaded with supervisory, office and technical employees (members of the Steelworkers Union) and scabs.
  Although this strategy was accompanied by much grumbling from the rank-and-file, it paid off when a Sudbury judge refused to grant the company's request for an early injunction limiting pickets.
  On the other hand production mounted, and so did picket-line discontent. In October strike leaders acceded to members' demands to step up the pressure and supply lines were shut down cold for a period of 12 days.
  This blockade gave the company the ammunition it needed for a successful injunction bid in late October, along with a demoralizing tongue lashing of the union from Sudbury Judge Patricia Hennessey, who limited the number of pickets to 20 per plant gate.
 

Due to internal labour movement friction, the Falconbridge strikers never made contact with other unions to shut down supply lines for the mill

  Once again production and vehicular traffic increased, and as Christmas approached strikers began to engage in low-intensity guerrilla activity at scab "mustering points" off company property, spiking tires, and heaving eggs at the hated school busses carrying replacement workers. Slowly but surely, the number of arrests began to mount.
  Although bloodshed was non-existent, the company and police seized on the guerilla tactics as evidence of mounting picket-line lawlessness. Matters came to a head on a solidarity weekend, January 28th and 29th, when CAW "flying squads" and members of York University's CUPE Local 3903, flushed with success in their own strike, reinforced the picket lines.
  This time the strikers and their supporters rocked a school bus and smashed a few windows and were met with local and OPP riot squads, armed with tear gas, shields and truncheons.
  The strikers were subsequently branded as "hooligans" by Sudbury Police Chief Alex McCauley, and Judge Hennessey wasted little time in granting a new company motion limiting the number of pickets to five per line.
  The next day, just as bargaining was set to resume, the company announced its intention to resume full production, with or without its striking workers. Although direct physical action, whether covert or overt, seemed only to provoke a far more powerful, and opposite, reaction, the company's tenuous and lengthy lines of supply were left virtually untouched.
  Because the Steelworkers' local at the company's new nickel mine and mill in Raglan, Quebec was not on strike, Falconbridge had feed for its strikebound Sudbury smelter. The output, or "matte," was then shipped to Norway for refining.
  That operation's unionized workforce was also not on strike, though they did leave the job for five carefully pre-arranged days as a show of international solidarity with the Sudbury strikers.
  For Falconbridge to produce during the Sudbury strike the collaboration of a half-dozen other trade unions including the Steelworkers, Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union, railway unions, longshoremen and ocean-going seamen was required.
  By the time a single pound of refined nickel was produced at the Norway refinery it had travelled some 7,000 kms - from the mines in northern Quebec to Quebec City by freighter, to Sudbury by rail, before it was returned to Quebec City where it was once again loaded aboard a deep sea freighter and then shipped to Norway.

"Unorganized" labour misses a chance
  But, like the gang that couldn't shoot straight, "organized" labour appeared powerless to interdict this truly global production. The CAW's pariah status within the Canadian Labour Congress did not help the cause.
  Union insiders concede privately that calls that should have been made to other unions to win a "hot goods" declaration were never made, for fear, and probably rightly, that they would not have been answered.
  And this may be the most important lesson of the Falconbridge strike to organized labour. In this era of just-in-time inventory and vulnerable supply lines between global business units, more, and not less solidarity is the requisite offset to an individual local's powerlessness, whether in the Mexican maquilladoras or Mike Harris's Ontario.
  While the CAW's exit from the CLC may have been based on a veneer of principle, the price will be paid by the union's own membership. After the Falconbridge strike CAW members may be forgiven for wondering whether that price is too high.

For more info: www.minemill598.com

Posted: March 05, 2001

[ Front Page ]