Lake Superior Mining News

Regardless of whether it’s true or not, Rio Tinto always seems to know what to say.

Rio Tinto boasts to the public, gullible politicians and job hopefuls in Michigan that the company is doing well financially, in order to lend the impression that the company’s Eagle Mine, in the Huron Mountains of the Upper Peninsula, is an inevitability.

In Boron, California, home of Rio Tinto’s vast US Borax operations, workers are being sold an entirely different tale.  To the nearly 600 workers at Local 30 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, AFL-CIO, fighting for respect and decent working conditions at California’s largest open pit mine, company brass is claiming they are in hard times.  While overseas investors are courted and assured that billions more than expected will be available for new project development in 2010 and southern California business leaders are informed that “the financial position of the company is very strong,” workers in Boron are told there is a need for cutbacks.  It’s all part of a broader effort to break I.L.W.U. Local 30 and force workers to sign a weak contract.

The union has received support from workers in Maritime Union of Australia, the Construction Forestry and Mining Union, Mining and Energy Division, as well as mine workers’ unions in Denmark, Poland, Turkey and India.  US Representatives Linda Sanchez, Stephen Lynch and Michael Michaud from the Labor and Working Families Caucus, as well as Representative George Miller, also expressed support for the workers.

In an October 15 statement the Maritime Union and CFMEU said:

“While our Unions have had a long and bitter experience with Rio Tinto and their anti-union, anti-workforce tactics and policies here in Australia, we continue to be amazed at the way in which multi national corporations like Rio Tinto, demand and expect working men and women to sacrifice hard won conditions of employment in order to prop up already bloated corporate profits.”

In a letter to Gary Goldberg, Rio Tinto US Borax President and CEO, Darrell Steinberg, from the California Senate and Karen Bass, Speaker of the California State Assembly, warned the company that they had “been informed that employees who have spoken up on job related issues have been reassigned, in apparent retaliation for exercising their right to free speech on the job.  This gives the impression that management at US Borax is intentionally increasing the adversarial nature of its relationship with its employees and their union.”

Poland’s Trade Unions Alliance wrote Rio Tinto CEO Tom Albanese to express concern that Rio Tinto was contradicting its “own policies concerning sustainable development” by showing a willingness to “punish the workers and their community which have been responsible for [the company’s] success” in Boron and was “seeking to weaken the trade union.” 

The letter noted company demands that “are unjustified and draconian” and maintained that “the company proposes to dramatically reduce worker rights, provided under the current agreement; terminate the current pension plan; drastically increase costs for dental and medical benefits; eliminate leave for sick workers; take away bidding rights of older workers; and offer no wage increases over 8 years while cutting wages if productivity falls.”

“Near slave conditions” in Namibia

Rio Tinto has an infamous labor rights record around the world.  The compay’s Rossing Uranium Mine, a joint venture with the government of Iran, operated in violation of the United National Council for Namibia’s “Decree No. 1” and various UN and International Criminal Court sanctions related to apartheid South Africa’s illegal occupation of the country.  A UN report at the time noted that workers at the mine operated under “near slave conditions.”  The twenty million member International Federation of Chemical, Mine, Energy and General Worker’s Unions accused Rio Tinto of racially segregating mine workers and paying black workers less than their white counterparts.

“Targeted retaliation” at Kennecott Utah Copper

Back in the US, at the company’s most profitable mine, Rio Tinto has long tried circumventing US labor law, in attempts to bust the union at the Bingham Canyon copper mine.

In 2003, the United Steelworks of America (USWA), which represents 600,000 workers, and the Kennecott Coordinated Bargaining Committee, representing local workers in five unions were outraged when Rio Tinto subsidiary, Kennecott, in a show of force to intimidate unionized workers, abruptly layed off 120 workers, including many military veterans and one worker on active duty in Iraq, only two days following the settlement of a six-year labor agreement.

“Judging by the manner and timing of these layoffs, we can only conclude that this company has exercised targeted retaliation against union members and union-represented workers for exercising their legal and constitutional rights: in violation of the two-day old agreement, in apparent violation of labor law, and in violation of the most basic rules of human conduct and decency,” said Leo Gerard, International President of the USWA.

In defiance of US labor law, senior workers eligible for voluntary retirement bonuses under the new agreement were escorted from their jobs by Rio Tinto, alongside union leaders and injured workers receiving worker’s compensation.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 16th, 2009 at 4:43 am and is filed under economy, Kennecott-Rio Tinto, workers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.