From the Marquette, Michigan Mining Journal:
A small handful of participants turned out Monday night in Marquette for an event supporting the cause of about 560 U.S. Borax workers locked out of their jobs in southern California by Rio Tinto, the parent company of the Kennecott Eagle Minerals Company. Read the rest of this entry »
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Kennecott-Rio Tinto, workers, economy | Tagged: Rio Tinto, yellow dog summer, workers, economy | 
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Posted by LSMN
After slashing more than 16,000 jobs, offering more shares to investors and selling a number of assets, Rio Tinto is doing really well, reports the company’s Chief Financial Officer, Guy Elliott, only two days after the company locked out over 500 workers at its Borax mine, in southern California.
Elliott told the London press that the company might soon expand spending on new projects and possibly start buying new projects.
“We are very happy with the progress of the recapitalization since June,” Elliott said. “We have lots of organic options and this gives us the flexibility to progress those if they require funding.”
Some are even speculating that Rio Tinto may soon have more cash than it can deal with. Read the rest of this entry »
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The company reviled by mine workers around the world for its union-busting activities is at it again. On Sunday Rio Tinto locked out roughly 540 unionized workers at its huge Borax mine in Boron, California and replaced them with a non-unionized workforce. Members of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union Local 30 are now organizing to ensure that workers and their families will have enough food and other necessities while they are out of work.
“People here are tough and willing to see this through to the end,” union spokesman Craig Merrilees said. “It’s not just about Rio Tinto but all the companies doing this to people across the country. In this little town people are drawing the line.” Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by LSMN
After addressing pollution concerns at the former Cliffs-Dow site, the Marquette City Commission took public comment on a proposed anti-ballot initiative resolution [read Marquette City Resolution Opposing Water Mining Ballot Initiative]. The “MiWater” ballot initiative would place greater restrictions on metallic sulfide and uranium mining activities in Michigan. Despite offering unanimous support for the resolution, commissioners presented a fairly diverse argument in their opposition to the MiWater ballot initiative. The majority of citizens providing public comment outlined various arguments in support of the ballot effort.
New commissioner David Saint-Onge questioned why the City was considering the resolution.
“As a new guy on the commission, I’m not so sure why this issue comes before us, to be honest with you, why we’re taking the amount of time that we’ve taken to address this issue – not that it’s not important,” said Saint-Onge. “I do believe that there are some portions of the resolution that’s being offered this evening that are unnecessarily inflammatory.” Read the rest of this entry »
Leave a Comment » | Eagle Mine, Kennecott-Rio Tinto, Law, uranium, water, Michigan, workers, economy, lake superior, water pollution | Tagged: Rio Tinto, Kennecott, water, pollution, yellow dog plains, Eagle Mine, water pollution, workers, uranium, cameco, humboldt, deq, politicians, economy | Permalink
Posted by LSMN
ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel producer – Britain’s richest man, Lakshmi Mittal, owns 43% of the company – may benefit from a £1 billion European carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS).
ArcelorMittal owns a 21% stake in Cliffs Natural Resources’ Empire Mine, located in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and a 62.3% share in Cliffs’ Hibbing Taconite facility. Cliffs’ has been taking some heat from Minnesota steelworkers for deals reached with ArcelorMittal that workers say are costing them their jobs. The company is expected to recall workers soon. Read the rest of this entry »
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Westwood High School, Ishpeming, Michigan – Perhaps reflective of a general lack of responsiveness at the state level on the metallic sulfide mining controversy in Michigan, few attended a hearing on Rio Tinto’s proposed Humboldt Township milling facility, located in western Marquette County. As with a previous hearing, in February, employment, water quality, worker safety and incompetence at the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and Rio Tinto were primary themes.
Baraga County Mine Inspector, Don Carlson, expressed concern that fugitive dust leaving the proposed mill site could affect worker’s health and the health of their families since he has not seen an adequate plan to both capture and dispose of the fine material. Carlson also highlighted Michigan’s poor economy – Baraga County has one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates - and said that any mining jobs need to be performed by union workers, citing the closed White Pine Mine as a good example of how workers could be treated.
“When this company comes to the area are the area people going to be hired or are the companies going to bring the people from other areas,” questioned Carlson. “We have an influx in Michigan of no jobs, people being laid off every day, all these types of things and these workers aren’t being able to go and get a job, a union job, with these companies.”
Rio Tinto, a notorious anti-worker company has drawn the ire of union workers around the world and is currently attempting to bust Local 30 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, AFL-CIO, at the company’s large open pit Borax Mine, in California.
Chris Mofatt, a Marquette County prison worker and lifelong Upper Peninsula resident said, “I don’t oppose mining, I don’t oppose jobs, but I do oppose liars and I think that Rio Tinto and the DEQ are not credible.”
“Rio Tinto’s track record is poor,” said Mofatt. “They want to come in here and do the same thing in the UP they’ve done in other countries. I oppose that. Michigan deserves better than that and we’re not getting it right now. Our corporate government wants to run an eighteenth century industry down the throat of twenty-first century enfranchised Americans. . . we deserve better and so does everybody in the world because we have twenty percent of the fresh water.”
According to Keweenaw Bay Indian Community geologist, Chuck Brumleve, the DEQ’s approval of the Humboldt Project is currently opposed by both the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Yet, in an interview with WLUC-TV6, the DEQ’s director of the Office of Geological Survey, Hal Fitch, claimed that approval of the Humboldt Mill project “hasn’t been a controversial issue.” Read the rest of this entry »
5 Comments | Eagle Mine, Kennecott-Rio Tinto, Law, water, Michigan, indigenous, human rights, workers, economy, water pollution | Tagged: Rio Tinto, Kennecott, Law, water, Michigan, native american, Eagle Mine, water pollution, workers, economy | Permalink
Posted by LSMN
"These colors don't run!," says a Borax miners' union website; Photo courtesy I.L.W.U Local 30
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. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by LSMN
From the Salt Lake Tribune:
Although those tailings could sweep across State Road 201 like a “violent and intense” flash flood in a 7.25-magnitude temblor, an independent investigation has determined that the slurry likely would stop before reaching any homes or buildings.
If a major earthquake strikes the Salt Lake Valley, Kennecott’s mine-tailings impoundment on the northern edge of Magna could fail and spill soupy sediment more than twice as far as the copper company had predicted.
In March 2008, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that Kennecott Utah Copper had concealed, since 1988, the potential for a major earthquake-caused tailings disaster in Magna, Utah. The tailings impoundment is located north of Magna and stores an estimated 1 billion tons of fine mine wastes. In 1992, the company conducted a “risk assessment” to determine if full containment of the impoundment would be more expensive than legal costs associated with property damage and citizen deaths.
The Tribune published a 1997 confidential memo, written by Ray D. Gardner, former Chief Legal Officer for Kennecott, that is highly critical of the company’s handling of the potential tailings disaster: “Prior management’s decisions to disregard and conceal legal advice, forego public notice, attempt to establish a residential buffer surreptitiously, collude with the State Engineer to withhold the KL studies from the public, and restrict the distribution of the Reduction Study, collectively and individually, give the appearance of a conspiracy to cover-up a profound threat to public safety.” Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by LSMN
Rio Tinto, long accused of worker violations by employees around the globe, has been fined over a case involving a worker who fell into a pool of corrosive liquid at a refinery in the Northern Territory, Australia, in March 2008. Reportedly, the worker burned roughly 25% of his body.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the company pleaded guilty to breaching the Northern Territory Mining Management Act.
Northern Territory WorkSafe executive director Laurene Hull said, “It’s disappointing this company has committed a number of serious offenses in a relatively short period of time.” Read the rest of this entry »
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“After three years of studying the application and related documents my original opinion has not changed, but I would add a conclusion that either the writers and all of the reviewers were not experienced and competent in mining and geology, or that their intent was to deceive, to ensure that permits would be issued without delay. Maybe both.” – Jack Parker
Marquette, MI – Kennecott Mineral’s Eagle Mine application is incompetent, at best, and fraudulent, at worst. That according to mining expert Jack Parker.
In a new thirty-three page report, entitled KEMC Eagle Project: A Fraudulent Permit Application?, Parker outlines several, but not all, of the major problems with the underground portion of the company’s mine application. In part, according to Parker, the project, (formally approved by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) in 2007 following delays associated with the suppression of documents critical of the mine’s design), was designed using “doctored” data, a “misinterpretation” of surficial geology and rock stress, and lacked reference to applicable mine case histories and a “sound mining analysis to prevent the mine from collapsing.”
Click the following link for Jack Parker’s report. . .“KEMC Eagle Project: A Fraudulent Permit Application?” Read the rest of this entry »
6 Comments | Eagle Mine, Kennecott-Rio Tinto, Law, Michigan, workers | Tagged: Jack Parker, Kennecott, Michigan, mine safety, Rio Tinto, workers | Permalink
Posted by LSMN
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