Why is the United Steelworkers providing Vale strikers only poverty-level strike pay?
July 1 marked one month since 2,450 workers at Vale’s Sudbury, Ontario mining and processing complex went on strike.
Workers have thus far rejected two concessions-filled contract offers. The first of these was unanimously recommended to them by the United Steelworkers (USW) Local 6500 bargaining committee. The most recent was voted down 10 days into the strike, with a decisive 87 percent of workers voting to reject in a ballot in which 84 percent of the strikers participated. Recognizing the anger and militancy among the workers, the USW felt compelled to call for Vale’s second offer to be rejected, even though it had advised acceptance of essentially the same terms less than two weeks earlier.
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At least 127 Delta variant cases in Ontario linked to massive COVID-19 outbreak at Nunavut mine
A major COVID-19 outbreak that has developed over the past two months at a mine in Canada’s far north has once again laid bare the disastrous consequences of the ruling elite’s “profits before lives” policy during the pandemic. The refusal to allow serious public health measures to impinge on the accumulation of corporate profits has resulted not only in scores of miners getting sick. It has also led to hundreds of additional infections in Canadian provinces to the south.
COVID-19 began to spread among workers at the Nunavut Territory’s Mary River Mine on April 19, and by May 5 the outbreak had become so severe that the mine was forced to suspend its operations.
The United Steelworkers’ policy of starving the Sudbury workers on meagre strike pay and isolating them from other workers in struggle has emboldened the multinational mining conglomerate to demand sweeping concessions.
Copper price down as China premium falls to 5-year low
Image from Codelco.
Copper prices dipped on Wednesday, hit by signs of weakening demand in top consumer China, while a firmer dollar made greenback-priced metals more expensive to holders of other currencies.
Copper for delivery in July was down 1% to $4.615 ($10,153 per tonne) on Wednesday afternoon on the Comex market in New York.
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Yangshan copper premium fell to $30.50 a tonne, its lowest since February 2016, indicating weakening demand for imported metal into China as high copper prices deter downstream consumption.
The dollar clung to small gains from overnight as a pick-up in US manufacturing kept bets alive for a quicker normalization of Federal Reserve policy.