Mining Labour Issues and History – Sudbury and Global

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

The province’s ongoing mining review was a hot topic at Day of Mourning ceremonies at Laurentian University on Monday.

United Steelworkers International president – and Greater Sudbury native – Leo Gerard said it was “a damn shame” that Vale and GlencoreXstrata officials did not appear before the review committee when it held hearings in the Nickel Capital earlier this year.

The committee is looking as way to make mining safer in Ontario. “Enough is enough is enough,” said Gerard, his voice rising before about 350 people in the Fraser Auditorium. “Appear before the inquiry and make your case. If you don’t have a case, admit it.

“Far too many workers are getting killed. Far too many workers are afraid of opening their mouth … If you ignore health and safety conditions, if you can’t manage, if you send someone into a dangerous circumstance, you should be held responsible.”
Gerard was one of more than half a dozen speakers at the 30th-annual ceremonies that are intended to honour the memories of workers killed on the job, or who died from workplace injuries or disease. The day is now marked in more than 80 countries.

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The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

The grown son of a man killed with three others at Inco’s Levack Mine on April 14, 1987, received a standing ovation and the respect of 400 people for his courage in baring his emotions on the anniversary of his father’s death.

Luc St. Amour was 13 and his brother, Richard, was 11 when their father, Germain “Butch” St. Amour, died on the job along with Rene Bedard, Wilbrod Gauvin and Donald Knight.

Luc, now 40 and a father himself, wrote a letter to his father April 13 this year, in which he poured out his heart. A relative associated with United Steelworkers read the letter online and asked Luc to read it at this year’s Day of Mourning service, his mother, Suzanne Stead, said last week.

“I sit here as half boy, half man. I think of how my last words to you were out of anger,” read St. Amour. “I wish I could have that moment back. I know you loved me. I wonder if your last thoughts were of mom, Richard and I.

“I sit here thinking … as a little boy, how I missed out on lessons you wanted to teach me. I sit here as a man still missing you, trying to remember your voice, your smell, your laugh, but I can’t.

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The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

Jailing one or two chief executive officers of companies where workers were killed on the job is all it would take to bring about the societal change necessary to finish what United Steelworkers started 40 years ago in Elliot Lake, says a union leader.

Enforcing the provisions of the Westray amendments to the Criminal Code of Canada, that hold CEOs and company directors criminally responsible for negligence causing a worker’s death, will demonstrate Canadians won’t accept workplace deaths as the cost of doing business.

Stephen Hunt, District 3 director for United Steelworkers and one of the officials spearheading USW’s “Stop the Killing: Enforce the Law” campaign, spoke to an audience of about 60 people Tuesday at the first day of a forum commemorating the 1974 Elliot Lake Miners’ Strike.

The three-week wildcat strike by more than 1,000 Steelworkers at Denison Mine prompted the provincial government to appoint a royal commission that resulted in the enactment of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

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The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

If recommendations from the inquest into the 1995 death of Clifford Bastien at Stobie Mine had been mandatory, Jordan Fram and Jason Chenier would be here today, says Fram’s mother.

Wendy Fram spoke at a conference Tuesday at the Steelworkers’ Hall about a USW campaign called “Stop the Killing: Enforce the Law.” The campaign calls on Canadians to sign a petition urging provincial, territorial and federal governments to enforce the Westray amendments to the Criminal Code of Canada.
The Westray law holds company executives and directors criminally accountable for negligence that is responsible for a worker being killed on the job.

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KIRKLAND LAKE – With the death of a miner in Sudbury last week Provincial NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says the provincial commission investigating mine safety needs the necessary resources to do the job.

It has been 30 years since a provincial commission investigated mine safety. Since then miners in Ontario have been killed and thousands of others have been injured. Last year the premier rejected a public inquiry into mine safety and instead chose a review,” said Horwath.

She continued saying: “But at the first public hearings in Timmins and Kirkland Lake, the government didn’t advertise or even put out so much as a press release or media advisory inviting participation. Does the premier think this is acceptable?”

Concerning media notification the Northern News was sent an email from the Ministry of Labour, informing of the meetings being held in Kirkland Lake. As well the Ministry also made its Chief Prevention Officer available for an interview prior to the meetings with enough time to publish prior to the meetings, and he was very accessible to the media at the meetings. A story did run in the Northern News prior to the meetings in Kirkland Lake and after the meetings.

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The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

If the overflow crowd jammed into a small, hot room Thursday in the basement of the main branch of Greater Sudbury Public Library was an indication, Sudburians are heavily invested improving mine safety. But they haven’t finished having their say about how they believe that should be accomplished. Not by a long shot.

About 40 people attended the last of three consultations held in the city by the advisory group for the Ontario Mining Health, Safety and Prevention Review. It was a tight squeeze when you added six group members, chair George Gritziotis and four Ministry of Labour employees.

There was some question about whether the crowd was violating the fire code, which allows for a maximum 39 people in the meeting room.

Wednesday there was room to spare at two public consultations held in Georgian Room B at the Holiday Inn, which could have held 100 people easily. About two dozen attended the afternoon session and a dozen the 6 p.m. session.

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The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

If Tammy Eger could start work on a research project tomorrow to improve mine safety, it would be on mental health in the workplace.

A researcher at Laurentian University’s Centre for Research in Occupational Health and Safety, Eger gave one of seven presentations to the advisory group for the Ontario Mining Health, Safety and Prevention Review.

The last of three public consultations to the group was held Thursday afternoon in a small, crowded room in the basement of the main branch of Greater Sudbury Public Library.

The mining review was announced late last year by the Ministry of Labour after a push by Sudbury labour groups for a public inquiry into mine safety in Ontario. That call came after an investigation into the June 2011 deaths of Jason Chenier and Jordan Fram at Vale’s Stobie Mine.

Eger told the group that good mental health in workplaces is “absolutely critical” to work safety, and being productive and healthy on the job.

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Fear of reprisals stifles health and safety progress: Steelworkers

To improve health and safety standards in Ontario’s mines, workers must not face reprisals if they bring issues forward to management, said Nick Larochelle, mines co-chair with United Steelworkers Local 6500.

Larochelle made his case Wednesday afternoon at the first public consultation in Sudbury as part of the Ministry of Labour’s year-long review of health and safety in the mining sector. Under section 50 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act employers cannot discipline their employees for refusing to do unsafe work or bringing their health and safety concerns forward.

But Larochelle said some of his members have been fired for complaining to their supervisors about health and safety issues.
He said employers use the guise of insubordination when they discipline workers for pointing out holes in their occupational health and safety practices.

The fear of reprisals, he said, has created an environment where mining companies’ internal responsibility systems are not as effective as they should be.

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The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

Legislation must be enacted to compel companies to implement recommendations from coroners’ inquests, otherwise there is no point in holding them, says a woman whose husband was killed on the job in 2006.

Faye Campeau shared how her husband, Raymond, 47, was killed May 25, just hours after they had spoken on the phone and said they loved each other, with a group whose mandate is to make Ontario mines safer.

Campeau spoke Wednesday evening to a second session of public consultations being heard by the advisory group of the Mining Health, Safety and Prevention Review. Campeau’s was one of about 10 presentations made to the group, most of them on the internal responsibility system, employee training and the merits of the review itself.

Campeau represented the lobby group MINES (Mining Inquiry Needs Everyone’s Support), which campaigned for a full-blown inquiry into mining practices in Ontario after the June 2011 deaths of two men at Vale’s Stobie Mine. Campeau’s husband was a contractor working for Dynatec who was killed after the jumbo drill he was operating came loose.

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