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Local 6500, Vale reach deal – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – April 28, 2015)

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

United Steelworkers Locals 6500 in Sudbury and Local 6200 in Port Colborne and employer Vale Ltd. have reached a tentative deal on a five-year contract for production and maintenance workers.

Members of the union’s bargaining committee are unanimously recommending the deal be accepted at membership meetings scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday.

News of the deal comes more than a month ahead of the expiry date of the current five-year contract, May 31, 2015. The parties began bargaining in late December, saying they were looking to get a new collective bargaining agreement without a labour interruption.

The last contract was hammered out after a bitter year-long strike that ran from July 2009-July 2010. USW Local 6500 president Rick Bertrand and Kelly Strong, Vale vice-president of Canada and UK operations, said in December that the company and the union had done a great deal of work to mend relationships after the longest strike in union’s history.

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Industrial deaths: Testimony painful at Chenier, Fram inquest – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – April 28, 2015)

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

Day 6 of the inquest into the June 8, 2011 deaths of Jason Chenier and Jordan Fram at Vale’s Stobie Mine moved into painful and sensitive territory Monday.

After a morning and an hour in the afternoon of technical testimony by Ministry of Labour inspectors, assistant crown attorney Rebecca Bald told the inquest jury the causes of death for the two men.

Thirty-five-year-old Chenier died of smothering, compressional asphyxia and blunt-force injuries, according to forensic pathologist Dr. Martin Queen, said Bald. The cause of death for Fram, 26, was smothering and compressional axphixia, said the lawyer, one of two assistant crown attorneys acting as counsel to presiding coroner Dr. David Eden.

Members of the Fram and Chenier families have attended every day of the inquest, sitting in the front rows of courtroom A at the Sudbury courthouse.

The inquest has heard the men were overcome by an explosive and violent run of hundreds of ton of muck – broken ore, sand, slimes and water – that was hung up in No. 7 ore pass, then burst through a control gate where they were working.

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COLUMN-Iron ore rallies on small BHP output deferral? Ridiculous – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.S. – April 23, 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/

LAUNCESTON, Australia, April 23 (Reuters) – While it’s well-known that markets can have irrational short-term moves, the 4 percent jump in Asian spot iron ore on Wednesday must be a more extreme case.

Spot iron ore .IO62-CNI=SI jumped to $52.90 a tonne from $50.80 on April 20, continuing its rally from the record low of $46.70 reached on April 2.

On the surface the catalyst for Wednesday’s spike was BHP Billiton’s announcement that it would defer an expansion of its output of the steel-making ingredient from 270 million tonnes a year to 290 million tonnes.

The future loss of 20 million tonnes from a market that’s oversupplied by multiples of that amount clearly isn’t a sound basis for a price rally. What it does show is a market where many participants are keen to call a bottom, and are happy to grasp onto any positive news as justification for a price rally.

It also shows that many in the market weren’t really reading into this week’s quarterly production reports from BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Brazil’s Vale.

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NEWS RELEASE: VALE AND THE UNITED STEELWORKERS REACH TENTATIVE DEAL IN SUDBURY & PORT COLBORNE

SUDBURY, April 27 2015 – Vale and United Steelworkers (USW) Local 6500 and Local 6200 are pleased to announce that an early tentative agreement has been reached on a new five-year contract for Production & Maintenance employees in Sudbury and Port Colborne. The new 5-year Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) will come into effect on June 1, 2015.

Details of the tentative agreement will remain confidential until the USW holds ratification meetings with its members on Wednesday April 29 and Thursday April 30.

“The negotiations process has been productive and respectful, and we are encouraged that we have been able to reach an early tentative agreement that is unanimously recommended by both bargaining committees for our members to consider,” said Rick Bertrand, President of USW Local 6500. “We endorse this deal and look forward to presenting the details to our membership as it paves the road for the next 5 years.”

“We believe we have reached a tentative agreement that appropriately meets the needs of both the company and our USW Local 6500 and 6200 employees,” said Mitch Medina, Manager, HR, Health, Safety & Environment and lead negotiator for Vale. “Both teams have worked very hard and in a spirit of cooperation to achieve the positive result we were all hoping for.”

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Vale loses fight to skip daily cage inspections – by Darren MacDonald (Sudbury Northern Life – April 24, 2015)

http://www.northernlife.ca/

Company argued checking safety backups daily was a waste of time

Vale Canada Ltd. has lost an appeal of a Ministry of Labour order to do daily checks of a safety mechanism on mining shaft elevators that prevent them from free-falling in case of a malfunction.

In an Ontario Labour Board decision released April 10, Vice-Chair Matthew R. Wilson sided with United Steelworkers Local 6500, ruling that inspections of the safety catches – known as “dogs” – must be done daily.

The process is known as “chairing the cage,” and it’s a procedure that mimics what happens when the elevator (cage) that carries miners underground fails and the claw-like dogs on top begin spinning, biting into the wooden timbers in the shaft and stopping the free-fall.

The danger is that the dogs can become eroded or be compromised by falling debris, meaning they wouldn’t spin and attach themselves to the wooden timbers. In their arguments, Vale said their cages have a protective “boot” on top of the cage that prevents debris from falling into the dogs. Therefore, the company argued, the weekly inspections they conduct were sufficient.

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Sudbury inquest: Stobie conditions ‘very, very wet’ – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – April 25, 2015)

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

If he had seen conditions like those he witnessed after a run-of-muck incident at Vale’s Stobie Mine in 2011, he would have issued a stop-work order to cease production, said a Ministry of Labour mining inspector.

Will Thomson testified at Day 5 of a coroner’s inquest into the June 8, 2011, deaths of two men at Stobie that he had never seen water conditions as bad as those since beginning in the mining industry as a student in 1989.

Thomson testified before a two-man, three woman jury Friday, saying water and muck was five feet deep on one level, and sand, slimes and water mixed with broken ore covered levels of the century-old mine.

Thomson had only been “badged” as a Labour ministry inspector since March of the year Jason Chenier and Jordan Fram were killed in a run of tons of muck while working at the 3000-foot level of Stobie, near the No. 7 ore pass.

Thomson had worked for Vale for 15 years, eight of them at Stobie, in logistics on the muck circuit in the mine’s A division. He was the on-call mining inspector June 9, 2011, at 12:15 a.m., when he was contacted about the incident in Stobie Mine’s B division.

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[Mining death inquiry] Muck shocked Sudbury mining veteran – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – April 24, 2015)

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

Mark Bardswich has worked for Vale for 20 years, but had never been to Stobie Mine until late the night of June 8, 2011.

The operations control centre supervisor at Vale’s Totten Mine, he’s a long-time member of Ontario Mine Rescue, an organization that trains and equips volunteers to respond to mine accidents and disasters.

Bardswich was awakened about 10:45 p.m. June 8, and called to an incident at Stobie Mine. He got there by 11:30 p.m. and met with other mine rescuers.

He was told three people were missing and unaccounted for. Bardswich was assigned captain of a second rescue team, and by the time it got to the 3,000-foot level, he knew two men were involved and the body of one had been recovered. Bardswich moved along the level toward the No. 7 ore pass, through sticky mud.

“Looking around, I couldn’t believe it,” Bardswich testified at the fourth day of the inquest into the deaths of Jason Chenier and Jordan Fram. The men were killed by a run of muck at the 3,000 level of Stobie Mine near the No. 7 ore pass about 9:45 p.m.

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Walter Curlook was Mining’s Green Pioneer – by Cynthia Macdonald (University of Toronto Magazine – Spring 2015)

http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/

The engineer, inventor, Inco executive and U of T prof is remembered for his boundless passion, spirit and energy

Nickel is a metal that’s both strong and remarkably versatile. These two qualities also describe Walter Curlook: an engineer, executive, community leader and teacher whose extraordinary career was forged not just in and around the nickel mines of his native Sudbury, but in work that took him around the world.

Curlook (BASc 1950, MASc 1951, PhD 1953), who died October 3 at the age of 85, rose meteorically through the ranks at Inco Ltd: from research metallurgist to top executive at a time when the company stood atop the world in nickel production. Curlook himself invented more than a dozen process patents: even at the highest administrative level, he remained an engineer at heart.

“He was an executive, but he also got right down in the labs and contributed directly to technical development,” says Prof. Doug Perovic of materials science and engineering. “He insisted on staying close and keeping his ear to the ground; he just worked so hard.”

He also pioneered environmental responsibility in the mining industry. “Under his leadership, Inco was always progressive in the environmental area,” says colleague Mansoor Barati. A $600 million sulphur dioxide abatement program, completed in 1993, was described as the largest environmental project ever completed by the industry.

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‘Something wasn’t right’ — Sudbury inquest [mining deaths] – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – April 23, 2015)

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

Two of the last men to see Jordan Fram alive testified about their encounters with him on the third day of the coroner’s inquest into his death and that of his supervisor, Jason Chenier.

Fram, 26, and Chenier, 35, were killed about 9:45 p.m. on June 8, 2011, at the 3,000-foot level of Vale’s Stobie Mine, near the No. 7 ore pass. They were overcome by an uncontrolled run of 350 tons of muck.

There are two divisions at Stobie. Luke St. Amand was a supervisor at division A, which was sharing the no. 7 ore pass that day with division B, where Chenier and Fram were working.

St. Amant was working the day the men were killed and had met Chenier on surface. He testified Chenier didn’t say anything about water, although Chenier had sent two emails to superiors about hazards in the days before the tragedy.

He and Chenier didn’t talk about double barricades, said St. Amant, although Chenier had mentioned in his emails they had been erected to block unsafe areas, the inquest has heard.

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Could have used more training: Superintendent – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – April 22, 2015)

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

Looking back to June 8, 2011, Keith Birnie said he would have liked to have had more training for his role as superintendent at Vale’s Stobie Mine.

Birnie had only been on the job four weeks when supervisor Jason Chenier, 35, and hourly worker Jordan Fram, 26, were killed by an uncontrolled run of muck while working on the 3,000-foot level of the mine near the No. 7 ore pass.

Earlier that day, Birnie had toured the mine with friend and mentor Larry Lauzon, a retired mining superintendent at Stobie Mine whom Birnie said was “coaching” him about safety. He invited Lauzon in “as a different set of eyes” to help him do his job more effectively.

Birnie, who now works in a different capacity for Vale, testified at the second day of a coroner’s inquest into the deaths of Chenier and Fram.

The two-man, three-woman jury heard that water was an ongoing issue at the 100-year-old mine. Because of large indentations on surface from two defunct open-pit mines, water pours into Stobie from above and seeps in from below.

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Nickel: The Outperformer And Top Pick For 2015 – by Stephan Bogner (Seeking Alpha – April 21, 2015)

http://seekingalpha.com/

Summary

Nickel was the best performing metal in 2014.
Nickel is the top commodity pick of several investment banks, including Morgan Stanley.
The Voisey’s Bay area may host the next big nickel discovery since it is abnormally under-explored.
From today’s perspective, Voisey’s Bay wasn’t really a great nickel discovery, but still one of the world’s biggest.

• 22 years ago, Robert Friedland’s Diamond Fields Resources Inc. stumbled onto nickel while looking for diamonds in Canada’s remote north.

• Only three years later, in 1996, Friedland sold his lucky strike, the Voisey’s Bay Nickel Deposit, for $4.3 billion USD to Inco.

• Prior to being purchased by CVRD (now Vale (NYSE:VALE)) in 2006, Inco was the world’s second largest producer of nickel.

• In 2005, the Voisey’s Bay open-pit and concentrator started production. Vale is currently completing an engineering study for an underground mine to be constructed between 2016-2019, extending mine life to 2035.

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Safety record at mines makes trust scarce – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – April 21, 2015)

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

A mining health and safety conference last week seemed far removed from the June 8, 2011 deaths of two men at Vale’s Frood-Stobie Complex in Sudbury.

In a conference room at a Sudbury hotel, Labour Minister Kevin Flynn presented the final report of the mining health, safety and prevention review with 18 recommendations to improve mine safety. One was that mining companies be required to have detailed water management programs.

The review was prompted by the deaths of Jason Chenier and Jordan Fram, who were overcome by a run of 350 tonnes of muck at the 900-metre level of the century-old mine. A mandatory inquest into their deaths began Monday.

A run of muck is an uncontrolled — and in this case violent — release of water, blasted rock, ore and sand. It engulfed Chenier, 35, and Fram, 26, as they were trying to determine what had caused the material to clog an ore pass above where they were working. According to three investigations and the counsel to the inquest coroner, the incident never should have occurred.

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Sudbury mine deaths ‘should not have happened’ – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – April 21, 2015)

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

Before an inquest jury heard about how two Sudbury men died on the job, an assistant Crown attorney talked about how the men lived.

Susan Bruce, who along with assistant Crown Roberta Bald is serving as counsel to presiding coroner Dr. David Eden, told the two-man, three-woman jury Monday what kind of men Jason Chenier, 35, and Jordan Fram, 26, were.

The two were killed June 8, 2011, at Vale’s Stobie Mine when they were overcome by a run of 350 tons of muck — rock, water and sand — while working at the mine’s 3,000-foot level near the No. 7 ore shaft. A mandatory inquest is being held into their deaths. It is scheduled for two weeks, but could end sooner because some witnesses who would have given similar testimony have been written off the list.

Chenier, a supervisor at Stobie, was the husband of Tracy and father of two children, aged 6 and 7. He loved family activities such as fishing, hiking and skiing, and built his children “an elaborate play centre from scratch,” not from a kit at a department store, Bruce told the jury.

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Highly anticipated Sudbury inquest opens Monday – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – April 20, 2015)

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

Vale Ltd. officials say they can’t turn back the clock to before June 8, 2011, when two workers were killed at the company’s Stobie Mine.

But they said they hope the families of Jason Chenier, 35, and Jordan Fram, 26, find some comfort “in the significant work done since that night to ensure this kind of tragedy never occurs again.”

Vale issued the statement three days before the start Monday of a coroner’s investigation into the men’s death. Regional supervising coroner Dr. David Eden will preside at the inquest, at which a five-member jury will hear evidence from several witnesses at what is expected to be a 10-day hearing.

Vale said in its statement that the purpose of the inquest is to review the circumstances around the fatality so that future deaths can be prevented.

Chenier and Fram died after being overcome by a run of 350 tons of muck while they were working at the 3,000-foot level of the mine.

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World’s Lowest Cost Iron Ore Miner Turns Screw on Rivals – by Jesse Riseborough (Bloomberg News – April 17, 2015)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Rio Tinto Group Chief Executive Officer Sam Walsh is fast becoming the worst nightmare of rival iron-ore producers starved of cash.

Iron ore prices have slumped by more than half in a year on a deepening global supply glut. That’s pushed some into bankruptcy and left others on life support. News that the lowest-cost producer is mining a ton of ore even more cheaply signals a more protracted price slump.

After achieving an industry-leading $19.50 a ton last year, currency movements and a drop in fuel costs mean Rio Tinto is now producing at $17, Walsh told investors in London on Thursday. The company is still seeking ways to ship it to Asian buyers more cheaply, he said.

“I know there’s a lot of controversy,” Walsh said. “I know that there’s a lot of late entries into the market who have taken advantage of higher prices and they are now feeling the impact of that as prices have come down. ‘‘This is rational, normal economics,’’ he said. ‘‘This is what physically happens across a range of commodities not just iron ore. It’s a process that we and others have got to work through.’’

The strategy, employed by the world’s largest producers, of continuing to expand output in the face of a price rout has earned the ire of some analysts, investors and loss-making rivals. Rio’s main competitor BHP Billiton Ltd. has described the tactic as ‘‘squeezing the lemon.”

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