Oh DOL...Borax Miners Locked Out

Rio Tinto workers locked out at Calif. borax mine

The mine in Boron shut its gates at 7 a.m. Sunday, as employees and their families showed up saying they wanted to work. Replacement workers were brought in to do the jobs of the locked out employees.

Rio Tinto has been negotiating with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 30 for the last five months. The union is resisting proposed changes in the seniority system.

The company says it has lost 25 percent of its global borax share and needs to make changes to stay competitive.

Information from: Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com

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Solidarity 2010

Little Stevie had to make a dump run this morning, so he decided to stop by the ILWU Union Hall in Boron to see what he could find out about what has been going on between the Company and the Union. ILWU Local 30's slogan is: "An injury to one is an injury to all", so Stevie interviewed the Union recording Secretary and took notes. There were a lot of Union brothers and sisters there today. The atmosphere was positive and sober.

The following is what little Stevie found out. There were 27 meetings for labor contract negotiations. The contract calls for eight years straight without a raise and eviscerates standard labor seniority concepts. Equipment incidentally damaged on the job is to be paid for by the employee, taken out of their pay check. Management rights have been multiplied by a factor of ten. Class action law suits are prohibited. All major disputes will have to be brought to arbitration, which is to be paid for by the Union if the company wins. Two civil law suits that the company has lost in the past involved not providing a second lunch for twelve hour shifts and not allowing a lunch break for straight eight hour shift workers.

Beyond this...seven Union members of the negotiating team were issued written corrective notices after the Company went ballistic over three labor representatives from Turkey that showed up on 12/7/09 out of solidarity(on their own dime) and to witness first hand what transpires in America at a Borax mine during labor contract negotiations. Chris Robison, Company Manager of Operations stood up throwing his chair back, effectively ending contract negotiations for that day after just a few minutes of negotiation; upon learning the identity of the three labor representatives from Turkey*. Labor Presidents Zekeriya Gultekin(umlaut over the u) and Gulahmed Guevan(umlaut over the first u) and ICEM http://www.icem.org/representative Kenan Dikibiyik stated to Union officials that the lack of respect and hyper exploitive tactics that they witnessed were on par with what they had encountered in Europe and elsewhere.

The Union negotiating team was ordered as a (non contractual) condition of employment to attend anti trust classes at the Palmdale Hilton Garden Inn. The presence of the Turkish labor representatives was twisted and misconstrued by the Company to represent giving away Rio Tinto trade secrets. When they did not comply, seven of them were issued written disciplinary notices by the company stating that they were under investigation. See image initiating this post.

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*This is the same guy that union officials have likened to Elmer J Fudd and who, just less than one month after 9/11/2001, compared the union to the Taliban; during 2001 contract negotiations.