BÉCANCOUR, Que. – United Steelworkers (USW) Local 9700 announced today that it will hold a general membership meeting tomorrow to seek members’ approval for a request for a fast-track arbitration process to resolve the lockout at the ABI aluminum smelter.
“We’re going to ask our members for a mandate to request arbitration. If we receive this mandate, we will request an accelerated arbitration procedure in which each side can argue its point of view and, at the end of the process, the parties would be bound by the arbitrator’s decision. We see this as a real solution to a lockout that has gone on far too long,” said Local 9700 President Clément Masse.
The Quebec government has the power to appoint an arbitrator if both the union and the company agree to such a process. The arbitrator would hear the parties’ respective viewpoints and would then rule on the content of a new collective agreement. The parties in such a process are obliged to accept the results.
“From the outset, we have said over and over that we wanted to reach a negotiated settlement. It’s obvious, however, that we’re still at an impasse, with the employer cancelling the bargaining meetings that were scheduled last week,” Masse said.
“The labour minister suggested yesterday that a theoretical settlement be submitted to the two parties. This process strikes us as a haphazard way of doing things because it in no way guarantees that the employer would accept it. In light of the bad faith the employer has shown from the beginning of the dispute, we’re afraid we would just come up against another wall, with a theoretical settlement that wouldn’t hold water. Tomorrow we’re going to ask our members whether they are ready to take the risk of going to arbitration,” he added.
ABI’s 1,030 workers have been locked out of their jobs by Alcoa and Rio Tinto since Jan. 11, 2018. The stumbling block for negotiations concerns pension plan financing and seniority rights in personnel transfers. On Wednesday it was learned that the dispute has resulted in revenue losses of $165 million for Hydro-Québec in 2018.
Affiliated with the FTQ, the Syndicat des Métallos/United Steelworkers is the largest private-sector union in Quebec, representing more than 60,000 workers in all sectors of the economy.
Clairandrée Cauchy, 514 774-4001, ccauchy@metallos.ca
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