A pair of candidates are looking to become United Steelworkers (USW) Local 6166’s first rookie president since 2006 at a time when their members and the company that is their biggest employer are going through an unprecedented transition, with layoff notices anticipated later this month in preparation for the permanent shutdown of Vale’s smelter and refinery in the summer.
Both candidates are long-time Thompsonites, one of them a second-generation Thompson miner, who’ve worked at the mining operations since they were still owned by Inco and bring with them a decade or more of union activism under their belts.
Warren Luky has lived in Thompson for nearly 25 years after arriving, as so many residents did, on the “two-year plan” before ultimately settling down in the Hub of the North for good.
“We really just kind of fell in love with living in the north,” says Luky, who currently serves USW Local 6166 as its recording secretary and lives at Paint Lake. “It ’s a wonderful community and we’re very fortunate to be here, very fortunate to enjoy a lot of things we do here in Thompson. There’s peace and quiet. There’s a lot of advantages living up north. That’s what’s really kept us here and having a good job that’s working towards a good pension, I think, is what everybody strives to be able to do.”
The other choice on the ballot is James Crawley, currently the union’s treasurer, who was born in Thompson and has lived here most of his life, with both a father and a stepfather who worked for Inco as well as numerous other relatives.
“I always wanted to be a miner like my dad,” said Crawley in a campaign pamphlet regarding his candidacy. “Most kids dreamed of being things like a fireman, doctor or astronaut. Not me. Miner only.”
Luky has 22 years of seniority with Inco and, subsequently, Vale, while Crawley has worked for the company since 2003, after earlier working underground with Mid-West Diamond Drilling. Both candidates say they got involved with unionism as a result of the dangers that mining poses and a desire to ensure that they and their fellow workers are as safe as possible.
For Crawley, the catalyst was an incident during the first shutdown of his career with the mine, when a friend of his was seriously hurt doing a job that Crawley was supposed to be working with him on, but Crawley didn’t do it, though he was unaware at the time that he had the right to formally refuse the assignment.
“So that made we want to get involved with the union,” he said.
The dangers of the smelter were the motivation for Luky to get involved in union activities in Thompson, though he had other union involvement before arriving in Thompson.
“It was a very active industrial environment and there was a lot of hazards out there,” he says. “There was a lot of risk to myself and other employees and I got involved because, if I didn’t get involved and I didn’t try to help ensure the safety of myself and the fellow workers there, I knew we could be putting people at risk,” Luky says. “There are so many things there that can hurt people and it’s very difficult for the management team to manage all that. I got on the joint health and safety committee to work together towards ensuring everyone gets home safe at the end of the day.”
Despite similarities in their past activities for the union – both candidates were members of the bargaining committee that negotiated the last collective agreement with Vale in 2014 (which runs until September 2019) – Crawley and Luky have different ideas when it comes to how they envision themselves as union president.
“I think for any president the term is a challenging period of time,” said Luky. “It’s very busy this time, we have a lot going on. We have a paradigm shift in how we’re going to mine. We’re going to be a mine-mill operation. We’ve always been a fully integrated mining operation that provided a lot of work and a lot of stability for the Thompson area and the Thompson workforce. Changing to a mine-mill operation is going to be quite different. There’s a substantial upset to the workforce which is going to resonate throughout town. We’ll navigate this next time ahead of us with due diligence and be careful so all the members are treated with dignity and respect and that we can move ahead towards a future that we can have a successful operation and have a good contract and have strong understandings and commitments from the employer towards the employees working here, which for the town of Thompson will of course be beneficial.”
As for Crawley, he views the upcoming transition and the willingness of governments to help mitigate some of its impacts as an opportunity to expand the training available in Thompson as a way to help retain some of the workforce with less seniority so that they are still around town and available to return to work when more senior union members begin retiring not too far in the future.
“We’re going to have a plant closure that we’ve never seen before,” said Crawley, noting that, as an underground worker for his entire career with Inco and Vale, he understand mines “100 per cent.” Crawley says that government money could be available to help establish an underground mining certification school in Thompson whose graduates would be qualified to work anywhere in Canada, including Ontario, which has a required certification process that all underground miners must complete before begoinning work. Offering this sort of training to surface workers who are losing their jobs as a result of the smelter and refinery shutdown would position them to step into underground jobs as senior miners retire and also have the potential to provide training to potential miners throughout Northern Manitoba. Crawley says the Mining Industry Human Resources Council predicts that the Canadian mining industry will need to hire as many as 145,000 miners by 2023.
“If we lay off junior guys now and let senior guys retire we’re going to have to hire back junior guys,” he says.
As a side benefit, Crawley says that training miners could be a cost-efficient way for Vale Manitoba Operations to deepen its shafts and access new ore bodies. Crawley also envisions Thompson becoming a cannabis-growing hub if mined-out areas are converted for horticultural uses, including both marijuana and other crops. “If I get elected, I would be able to help push some of these ideas. I believe that this is important. I want our community and the people at the mine to succeed. I think Thompson could be a great place again.”
Luky says his experience could help USW Local 6166 and the community weather the storm of uncertainty approaching due to the changing nature of Thompson ming operations.
“I have a very vested interest in bringing everybody to a good position here going forward,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of experience in the union. I’ve done a lot of negotiations. I’ve done a lot of activities and I’m very much a community person. I want to protect our future, that’s why I’m running. I want to be able to maximize our membership’s strength in that regard. I have a lot of experience and the membership needs experience moving forward. Unprecedented times are coming and I think that they have to be met and they have to be dealt with.”
Advance polls are taking place at the Steel Centre April 5 and April 6 from 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. with the official election day April 9 at the same location during the same hours.
