Hometown Boy, Gerard, to Join Pickets Friday

By Carol Mulligan, Sun Media:  Sudbury Star, 16 July 2009 

International President of United Steelworkers will bring his determination and passion to the fight against one of the most profitable multinationals that is threatening the viability of its Canadian communities, and demanding long-term dramatic cuts from it’s workforce.

The president of United Steelworkers International will walk the picket line Friday morning with striking members of USW Local 6500 .

Sudbury native Leo Gerard, who went from working at Inco Ltd.'s nickel smelter at age 18 to heading an international union, will visit strikers at the entrance to the Copper Cliff Smelter Complex at 10 a. m.

Under his leadership, Gerard has moved the former United Steelworkers of America to become the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union, AFL-CIO, CLC.

He is credited with launching initiatives that increased the union's membership by 65 per cent to 350,000 workers. The USW has also won tariff relief that helped save the American steel industry, a Workers First law in Canada that gives workers top priority for consideration in corporate bankruptcies and the lan- Westray Bill that makes corporations criminally liable when they kill or seriously injure their employees or members of the public.

But to USW Local 6500 president John Fera, Gerard is, was and always will be "a Sudbury boy, a Local 6500 boy. His heart is here." Fera expects Gerard to tell more than 3,050 strikers in Sudbury and another 150 with USW Local 6200 in Port Colborne that "locally and nationally and internationally, we're all in this thing together."

Wednesday was the third full day on the picket line for Steelworkers who began striking Monday at 12:01 a. m. after their collective agreement with Vale Inco Ltd. expired. Many people had predicted that was how more than three months of negotiations would wind up because there didn't seem to be much progress during contract talks.

Fera says support for the union's bargaining committee, which recommended that members reject Vale Inco's settlement proposal, is strong. "Everyone knows what the fight is about, and people are solid and very, very supportive of each other," he said.

Meanwhile, Local 6500 members continue to picket at Vale Inco's Sudbury operations. So far, the union is preventing anyone - including members of sister union USW Local 2020 -- from entering the sites.

Staff and management employees are working inside the plants for days at a time, and are being ferried to work by helicopter at a reported cost of $1,200 an hour. Fera expects Vale Inco will apply for an injunction soon to force strikers to allow certain people through picket lines.

Last week, Vale Inco laid off 54 non-union employees, and Fera says he has heard from some of them and others that they would like to join the union. He says that is not outside the realm of possibility.  "Anything's possible," he said. "I've had (some) staff talk to me and say, 'At some point, we may want to sign a card.' "

Vale Inco is treating its nonunion employees in a way "that really befuddles us," said the union president. "Why they would treat their own like that?"

Some of the people laid off last week had as many as 28 and 20 years with the mining company.

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