Posted: Monday, 1 June 2009

It’s just way too much

In the Spring of 2009, the unemployment rate in Northern Ontario was 13.6%, a record level since December 2000, and well above the provincial unemployment rate. Sault Ste. Marie felt the impact of the crisis in the steel industry. In the first half of 2008, steel prices fell from $1,100 to less that $400 a ton with demand reaching record lows. By April 2008, 20% of Essar Steel’s workforce of 2251 were on layoff. Mike DaPrat President of Steelworkers Local 2251 told his local members, “Don’t make any major financial commitments in the near future.”

Joe Black worked 7 years at Essar until he was laid off in March:

I’m 29 years old and I have nightmares almost every night, stressed out whether to wait to go back to work and the rumours are it’s going to be maybe November, maybe February, maybe next March, maybe they’re going to start laying off every summer. Nobody knows what’s going on. Management isn’t telling us and so it’s just way too much, people can’t handle this.”<

Meanwhile at Tenaris, production was completely shutdown from December 30 to January 3 and for two weeks later in January 2009. As the only Canadian maker of seamless pipe for the oil and gas industry resumed production on a limited basis, 130 workers remained on layoff.

Sault Ste. Marie and District Labour Council President Gary Premo, describes the new operation, “One week they make pipe and the next week they finish that pipe and then the third week they actually ship it. So one crew works three weeks but doing different jobs. So only a third of the workers are actually working.”

EI doesn’t cut it

Lance Dubreuil was trained as a millwright at Dofasco in Hamilton. He moved back to Sudbury to be closer to his family, but was laid off not long afterwards. He then relocated to Sault Ste. Marie to work at Tenaris, only to be laid off again.

I was hoping to come here establish myself. Plant some roots and hopefully start a family but like I said I was hard hit. And now I find myself laid off, collecting EI which doesn’t cut it, it’s half my wage and plus I’m finding myself applying from Western to Eastern to Southern to Northern Canada pretty much. I’ve applied to roughly 125-130 different establishments and I’ve only had one call back, so it’s tough.

Without any family support Lance says that “It’s been hard for both myself and my fiancée. She’s picked up a job fortunately at Station Mall as a security guard. She was going to pursue her dream as a nurse, which she had to discontinue in Sudbury to follow me with my career.” David Petallia suggests that Canada’s lack of an industrial policy means seamless pipe is flooding the steel market.  I think the government should be looking at fixing the trade deals to make them fair...For example, China produces coke, a lot of coke, their pollution is phenomenal and it’s unacceptable. And by us purchasing coke from China we’re enabling further pollution to our planet.

Get them off stop

Joe Black volunteers as a Peer Helper at the Tenaris Action Centre. How do I look at a grown man and tell him you’ve got to find something else? I’ve had guys come to me in their 50s almost in tears telling me how they’re going to lose their house, how they’re going to lose their camp because they’re waiting for Tenaris to call.

The toughest job for Action Centre coordinator Lillian Roe is to “get them off stop – so that they aren’t all sitting waiting for recall but they are taking advantage of this opportunity to maybe make some difference in their life take control, and be in the driver’s seat.”

It’s a matter of survival right now

St. Mary’s Paper laid-off 150 workers. “I think it’s just a matter of survival right now,” says an officer of one of the CEP locals. “They’re doing everything they can to cost cuts to make sure that the plant runs and they’re going to try everything. We’ve been through what every other mill is going through right now.”

The Huron Central Railway also closed the rail link between Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury, not only idling 45 workers, but adding shipping cost for steel coming out of Essar. USW’s DaPrat notes the impact:

The railroad system in Canada hasn’t had a new what we call roadbed – railroad tracks and ties and slag – they haven't been rebuilt in 20 years. That’s going to add cost and make you less competitive. An alternative becomes and east to west railway system through the U.S. instead of across Canada – one was supposed to join Canadian businesses.

One of the long-time call centres, NCO, closed its doors in November taking 300 jobs with it. At its peak NCO had over 800 employees in what used to be the Woolco department store in the downtown. These were important jobs in the community with wages from $11 to $12 an hour and some benefits.

They’re going to come after our cleaning formula

“We are critically short-staffed,” says Mike DaPrat. This has resulted in “upwards of 2000 grievances with Essar.” CUPE activists Brenda Brooks and Lynda McFarling work at the Algoma district school board. Says Lynda, “I’m really afraid they’re going to come after our cleaning formula and that will be totally against the collective agreement and I think all hell will break lose.”

OPSEU member Margaret Rafter describes the effect of cut-backs in her work as a technologist in the hospital. “You’re performing at 200% for seven and a half hours a day and quite literally people leave there crying. Quite literally…There’s 2 people where we used to have 6 in the department less than 5 years ago…The stress level is extremely high.”

Reeling from the effects

Algoma University professor Gayle Broad is concerned about “the sky rocketing rate of tuition fees” that limit access for first nations’ students and notes the rise in food bank usage at the University.

Jutta Horn is a councillor for the Missanabie Cree First Nation. Horn says that her community is “reeling from the effects like everybody else. We’re all having to meet our obligations. Financially it’s very difficult.” While waiting for their claim to be settled, the Missanabie Cree bought property for themeselves and for fishing tourism. “A lot of our business comes from the States and they’ve been economically hit hard.”

Wendy Bird, is a director legal clinic who says that housing vacancy rates are at an all time low. Says Wendy, We’ve seen a lot of affordable housing dry up in the last while.”

We had a responsibility to provide for each other

MP Tony Martin comments on the importance of public programs such as pensions, employment insurance and public health care. “We built that together. We agreed that that was something we owed and had a responsibility to provide for each other.” He knows there has to be a better way.

So government will shrink, taxes will continue to shrink and what ability will we have as a country to continue to build on this vision, this dream that my father sold everything that he owned to buy into? … How can we get back to that and reclaim that and see it as good and right for everybody?

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