/IPS ENVIRONMENT BULLETIN/ CANADA: Unemployment Spreads in Canadian Mining Centres

By Paul Weinberg Reprint | | Print |

Paul Weinberg

TORONTO, Jun 7 1997 (IPS) - As Canadian mining companies make waves abroad, unemployment is spreading in established mining communities in mineral-rich northern Ontario.

With a few exceptions, Canadian corporations are finding it more lucative to extract mineral resources in developing countries, where they face fewer environmental regulations, lower labour costs, and less resistance to open-pit mining than at home.

Charles Angus, editor of ‘The Highgrader’ in Cobalt, Ontario, says the result is that “there is a highly qualified mining workforce sitting around jobless in northern Ontario.”

Take the case of Elliot Lake, a town of about 13,000 people that sits amidst rock, forest, and water in this sparsely populated region.

Depleted uranium mines, which once fueled the local economy, the U.S. military machine, and the Ontario nuclear power industry have closed. And some of the miners who remain there are dying of cancer, reports Dan Hutchinson, former president of Local 5417 of the Steelworkers Union.

“I am hanging around to represent my membership in workers’ compensation cases,” he says.

Because of their ability to shift investment capital around the world, large mining concerns are able to play one community or nation against each other, leading to pressures to deregulate in such areas as health and safety and the environment, says David Leadbeater, professor of economics at Laurentian University in Sudbury in north-east Ontario.

“We need an international convention on mining with spcific regulations and international enforcement,” he insists.

Angus says sme Canadian miners do follow the companies abroad to look for work in mineral drilling operations in countries like Chile and Peru.

“A lot of people are working in other parts of the world, because there are no jobs here,” he says.

But Bob Russell, professor of sociology at the University of Saskatchewan, doubts that Canadians with mining backgrounds who are used to a certain level of pay will get many jobs in overseas operations where local workers are paid much less.

He says the out-of-work miners tend to migrate to still- functioning mines within Canada.

Employment on overseas contracts “is restricted to managers, supervisory staff, and maybe a few maintenance mechanics,” says Russell, who has studied uranium miners in his province.

The newer mines in places like northern Saskatchewan, the hub of uranium mining activity in Canada, do not include the classic scenario of a company town where the employees of a local mineral operation settle into a community for a generation or longer.

Instead, companies are flying miners in and out of their mines on contract jobs that last for a few months at a time. The temporary workers are housed in a company residential facility during their stay. These companies onot have to worry about paying property taxes to a local municipality, where services, schools, and roads are built to support the population.

“You mine the stuff, and then you’re out,” Russell says, adding that technology is also reducing the number of workers required in established mines.

Still, the talk within the industry of “the miner-less mine,” is bit of “wishful thinking,” says Leadbeater. “The various mining technologies are designed to reduce employment underground and increase output from (the remaining) workers.”

The cyclical, boom-bust nature of mining “is well understood” by those involved, says Mick Lowe, a journalist and author who lives near Sudbury, a city that is at the heart of Canada’s largest mining centre.

Mining, particularly in nickel, has proceeded in Sudbury since the start of the century. But the population is aging, and young people find fewer opportunities for employment in the local mineral sector The onlyother eployer is the public sector, but both the federal and provincial governments have been busy downsizing their operations.

Lowe cites friends whose grown up children are heading south for Toronto. He blames the trend on the “produce-more-with-fewer- people” approach of the mining industry.”

He and others are concerned about the long-term impact of the expansion of one major corporation on Sudbury. Inco Corp., the area’s major nickel company and employer, plans to expand into Voisey’s Bay in Labrador in eastern Canada.

Inco will find it more “economical” to invest in a new, open- pit nickel mine in Labrador, says Leadbeater, who predicts that the move will lead to a downgrading and possibly the eventual closure of its older Ontario mines.

Sudbury’s highly unionised workforce, largely represented by the Steelworkers Union, will find themselves at a disadvantage as they bargain with Inco, unless the new Voisey nickel miners are also organised, says Leadbeater.

He says he has already observed a trend in northern Ontario where mining contractors avoid hiring unemployed miners with a history ov union activism. “Certain employers will screen out people by calling their former supervisors,” he says.