The Company has eliminated the Central Services Department and has combined the three closing mines into one Care and Maintenance Department.  We are slowly realizing that we are now a three-site operation – Smelter, Mill and Nickel Rim South.

Nickel Rim South

The transition of the remaining workers from the closed mines is completed.  We have a little over 280 workers out at Nickel Rim South.

For the last few weeks, we have been asking the Company why we are not doing the Development Drift on 1700 Level as we strongly believe that it is our work.  The Company is slow in answering our enquiries as they keep saying that “we are behind schedule on the other levels.”  They can’t afford to move people to that level.  We reminded them that we have lots of people on layoff that are more than trained and able to do this work.

I have advised the Company last week that if the Company does not answer quickly on this, we will be filing a grievance on contractors doing our work.

They keep reminding us that technically speaking, it is still not our mine and we agree with this because our language is clear.  But morally and ethically, when you have 600 people on layoff, the Company has to look beyond that and show the employees and the community that they still have values and they have to demonstrate open willingness to assist the workers that they just laid off.

I know it is about only three months of work, but three months of pay is better than no pay.  I will keep you updated as the matter unfolds.

Another important matter that we keep asking the Company about is the shift schedule.  We would like to see a shift schedule that reflects a better type of life that employees would benefit from and is more humane.  To date, the Company is not answering our calls for change as they want to maintain their advancement rate.  We know that soon the ventilation system underground will be better and will offer opportunities to look at different shift schedules.  Hopefully, this will happen sooner than later.

I want to remind all workers, even though we are going through many daily changes and situations that might distract us from keeping our mind on our jobs as much as we would like, we need to remain focused on our task at hand and continue working safely so that we can get to go home safely at the end of each and every shift.

Smelter

The Smelter will be having a three-week shutdown starting June 4th, 2009 and about 100 of our laid-off workers will be asked to work those weeks.

Mill

The Mill will be going into a production shutdown mode for nine weeks shortly.  It will allow it to complete its project construction and commissioning in order to accept the rich ore from Nickel Rim South.

Additional workers are needed and laid-off workers were called back temporarily to assist.

Investment Canada

Last week the leadership of this Union traveled to Ottawa to talk directly to our government on the issue of Investment Canada allowing Xstrata Nickel to get out of its purchase agreement.

The Minister of Industry did have a face-to-face meeting with our President.  The Minister will get back to our President on the “seven weeks of pay” we feel is still owed to all the laid-off workers.

We are hoping to get a positive response from our government.

General News

I have been hearing lots of rumours about mines re-opening.  To our knowledge, the Company has no intentions of re-opening any mines in the near future.

We will keep asking on behalf of all our active and laid-off workers.