The following article by GARY KINSMAN is excerpted from a book on the significant 2000-2001 Mine Mill/CAW Local 598 strike against Falconbridge which will be published in the next few months. Clipping the Wings of the Falcon: Mine Mill Strikes Falconbridge 2000-2001 is edited by Kaili Beck, Chris Bowes, Gary Kinsman, Peter Suschnigg, and Mercedes Steedman. It both documents the strike learning from union activists themselves and also draws out some lessons for future labour struggles. Many of these lessons were learned from in this years three week strike

The Mine Mill/CAW Local 598 strike against Falconbridge in 2000-2001 was a strike with crucial lessons for all workers fighting corporations in the context of neo-liberalism and capitalist globalization. We need to move beyond purely defensive to more offensive ways of organizing if we wish to stem the tide of attack and begin to win victories. Falconbridge and Noranda (who now controls Falconbridge) were attempting to impose “flexible” or “lean” production on the workers, which would have been a major defeat. For this project to succeed, Falconbridge required a major weakening of the gains workers had won in previous contracts.

Tom Rannelli, who participated on the Bargaining Committee as a representative of the retirees, points out that management "told us there were a lot of changes that had to be made in the collective agreement, that the collective agreement was too cumbersome, there wasn’t enough room for mobility as far as the company was concerned, and they wanted to get rid of a lot of this contract language to make their operation more efficient ..."

What “cumbersome” means to them is that unions with real rights and powers infringe on management and corporate power. What “mobility” means is their ability to move workers and investment around without any union restrictions. And what “efficiency” is all about is speeding up production, and increasing the rate of exploitation of workers. This was all about increasing corporate power, raising profit rates, and decreasing the power of workers.

This is why Falconbridge tried to rewrite the contract entirely, hired the Accu-Fax strikebreaking firm, and planned to use scabs. Falconbridge made a big issue of union representation to try to directly undermine union power. This was an attempt, as Norm Chammas points out, to “drive a wedge between the membership and the union officers.” This did not succeed and in the end drove more people to support the union. But at this time many did not see that the character of Falconbridge in the bargaining process had changed and that this was not your standard “status quo” bargaining that would lead at the end of the day to a compromise, with the company taking most of its concession demands off the table.

. . . During the period of bargaining, the level of mobilization was not very high. There were only about 300 people out of a total membership of 1,200 at the strike vote meeting in early July 2000. It was only with the final meeting just before the strike started, where all the members present received a summary of the new contract proposed by Falconbridge, that a major mobilization of the membership was initiated. This membership information, education and involvement were critical to the success of the strike.

. . . As bargaining progressed, and especially as the strike began, individuals and small networks within the union began to realize what the stakes were in this strike, especially by the Labour Day weekend, four weeks into the strike. This was a rather uneven process, and it was some rank-and- file activists and members of the leadership who were more tied into the mood of the union militants who began to realize that far more was needed from the union than simply a regular strike. They began to see that waging a regular strike would be a recipe for disaster.

According to Norm, Falconbridge thought they "would carry on their fight with a few individuals in the union. In reality what transpired was that the membership took over the fight, and that’s why Falconbridge was surprised. Because when you challenge union people it’s like waking up a sleeping dog. It’s very simple, you might feel it’s very quiet and all that, but when you challenge them they pull together … especially when their survival is at stake."

As a result, members began to initiate more militant picket line activities and other strike and support activities that both put more pressure on Falconbridge and also began to mobilize a section of the membership and the community in greater and more militant activity. Workers quickly came up against the limitations of the strike protocol that the union had signed with Falconbridge, when they expected this to be a typical strike, which limited the ability of the workers to hold up vehicles and to picket .

Going on the offensive

In response to the court injunction limiting picketing, workers from the smelter initiated secondary picketing at Maley Drive, where scabs were picked up and transported to Falconbridge sites. Ben Robinson tells us about how successful this was: "from an activist point of view ... it was very successful … They never expected 300 or 400 people to be at Maley Drive. The police attempted the first time to remove us, and said it was private property. But we had information it wasn’t private property. It was in fact a public road. ..."

As Norm put it, some members wanted to do things that would have an impact "to make sure that we go on the offensive rather than being on the defensive. Beside bracing ourselves to cope with the impact of the strike, to fight a lengthy strike, go on the offensive and try to show the company that we are defiant and we are not going to give in."

This included more militant picket activities, secondary picketing, taking the struggle to Falconbridge’s office in Toronto and to Queen’s Park, and building major solidarity activities including the Solidarity Weekend in January. There was also a scab-mobile that went around town causing problems for scabs – visiting their houses and calling attention to them. These initiatives began to develop the struggle into a rather innovative strike.