SUDBURY STAR, 21 Sept 2009
By DENIS ST. PIERRE,
Union leaders from around the world converged on Sudbury on the weekend to publicly declare their support for striking Vale Inco workers.
If Brazil-based Vale, the world’s second-largest mining company, wins historic concessions in Sudbury, miners across the globe will be increasingly attacked by other mining conglomerates, they warned.
“If Vale wins this fight, imagine what Xstrata and BHP Billiton and all those other companies will do to workers around the world,” said Sharan Burrow, an Australian labour leader and president of the International Trade Union Confederation, which represents 166 million workers in 156 countries.
“To the community of Sudbury, I say congratulations for standing up, for standing up for yourselves and for your children, for your community,” Burrow said.
“You are standing up to the biggest corporate bully in the world.”
“You are going to show us the model of the worker of the future that we all want to be,” Pinto said, to thunderous applause from the arena crowd. “We are very proud and one day, we know, we are going to work together for a company that respects workers all over the world. I leave here with the conviction … of this great victory.”
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