VALE INCO STRIKE: Local 6500 Holds Rally in Downtown Sudbury
THE SUDBURY STAR, 14 Jan, 2010
By Carol Mulligan
For a good couple of hours Wednesday, the streets of downtown Sudbury belonged to striking Steelworkers.
After six months on picket lines and receiving $200-a-week strike pay, production and maintenance workers marched and chanted to tell the city — and the world — they are alive and well and more solidly together than on July 13, when they went on strike against Vale Inco Ltd.
From 1,500 to 2,000 people, depending on who counted, paraded from the new Steelworkers’ Hall at 66 Brady St. through the city core, stopping traffic, turning heads and prompting teenagers not aware of their labour struggle to take pictures with their cellphones.
One young woman talking on her phone as she walked down Larch Street, looked up suddenly, grew startled and yelled over her phone: “Man, there’s like hundreds of people marching down the street here.”
She was not the only person surprised at the size of the rally to mark six months on strike by USW Local 6500 in Sudbury and Local 6200 in Port Colborne.
Steelworkers, themselves, were astonished by the turnout at what they began to realize was an historic event.
Union leaders and politicians told strikers and their supporters it was a day people would be talking about for a very long time and no one participating in the march questioned it.
After several strike solidarity events at which organizers put on brave faces when attendance was poor, Steelworker activists and organizers were ecstatic at the show of support.
USW international president Leo Gerard’s face lit up when it was clear by 9 a.m. that the event was going to make the record books in sheer size and volume.
Several organizers admitted there could hardly sleep the night before, they were so nervous about the turnout at the rally. Their smiles indicated they would sleep well last night.
Veterans of the landmark Inco strike of 1978-79 remarked that, even then, when Local 6500 had 11,600 members, protest marches did not attract as many people as this one.
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