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'Payday loans of the mining industry' download risk to workers in one of world's most dangerous jobs

Submitted by x344543 on Wed, 09/28/2016 - 18:54

By Sharry Taylor - Rabble.Ca, September 26, 2016

Goldcorp founder Rob McEwen has called them "the payday loans of the mining industry" and they're introducing a new, intense pressure on an industry already reviled for Indigenous land theft, dangerous working conditions and environmental infractions.

"Streaming" is a form of speculative futures in the gold mining industry where instead of charging interest, financiers provide loans secured by a mine's assets in exchange for a future cut of production. As gold has become more difficult to find and access, higher production costs have left many mines unable to finance production through debt and equity. Since 2004, streaming has emerged to fill this void.

Mining companies agree to sell a percentage of their future gold to the streaming company at a deep discount. When the gold has been mined, streaming companies sell their cut at the spot price, collecting the difference as profit.

Once a mine is producing gold, the streaming deal becomes active with the mine first repaying its debt to the streaming financier. Yet since streaming deals promise a share of production over the life of the mine, even once this debt is paid off the mine must continue to pay. At one non-unionized mine in northern Ontario, the streaming deal in place will yield the streaming company a predicted $18 million in profit from the mine over its estimated life of six years; more than a 50 per cent return on their original loan to the mine.

Streaming represents a new emergent layer in capitalism that is more acutely derivative and parasitic. This layer overlies the productive economy and its workers in technically creative ways, expropriating maximum surplus value while avoiding messy risks. Streaming takes a cut of production while leaving political and operations-related risks to be borne by mining companies.

This means that "risk minimization" for streaming company investors is really "risk displacement" onto people affected by mining operations. When profit margins are squeezed by streaming deals, other parts of the mining operation must compensate in order for it to be profitable. This could manifest in a myriad of ways, from union-busting to toxic waste dumping. It is becoming evident that part of this risk is shifted onto miners, whose work is intensified by the pressures from streaming's relentless skim.

Sources at one streamed Ontario mine say that management holds quarterly meetings with the miners, reporting figures that point out the relationship between costs, gold production and mine viability. How much rock has been removed from the mine, the gold recovery rate from it, total ounces of gold recovered, and its average selling price; these are aggregated along with life- of-mine costs into an important figure called the "all-in sustaining cost," or AISC.

The AISC represents the overall cost per ounce of producing gold at the mine at a particular moment in time. If the AISC is continually above the price of gold, the mine ceases to be profitable. Miners get a sense from these meetings how close to this point they are. Since streaming costs are factored into the AISC for each quarter, streaming agreements have a direct impact on the goals that are set for miners and the production pace to which they must aspire in order to be "profitable." Sources at the streamed Ontario mine say that towards the end of the quarter, miners are encouraged and incentivized to work faster, which puts their safety at risk.

At their most recent quarterly meeting in August 2016, mine management focused heavily on safety, since reportable injuries went up in 2015 and a miner was seriously injured by falling rocks in June. Yet miners were also told that they are "behind" in gold production for the year-to-date. When a crew recently identified a serious safety issue that resulted in part of the mine's permanent closure, management praised the team for identifying the issue, but also mentioned that it cost the company $1.2 million. These mixed messages essentially transfer corporate financial decisions onto miners as they consider matters of safety.

Streaming deals mean that part of the miners' future work is already promised away. This future loss weighs heavily upon the present, increasing a mine's AISC and therefore the urgency for present production while gold prices are high enough to support the costs. This directly pits the concept of being jobless against that of safety for miners, while streaming companies sit back and wait for their returns.

Streaming's exploitative terms mean that miners must work at maximal speed and efficiency in order for a mine to remain viable. With priorities shifted by this knowledge, streaming has the potential to influence miners' decisionmaking in ways that could well turn out to be deadly.

Tags: 
mine workers
health and safety

EcoUnionist News #122

Submitted by x344543 on Tue, 09/20/2016 - 19:28

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, September 20, 2016

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

Ongoing Mobilizations:

The Thin Green Line:

Just Transition:

Bread and Roses:

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

Whistle Blowers:

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
green unionism
Thin Green Line
just transition
agricultural workers and peasants
agribusiness
health and safety
direct action
labor and environment

EcoUnionist News #121

Submitted by x344543 on Tue, 09/13/2016 - 15:05

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, September 13, 2016

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

Ongoing Mobilizations:

The Thin Green Line:

Just Transition:

Bread and Roses:

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
green unionism
Thin Green Line
just transition
agricultural workers and peasants
agribusiness
health and safety
labor and environment

September 13th: Thousands petition to Drop the Charges Against Harding and Labrie

Submitted by x344543 on Sun, 09/11/2016 - 18:12

By Fritz Edler - Harding and LaBrie Defense, September 8, 2016

Time: Tuesday, September 13, 2016 at 9:00 AM

Place: Palais de Justice, 375 Rue King Ouest (corner of King and Belvédère), Sherbrooke, QC

(Sherbrooke, QC)-Representatives of the Harding and Labrie Defense Committee, Railroad Workers United (RWU) and community allies from the Lac Mégantic area will be at the procedural hearings at the Palais de Justice in Sherbrooke, QC on September 13th, 2016 carrying petitions signed by over 2000 people across North America calling for ending the prosecution of Canadian railworkers Tom Harding and Richard Labrie. Harding and Labrie have been targeted and charged under the Criminal Code as well as the Railroad Safety Act and other laws. The charges could result in prison terms up to life.

“Investigations have already determined that the actions of these two were not the predominate cause the Lac-Mégantic tragedy,” said Committee representative Fritz Edler, a 35-year veteran train engineer. “The runaway train that killed 47 and destroyed half the town was the result of railroad managerial irresponsibility compounded by a failure of government oversight and safety regulation. There was a lax safety culture that has to change.”

The irresponsible practice of sending out unit trains of the most volatile kind with only a single crew member illustrates the disregard for public safety by the Montreal Maine and Atlantic Railroad (MMA) whose most important policymakers have had no legal penalty.

“The number of runaway trains reported across Canada has increased every year since Lac­ Mégantic,” Edler added. “It’s no wonder the people of Lac Mégantic have no confidence in the current actions of the railroad companies or the government agencies to keep them safe, and are calling for the tracks to detour around the town rather than run through it.”

Supporters will gather at 9 am on September 13th in the Palais de Justice Square in Sherbrooke to present the petitions. After the procedural hearing, Harding’s legal defense team will update supporters on the latest developments in the case.

Tags: 
Railroad Workers United (RWU)
railroad workers
health and safety
Lac-Mégantic
Tom Harding
Richard LaBrie

Capitalist Saboteurs

Submitted by x344543 on Thu, 09/08/2016 - 11:22

By R. H. Lossin - Jacobin, September 1, 2016

This April, a natural gas pipeline exploded in Salem Township, Pennsylvania, shooting flames well above the tree line and producing enough heat to send a man to the hospital with third-degree burns. Such explosions, if uncommon, aren’t rare: according to ProPublica, they’ve killed five hundred people and injured four thousand more in the past thirty years.

When infrastructure fails in such a dramatic fashion, it is usually considered an accident. In the rare instances in which events like pipeline explosions are addressed as structural failures, it is only in the most literal sense of the word “structural,” prompting demands for repairs, regulation, and safety measures. But calls for oversight and technological fixes only reassert the accidental nature of what is in fact a problem of class society.

Pipeline explosions are a perfect example of what the late nineteenth-century French syndicalist Emile Pouget called “capitalist sabotage”: the regular and systematized damage done by capitalists to industry, commerce, workers, and consumers in the service of profit.

This is quite different from the sabotage periodically carried out by workers. For workers, Pouget explains, sabotage is “aimed only at the means of exploitation against the machines and the tools, that is against inert, painless and lifeless things.” Capitalist sabotage — “the very life essence of modern society” — “reaps human victims and deprives men of their health by sticking a leech at the very sources of life.”

Capitalists, of course, are well aware of the difference. The energy industry is again instructive. The initial investment in pipeline infrastructure was not necessarily a safety measure — it was a self-conscious assertion of class power.

Pipelines allow oil to flow across vast distances without human labor, wresting control from workers who would otherwise control crucial checkpoints in its distribution network. They decrease workers’ ability to, as Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn put it, “consciously withdraw their efficiency” — in other words, sabotage the operation.

Tags: 
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
sabotage
capital blight
pipelines
health and safety
green unionism
green syndicalism

EcoUnionist News #120

Submitted by x344543 on Tue, 09/06/2016 - 22:57

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, September 7, 2016

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

Ongoing Mobilizations:

The Thin Green Line:

Just Transition:

Bread and Roses:

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

Whistle Blowers:

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
green unionism
Thin Green Line
just transition
whistleblowers
health and safety
agricultural workers and peasants
Brooke Anderson
J.P.Wright
labor and environment

(Working Paper #7) An Illness to One is the Concern of All: The Health Impacts of Rising Fossil Fuel Use

Submitted by x332349 on Thu, 09/01/2016 - 12:40

By Svati Shah and Sean Sweeney - Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, September 2016

This paper has been written to help unions representing workers in all sectors get a clear sense of what is presently happening in terms of the health impact of fossil fuel use and what could also happen if present patterns in energy use continue into the future. The data are presented in a way that unions can use to more effectively advocate both for their members and the broader public.

Unions in health care can play—indeed are playing—an important role in addressing both the climate-related and the pollution-related dimensions of the unfolding health crisis, as can health and safety personnel working with or for unions in different sectors. But the health-related impacts of rising pollution levels and climate change are expected to affect the lives of workers across a range of occupations. Unions representing workers in emergency services, workers in transport systems, or workers who must work outdoors in agriculture or construction also have a particularly important role to play. The situation requires as unified a response as possible.

One of the striking features of fossil fuel use today is how much it reflects and reinforces class inequalities. It is well known that rich countries consume far more energy per per-son than poorer ones, but within both rich and poor countries there is often a huge gulf between the energy consumed by the rich and the energy consumed by the poor and working class. The same is true of emissions. A December 2015 study released by Oxfam calculated that the poorest half of the global population are responsible for only around 10% of global emissions yet live overwhelmingly in the countries most vulnerable to climate change while the richest 10% of people in the world are responsible for around 50% of global emissions.

Trade unions with the capacity to play more of an active role in resisting the expansion of fossil fuel use can be confident of the fact that they will be intersecting with a rising global movement that is confronting fossil fuel extraction, including “unconventional fuels” like shale gas and shale oil. The concerns that drive this movement are numerous. Along with climate and air quality concerns, struggles have been built around questions of water scarcity and contamination and the fight to defend land and livelihoods from “extractivist” energy companies.

Read the report (PDF).

EcoUnionist News #119

Submitted by x344543 on Tue, 08/30/2016 - 18:30

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, August 31, 2016

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

Ongoing Mobilizations:

The Thin Green Line:

Just Transition:

Bread and Roses:

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
green unionism
Thin Green Line
just transition
whistleblowers
health and safety
agricultural workers and peasants
agroecology
labor and environment

EcoUnionist News #118

Submitted by x344543 on Tue, 08/23/2016 - 21:44

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, August 24, 2016

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

Ongoing Mobilizations:

The Thin Green Line:

Just Transition:

Bread and Roses:

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

Whistle Blowers:

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
green unionism
Thin Green Line
just transition
whistleblowers
health and safety
agricultural workers and peasants
agroecology
labor and environment

EcoUnionist News #117

Submitted by x344543 on Mon, 08/15/2016 - 19:21

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, August 17, 2016

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

Ongoing Mobilizations:

The Thin Green Line:

Just Transition:

Bread and Roses:

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
green unionism
Thin Green Line
just transition
whistleblowers
health and safety
agriculture
agricultural workers and peasants
agroecology
labor and environment
green jobs
Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL)
World Social Forum

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