Local workers may not be in line for mining jobs

Mel Rothenburger’s recent speech on the mine was inspiring and right on the money in my view (The Daily News, Nov. 25).  

What he didn’t address was the assumption that most of the proponents of the mine are making that there will be lots of great paying jobs for Kamloops workers if the mine goes ahead.  

I think there are good reasons for doubting that assumption.  More likely there will be an army of foreign workers hired “temporarily” at minimum wage to do the work, replacing them with “new” foreign workers when their time runs out.

To quote the Huffington Post:

“Thousands of Canadian employers use temporary foreign workers. The Alberta Federation of Labour recently obtained a list of more than 4,000 companies that have used the ‘fast-track’ process since it came into existence a year ago, in April 2012.”

“We took that list and combined it with the Globe and Mail’s list of largest Canadian employers to find out which of them are using the ‘fast-track’ process. Of the
50 largest Canadian employers, The Huffington Post was able to confirm that at least 18 of them were on the AFL’s list.”

Also look at the following link for Temporary Foreign Worker Impacts Felt Far Beyond RBC (www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/04/13/rbc-foreign- workers_n_3073989.html)
On this post, Mark Thompson, professor emeritus at UBC’s Sauder School of
Business, says the story is much bigger than the four dozen Royal Bank workers, and it’s far from over:  

“I think there’s going to be more examples of temporary foreign workers doing things that most people in the public wonder about.”  

Thompson says there are over 300,000 temporary foreign workers in Canada in jobs that aren’t temporary in restaurants, in health care, and in many other fields.

“Normally, if you have a shortage of people, the response is wages go up . . . If you can get foreign workers for the prevailing rate where the market doesn’t clear, then you never have to raise the wages for the Canadians,” he said.

Comments:

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  Snuffy The SEAL 

  • 3 days ago

  Oh boy...here we go again. I got as far as The Huffington Post....and quit reading. Here's a few non-fear-mongering comments instead. The rules for foreign workers are very strict....maybe try researching what hoops the employers have to jump through before any foreign worker comes here. Ironic that those whining about a supposed lack of local hiring, are all old and retired. I guess these same locals also have no idea what the shortage of skilled workers means to the economy or to employers. How many of you have ever worked at Domtar ?....if you have, you would KNOW that they very rarely hire from outside THIS community. For years they wouldn't even accept an application if it didn't have a Kamloops return address. Did any of you even realize that ? My company, as well as most, have a policy of in house job posting first....then they go in company and finally, they will go outside the company. I really wish some people around here would get all the facts before they blindly swallow what a bunch of self-serving and partisan people throw at them. Sad...but that's why it's Fruitloops.

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    Karlwo  Snuffy The SEAL 

    • 3 days ago

    I admire you for your constancy in believe that our governments are acting in our best interests and that their regulations are applied fairly and honestly and that no one knows how to get around these rules or manipulate the decisions of panels and boards. However your comment about "hoops" that employers have to jump through is mostly wrong. A company can cease to be the employer - they contract out the provision of labour to a contracting firm to supply the workers - and these contractors are bringing in temporary foreign workers by the thousands with few or any "hoops". They are replacing Canadian workers who are being fired, all over the country for example 300 highly skilled trades workers were fired in Fort McMurray a month ago and replaced with temporary foreign workers using this approach. Please get all the facts before you blindly swallow what a bunch of self-serving and partisan people throw at you.

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      Angst Over Ajax  Karlwo 

      • 3 days ago

      Having faith in our government to look after our interests before those of corporations or foreign nations is becoming rare.

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        Karlwo  Angst Over Ajax 

        • 3 days ago

        Naivety in a young child is called innocence; but in an adult who has been around so much, seen so much and knows so much, I would call it blind ignorance.

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    Nelsonx1  Snuffy The SEAL 

    • 3 days ago

    There is a severe shortage in BC for skilled labour in all levels of resourse extraction. In Austrailia, mines are loosing people in droves as workers leave mining operations for better paying LNG projects. The same will happen here in BC. Firstly Ajax will have difficulty drawing workers from establsihed mines to work for a foreign owned low grade operation with no track record that will be subject to shut down at the first hint of lower copper prices. Secondly KGHM has a poor environmental record http://www.greenbiz.com/news/2... and poor labour relations back home http://www.euronews.com/2011/0...
    Who would quit their secure employeement to work for this substandard organization? Workers from Poland?

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  Nelsonx1 

  • 4 days ago

  Ajax Mine's priority is to its shareholders
  - Not employees
  - Not the City of Kamloops
  - Not the environment
  - Not the politicians
  The will build this mine as cheaply as possible, operate it as cheaply as possible and if it means hiring their own from back in Poland, they will. The average miner's salary in Poland is $3000 USD. That is why they will not guaranttee to hire locally. Do the math, a Polish worker will take a job at a much lower wage than local workers and will likely be more qualified as they are trained in KGHM procedures. Less operating costs means more profits to the Company, 32% of which is owned by the Polish government. The mine has a high probability of hiring foreign workers and profits will trickle back home to fund government services there as Hydro subsidies ensure profits are maximized. Seniors and schools in BC will be worst hit by 28% Hydro increases all while Ajax profits will fund seniors and schools in Poland.
  THIS IS TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!

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Gabriel’s subsidiary probed for money laundering and tax evasion in Romania

Rosia Montana Gold Corporation (RMGC), a Romanian mining company majority owned by Canada’s Gabriel Resources (TSX: GBU), is being investigated for alleged money laundering and tax evasion by local authorities

Rise Project, a member of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), reports (Romanian language) that RMCG paid over US$300,000 to Kadok Interprest SRL, a firm that prosecutors say is a phantom company used by an organized crime network based in the Romanian city of Ploiesti.

The news outlet adds that prosecutors discovered the payments in an investigation into the “Păvăleanu network,” which resulted in the arrest three weeks ago of Marcel Păvăleanu, an advisor to the Romanian government.

Gabriel’s chief executive officer, Jonathan Henry, told Bloomberg that no employee or manager at the unit has been targeted and that the company is “cooperating fully” with the local authorities.

The criminal investigation is the latest of a series of setbacks Gabriel Resources has suffered on its flagship gold and silver project of Rosia Montana. For the last year, and with more intensity in the last three months, Romanians have been protesting what they say is an environmentally risky project and a larger problem of political corruption.

Last November a Romanian parliamentary committee rejected the project, forcing Gabriel to push it back several more months, and upping costs to about $1.5 billion.

Meanwhile a group of environmentalists sent Thursday an open letter to Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister and members of parliament, demanding the prompt introduction of legislation to make local firms, particularly extractive industry corporations, accountable for proposed projects and actual operations abroad. The group has also requested Ottawa to withdraw its support for Gabriel Resources' project.

The Canadian miner has already spent more than $500 million on the project in a region of Transylvania where mining dates back to the first century, since it first acquired the concession in the late 1990s.

Italdraghe: New Dredger for Ethiopia

The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia is experiencing rapid population growth and this is placing ever greater demands on the country’s already limited water resources due to increasing needs for crop irrigation, drinking water and hydroelectric power.

Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile River, is located at a height of 1,786 metres above sea level in Ethiopia’s North West Highlands. As the country’s largest lake, with a surface area of more than 3,100 km2, it is also an essential source of water. Given its importance the lake needs to be carefully managed to maximise the economic, social and environmental benefits it can provide.

Italdraghe, Italy’s leading dredger pump manufacturer, thanks to World Bank funding, will be supplying a new cutter suction dredger to the Ethiopian Ministry of Water and Energy. Based initially at Bahir Dar, this dredger will be used primarily to dredge the seven industrial ports situated around the edge of the lake, which is up to 14 metres deep in places.

The SGT 250 cutter suction dredger, designed and built in Italdraghe’s shipyard on the Adriatic coast, is 23.70 metres long and 4.40 wide and is able to dredge down to 7.5 metres. It features a Draghe Lario dredging pump and IVECO C90 engine (280 kW at 2,000 rpm) as well as a 10 kVA generator.

The dredger also boasts a spud carriage with a travel of 2000mm and a tilting spud system. Its extremely comfortable fully-fitted out operator cabin offers all-round vision and an impressive range of instrumentation including production measuring equipment.

Having successfully passed its pre-shipment tests and inspections it is already on its way to Djibouti from where it will travel overland to Lake Tana in the Amhara region. Following on from dredger assembly and commissioning, Italdraghe technicians will run an onsite training course for the local dredger operators to familiarise them with the equipment.

Mixed signals from the Ukraine’s coal mining industry

Back in August, President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych said that no coal mines will be closed without reason. He said this at celebrations on the occasion of Miner’s Day in Donetsk. According to him, the preservation of promising operating mines is a priority of state policy. Most recently he is reported to have called for an increase in annual coal production to 105 Mt. On Miners Day he stressed that the closure of unprofitable mines must happen in parallel with providing miners with new jobs and the preservation of the existing level of social protection. He also noted the importance of engaging private investment in the coal industry.“In the future it is necessary to improve public-private partnership involved in modernisation of coal enterprises,” he said. The President stressed the need for modernisation of the coal industry. “The ultimate goal of this process is to create a sector of new economic quality through the introduction of advanced production technology and management, modern safety standards,” Yanukovych said.

Yanukovych also said on Miner’s Day that the privatisation process, which was originally set to be completed in 2015, has been accelerated and now will be finished in late 2014. “Everything has to be done under the full control of labour collectives and the trade unions,” he said. “I’d like to emphasise that no coal mine can be closed unjustifiably. According to him, steps to increase the use of coal in the domestic market have been already taken. “In this way we create the market conditions for the development of the coal industry,” Yanukovych said. UPI reported recently that “Ukraine has designated 45 coal mines for privatisation under a law adopted last year meant to modernise the country’s chronically unprofitable coal sector.” The list includes mines held by the state-owned enterprises Makeevugol, Ordzhonikidzeugol, Luganskugol, Pervomayskugol, Donbassantratsit, Lvivvugillia and Volynugol, the business daily Kommersant-Ukraine reported.

In April 2012 a law was passed to allow the privatisation of the coal sector, opening up profitable state-owned facilities to private investors through licenses and leases or outright sales in an effort to save millions of dollars and boost production. UPI reported that the current national energy strategy, published last year, “calls for an increase in coal production of up to 115 Mt, to be achieved through the modernisation of the mines with the help of private capital.” UPI also reported that “70% of Ukraine’s coal mines are state-owned, with 80% of them unprofitable and requiring subsidies of up $160 million per year to keep them running. In all, the Ukrainian state mining sector lost $1 billion over the first seven months of 2013, up 34.2% from year-earlier figures,” Kommersant-Ukraine said.

Energy analysts have warned finding investors for the mines won’t be easy at a time when domestic coal demand is weak and production is falling. Ukraine’s coal extraction totals dropped 4.3%, or 1.27 Mt, in the January-April 2013 period, compared with the same time frame from last year, official figures indicated. Figures released just last week showed Ukrain’e coal production for the first ten months of 2013 to have fallen by 4.6%. Another complicating factor is the 2012 privatisation law requires any buyers to abide by guarantees of social protections for miners. But in order to find willing buyers for the operations, their working costs need to be brought down, the newspaper reported analyst Denis Sakwa of the Ukrainian investment bank Dragon Capital as saying. For example, at the state-owned Lisichanskuglya mine, which was put up for sale recently, “the cost of production of coal is [$85] per tonne, while at similar private mines it in the range of [$50-$60] per tonne,” he said.

However, implementation of clean coal technologies and technologies for carbon capture and storage lacks government support, representative of the Institute for Coal of the Russian Academy of Sciences Denis Zastrelov recently told a press conference. “Researches are not enough to start implementing projects in Ukraine. Mechanisms of state support are needed to get a commercial basis,” Zastrelov said. “Almost all of them are waiting for solving of regulatory and legal issues related to the promotion of projects for pumping carbon dioxide. Prices for quotas have dropped significantly on carbon market. Everything will depend on settlement of this issue at the international level, and whether the Kyoto Protocol will continue having effect. Then we can talk about possible ‘pilot’ projects in Ukraine,” he said.

Total coal resources are reported at 117,500 Mt, including 56,700 Mt of known reserves, of which 39,300 Mt is thermal coal. The recession’s drop in Ukrainian steel production reduced coking coal demand and the fall in energy consumption by most of the country’s industries lowered thermal coal demand. Currently about 45% of coal in Ukraine is produced by private players – including their 55% share in coking coal production.

Back in April, the BBC reported on illegal coal mining in the Ukraine and it quoted Mihailo Volynets Head of Ukraine’s Independent Miners’ Union saying that about 6.5 Mt more coal – 10% of Ukraine’s total output – is for sale than is officially mined.

US oil prices surge on expectations of supply drop

utures have surged to a one-month high on expectations for the first decline in weekly U.S. crude supplies in nearly three months as well as news that a key pipeline will begin service at the start of the year, relieving the glut of oil in the middle part of the country.

Nymex WTI oil futures climbed more than $2 a barrel to reach a session high of $96.04 a barrel. Front-month WTI futures have not settled above the $96-a-barrel mark since Oct. 31. Brent crude oil futures rose more modestly, up about $1 to a session high of $112.70 a barrel.

(Read more: Will Mexico open its oil industry to the world?)

News that TransCanada's 700,000 barrel a day pipeline taking crude from the main physical delivery point for the WTI oil futures in Cushing, Okla., to Port Arthur, Texas, on the Gulf Coast will begin service on Jan. 3 helped to spark Tuesday's move in the benchmark U.S. oil price. 

"The pipeline news kicked off technical buying," said Addison Armstrong, senior director for market research at Tradition Energy. "Analysts are also looking for a drawdown in crude supplies for the first time in about two months." 

Analysts surveyed by Platts expect that U.S. crude oil inventories fell by 1.25 million barrels last week, which would mark the first weekly decline since Sept. 13. Refinery runs rates are expected to be well above normal for this time of year, helping to reduce crude supplies.

(Watch: Will Iranian crude dominate OPEC's agenda?)

Traders say the reduction in premium of Brent crude futures—the global oil benchmark—to the WTI contract is another factor aiding the surge in the U.S. oil price. Brent was trading at nearly a $20 premium to WTI a week ago. The spread is now closer to $16 a barrel.

OPEC oil ministers will meet in Vienna on Wednesday, yet traders and analysts are not expecting a change in production quotas and therefore little impact on oil prices.