Vale Inco Demo In London

From the Morning Star.....

Striking Canadian miners have brought their fight to the City and challenged their hard-line bosses to "come out of hiding" and explain why they have forced 3,000 workers to take to the picket lines.

The nickel miners from Sudbury in Ontario, who have been on all-out strike since July over huge multinational mining corporation Vale-Inco's demands for massive pension cuts, tracked down the firm's executives at a wealthy stockbrokers' meeting in London.

Demanding that their bosses "show their face," United Steelworkers Union (USW) member Patrick Veinot told the Morning Star that the miners were prepared to challenge executives "wherever they went.

"This is a company that doesn't know how to talk to a union, that doesn't know how to negotiate and that doesn't mind lying," he explained.

"Management has provoked strikes and demonstrations by its workers across the world - in Canada, in Indonesia and in Brazil - because of its attacks on conditions," Mr Veinot added.

The picket in the heart of the capital's financial district was organised by the Workers Uniting global union that brings together the USW and Unite. The British union's joint general secretary Derek Simpson emphasised how the demonstration was "just the beginning of real international co-operation.

"Multinational companies are free to organise their interests across borders and it is essential that unions organise internationally to defend the interests of workers in those companies," he stressed.

Unite assistant general secretary Les Bayliss added that the Canadian miners' four-month strike deserved solidarity throughout the world and proclaimed that "the fight of Vale-Inco workers, whether in Canada or Brazil, is our fight too."