What Unimin isn’t telling you

Two days before Christmas, when my employer announced that it was going to close the Nephton mine where I work, I was both disappointed and confused.

I was disappointed because closing the mine where I work with nearly 100 other people is simply not necessary.

Closing my mine is only made possible because Unimin is increasingly contracting out significant amounts of our raw materials work south of the border. If the contracting out (something explicitly forbidden in my collective agreement) ended tomorrow, there is simply no way my mine’s sister facility next door, Blue Mountain, would be able with keep up to customer demand.

The coverage of the Nephton mine closure has also been confusing for those of us familiar with how these two facilities work.

Unimin has not been forthcoming about the impact of contracting out, and therefore throwing 100 Canadians out of work at Nephton. In its public communications, Unimin boasts that upgrading the Blue Mountain site will reduce power consumption and noise levels. As somebody who has worked at Unimin for 14 years and lived in the area my whole life, I can confidently say that this is pure fantasy. Beefing up our sister mine and ramping up the amount of product going to the U.S. to replace Canadian jobs will most certainly cause more rail traffic and highway noise, as the truck traffic will increase by 30-40 trucks per day.

The bottom line is this: closing the Nephton mine is going to be detrimental to the community and surrounding businesses. Mining jobs are good jobs that are important for sustaining this region — a region that is already reeling from the announcement that General Electric in Peterborough will be closing.

The government should step up and work with Unimin to ensure that past (or future) public subsidies keep these jobs in Canada. For example, modernizing a portion of the Nephton plant would both ensure the viability of the mine and ensure good local jobs into the future. It also has the added benefits of reducing the noise and traffic described above.

It is heartbreaking that good jobs will disappear when they simply don’t have to. Unimin has received substantial public funds in the past, and the community (workers, local residents, First Nations, cottagers) deserve some honesty about whether or not job loss is necessary.

Nathan White President, Unifor 306-0