PotashCorp CEO says union 'paralysed' talks

23 October 2008 21:18  [Source: ICIS news]

HOUSTON (ICIS news)--PotashCorp CEO Bill Doyle on Thursday blasted the United Steelworkers union (USW), claiming the national leadership of the organisation had “paralysed” the negotiating process.

Doyle, speaking in an analyst call in which Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan (PotashCorp) unveiled record earnings, praised USW negotiator Lee Edwards as “smart and tough and fair”, but said the union’s headquarters stepped into the bargaining, thwarting progress towards an agreement.

“She lost control to the union’s national leadership,” Doyle said.

Messages left on Edwards’s office and cell phones were not immediately returned on Thursday.

The union and PotashCorp officials met more than 40 times between January and when mediation broke down on 7 August. Since then, workers at three potash fertilizer facilities that manufacture a combined 3.1m tonnes/year of production in Canada’s Saskatchewan province have been on strike.

Doyle blasted the national leadership of USW as trying to “poison the relationship between the company and its employees”.

“One of the things you learn in a strike is giving the union’s leadership a strike mandate is a dangerous thing. Because as soon as they get that from the rank and file, basically the union leadership has proved it can do whatever it wants. So basically, all transparency and accountability goes out the window and the union members are left in the dark,” Doyle said.

Doyle also lashed out at the union’s proposed commodity-based bonus scheme, which would tie compensation of miners to the price of potash fertilizer. The proposed bonus would amount to $157,000 (€122,460) per employee under current earnings estimates, Doyle said.

Talks appeared earlier this month as if they were about to resume, but the company cancelled further bargaining when the union declined to strip the commodity-based bonus scheme from its proposal.

($1 = €0.78)

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By: David Rosen
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