In conversation with Neskantaga Chief Chris Moonias as Ring of Fire concerns abound

The Canadian Press
Tue, October 10, 2023 


NESKANTAGA FIRST NATION, ONT. — On the shores of Attawapiskat Lake, deep in the Ring of Fire region in northern Ontario, sits Neskantaga First Nation – a community of about 350 people that can only be accessed by plane or an ice road in the winter.

Many residents, who have for years dealt with challenges including a longstanding boil-water advisory and a shortage of adequate housing, are concerned that Ontario's desire to mine metals from the Ring of Fire could threaten Neskantaga's way of life.

The First Nation's chief, Chris Moonias, wants to meet with Premier Doug Ford to discuss his community's concerns, although that has not happened. From his office in Neskantaga, where a large, orange Every Child Matters flag with his First Nation's insignia hangs on a wall, Moonias sits down with The Canadian Press to share his thoughts.

What is Neskantaga’s position on the proposal to mine the Ring of Fire?

Neskantaga is a pro-development community. We're not saying right out no. We just want to be part of it. We want to have jurisdiction into the area and before anything happens in our territory, in our homeland. We want to be part of the decision making. We have to know what the real benefits are and we have to know what the real impacts are.

Will Neskantaga say yes to mining?

Not at this time because we're not full participants. Everything is being done according to what Ontario wants. Everything was being pushed during the pandemic, this free-entry mining. It's like we don’t have a say at all and that doesn’t sit well with the First Nation.

Do you hope Doug Ford and his government will change their approach?

Not the way they’re acting now. But I hope that some day, maybe the investors will force Doug Ford to act accordingly for a First Nation’s full participation.

What about the promise of prosperity and jobs?

Jobs is a given, it’s easy to get jobs in any development. It’s automatic to get jobs. We’ve had mining in and around northwestern Ontario. You don’t see these First Nations prosper, many boil-water advisories, a lot of poverty. We got to be careful We're always told we'll get jobs, you will get this, you will get that, but nothing happens. That’s why we haven’t been able to really support what’s going on with the Ring of Fire. There are promises of prosperity, sure. We’ve been promised that many times before. It's the rich getting richer. Once they’ve extracted the resources, we’re still out there with boil-water advisories, we’re still in a housing crisis, we’re still in a social crisis. It doesn’t benefit communities as of right now.

— This conversation has been edited and condensed.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 10, 2023.

Liam Casey, The Canadian Press

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Ontario’s Ring of Fire | ontario.ca

'We want to be able to decide': Inside the battle over the Ring of Fire

The Canadian Press
Tue, October 10, 2023 

NESKANTAGA FIRST NATION, ONT. — On a rock-covered beach in the heart of the Ring of Fire in northern Ontario, Alex Moonias gazes east, then north. All he sees is undisturbed land, water and air.

Some 100kilometres from where he stands, the province plans to build a road as part of its pledge to mine the area, which is said to be rich in metals needed for electric vehicle batteries.

Moonias, an elder from Neskantaga First Nation, and many in his community see the provincial government's ambitions for the Ring of Fire as an existential threat to their way of life.

"Mother Earth is hurting," the 70-year-old says. "If a big needle is pushing into your body, how would you feel?"

The survivor of a residential school and, later, alcohol addiction, has heard government promises of prosperity related to developing the territory before. And he's not convinced.

"The government has to come and see the land, or at least spend time with us," he says, breathing in the morning air as water laps the rocky shoreline. "The gift the Creator gave us is to protect the land."

Neskantaga's leadership is not completely opposed to mining in the Ring of Fire, a 5,000-square-kilometre area about 500 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay, Ont. But they are dead set against the way the province has gone about it, saying the government has not properly involved them.

"We're not saying outright no, we just want to be part of it," Chief Chris Moonias says.

"Before anything happens, we want to be able to decide. We have to know what the real benefits are and we have to know what the real impacts are."

Premier Doug Ford has made mining the Ring of Fire a key priority as part of his goal to build an end-to-end electric vehicle manufacturing chain in Ontario.

The province and federal government have together committed billions to deals inked with auto giants Volkswagen and Stellantis to build EV battery plants in southern Ontario. In Ford's vision, the metals supplying those plants would come from northern Ontario and head south for refining and processing.

The province considers nine First Nations to be within the Ring of Fire.

Two of those First Nations – Webequie and Marten Falls – are leading an environmental assessment on a proposed road to the Ring of Fire. While other First Nations say they respect Webequie and Marten Falls' position, they also say the province is employing what they call a colonial divide-and-conquer tactic.

In Neskantaga, Chief Moonias says the premier has yet to reach out directly to the community to discuss plans for the Ring of Fire. Government promises of prosperity ring hollow, he says.

Neskantaga has been under a boil-water advisory for more than 28 years – the longest continuous boil-water advisory in the country, which only the community’s leadership decides when to lift. There's also a housing crisis — the fly-in community of about 350 people needs at least 100 more houses and many live in cramped conditions.

The community has no high school, meaning children have to leave at 13 or 14 years old for education. There is no doctor in the community and its nursing station faces constant staffing shortages.

A state of emergency declared in 2013 over a rash of suicides remains in place. Opioids are an emerging worry, while alcohol still finds its way inside the dry reserve.

Prosperity, the chief says, would have to come in the form of tangible improvements.

It means a high school in the community, he says. It means clean drinking water, good jobs, a paved airport runway that would allow bigger planes in and better access to doctors and nurses.

COMMUNITY CONCERNS

Outside a home for elders, George Sakanee fiddles with a new metal detector. He loves hunting for metallic rocks. Out of one pocket comes a few stones. He pulls a magnet out of his other pocket. A shiny black rock gets pulled to the magnet.

"There's a lot of metal around here," he says with a smile.

He recounts a story about another elder who performed a ceremony that connected him to the spiritual world deep inside the Ring of Fire.

"The Ring of Fire is a gift from the Creator to the Indian people," he says the elder told him.

"But Doug Ford wants all of it now and what will we be left with?"

An all-weather road to a mining development, if it's ever built, also presents concerns. There are plans for several water crossings, including a bridge over the Attawapiskat River.

"They will contaminate the water and we could lose a lot of our fish," says Ryan Moonias, who lives in Thunder Bay with his young family but returned to Neskantaga for its annual summer festival.

"I worked in a mine before, I know what can be left behind, sometimes they screw up, or there are accidents and spills. It could mess up our environment, screw up our hunting grounds and trap lines."

For Roy Moonias, the road itself is an issue.

"Who owns that road? Will there be Ontario police on that road? What else comes with that road, more drugs and alcohol?" he says.

"Building a road into our territory will cause changes and we're obviously really worried about that."

MARTEN FALLS

About 150 kilometres southeast lies Marten Falls First Nation, which is taking a different approach.

It is working on two possible road projects. One is an access road that will connect it with the provincial highway system to the south. The First Nation is leading an environmental assessment that should be complete in two years, says Chief Bruce Achneepineskum.

"That access road would provide for better lives in our community because we would have 24-hour transportation to another community for health reasons, or for education, employment and training, and the list goes on," he says.

The second project is the so-called "Northern Road Link" that would lead to a proposed Ring of Fire mining site known as Eagle's Nest, owned by Wyloo, an Australian-based mining giant controlled by billionaire Andrew Forrest.

Marten Falls and Webequie First Nation are leading the road's required provincial environmental assessment, which Achneepineskum says will not be complete until 2026.

He emphasizes that helping lead the environmental assessment is not a tacit approval to mine the region.

"We felt strongly that we should take the lead in any development happening in our territory," Achneepineskum says.

"But first we want to address the social conditions and economic conditions in our community. These issues are being ignored."

Marten Falls has been under a boil-water advisory for 17 years, so fixing the water problems is paramount, the chief says. The community also needs more housing and better health care.

Marten Falls hopes the proposed road to the provincial highway system will help address those issues, the chief says. The road to the Ring of Fire comes a distant second in priority, he says.

The chief feels, however, that Marten Falls is being held back by other First Nations who disagree with his community's approach.

"This is a new form of paternalism, but now it seems to be coming from our Indigenous brothers and sisters," he says. "Do we have to give up our vision because we have not agreed to a collective approach?"

THE GOVERNMENT VIEW

On a recent afternoon, three Ontario ministers were ebullient when discussing the creation of an end-to-end electric vehicle battery manufacturing chain.

The province is coming off two big — and expensive — wins in service of that goal by landing, with Ottawa, deals with Volkswagen and Stellantis for electric vehicle battery plants in southern Ontario.

Greg Rickford, who runs two ministries — northern development and Indigenous affairs — along with Mining Minister George Pirie and Economic Development Minister Vic Fedeli say all of northern Ontario holds the key to economic growth across the province.

"This is a generational opportunity to transform our economy," Pirie, a former gold mining executive, says.

With development comes a host of jobs, they say, including engineering, architectural, accounting and legal work. There will also be jobs in mines and need for heavy equipment operators, among others.

The ministers believe the development will spur socio-economic change within northern Ontario First Nations. And, of course, be crucial to Ontario's plans to become an EV battery powerhouse.

Rickford, who spends a lot of his time talking to chiefs across northern Ontario including Neskantaga's leader, believes the government can reach agreement with the opposing First Nations.

"We have lots of talks off-line around some of the things that (Neskantaga) needs to move forward," he says. "If we focus on those common interests around legacy infrastructure and keep it keep it pretty simple, we have a clear path."

The province has recommitted $1 billion to develop the Ring of Fire, like the previous Liberal government before it. Ontario has repeatedly asked the federal government to match the funds, which it has thus far not done.

Ottawa wants to develop a domestic source of critical minerals, but it believes many other mining projects across the country are closer to realization.

"We are going to focus very much on expediting the development of Canadian resources," says Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson.

"We will only develop minerals in a manner that is sustainable and respects the rights of Indigenous peoples."

MINING PROSPECTS

In downtown Toronto, Kristan Straub, the Canada CEO of Wyloo, shows off a model of what the underground area that could be explored at the company's site in the Ring of Fire might look like. The mine would be three times as deep as the CN Tower is tall — possibly deeper.

Wyloo is performing exploratory drilling at its Eagle's Nest site and completing a variety of engineering studies. It has also made a commitment to bury 100 per cent of any mine tailings underground in a process Straub says is safe.

In 2007, nickel, copper and platinum metal deposits were discovered at the site. Nickel is a key component of electric vehicle batteries, accounting for roughly 80 per cent of one, says Straub, who came to the company in the spring.

Eagle's Nest – if and when it becomes operational – could produce upwards of 15,000 tons of nickel annually.

"Our goal today is to be in a position where we're ready for construction in four years by 2027, and that would see us in production for 2030," he says.

Wyloo forecasts a 12-year mine life with a possible eight-year extension, he says.

The majority of nickel currently mined in Ontario is exported, Straub says. With the coming Volkswagen and Stellantis plants, the need for nickel in the province will skyrocket.

"Is Eagle's Nest going to supply Ontario's new battery electric vehicle market?" he says. "No. It's going to take, roughly by our calculations, probably close to 25 to 30 new Eagle's Nests."

For any of that to work, the company needs a road to haul out the metals it extracts. And it needs collaboration with First Nations, he says.

Straub, from Henvey Inlet First Nation south of Sudbury, Ont., understands better than most the needs of Indigenous communities. The company is in direct talks with some First Nations, he says.

Wyloo has pledged at least $100-million worth of contracts for Indigenous companies. They've also established a fund to invest in First Nation communities' priorities, focusing on health care and education.

"Certain First Nations are going to either highlight that they have a problem or they want us to stop," Straub says.

"Our ask back to the government and to the other First Nations is that while we respect your opinion, that we don't get stopped in terms of the exploration work or the engineering work."

Individuals and companies can stake mining claims for a small fee in Ontario. There are more than 28,000 mining claims held by 14 companies and individuals in the Ring of Fire, the province said.

Last week, several First Nation leaders, including Neskantaga's chief, protested Ontario's Ring of Fire plans at the legislature. Four First Nations outside the Ring of Fire have pledged to support Neskantaga in a group they've called the Land Defence Alliance.

Chief Rudy Turtle of Grassy Narrows First Nation, which is part of the alliance, does not want mining, logging or any development in his territory — or in any others.

In the 1960s and '70s, two paper mills dumped thousands of kilograms of mercury into a river upstream of Grassy Narrows.

Researchers have reported that more than 90 per cent of the residents in Grassy Narrows and the Wabaseemoong First Nation show signs of mercury poisoning, including Turtle. He lives with seizures, the shakes and co-ordination problems.

"What I'm seeing is it's nothing more than a divide-and-conquer tactic," Turtle says. "It's led to tragedy in the past, and that's how I see it right now."

— with files from Mia Rabson in Ottawa.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 10, 2023.

Liam Casey, The Canadian Press

WAGE THEFT

Class action case filed against TD on behalf of mobile mortgage specialists

The Canadian Press
Tue, October 10, 2023 


TORONTO — A proposed class action lawsuit has been filed against Toronto-Dominion Bank alleging more than 1,000 TD mobile mortgage specialists across Canada did not receive their proper vacation and holiday pay.

The case alleges the bank failed to pay or properly pay its mobile mortgage specialists vacation and/or public holiday pay on their commissions, volume bonuses and other variable payments.

It alleges the money was owed, but not paid, on top of the set commissions and other non-salary compensation.

The allegations have yet to be tested or proven in court.

Jason Chiang, who worked for TD in Vancouver for nearly 13 years, is the proposed representative plaintiff for the case filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

TD spokeswoman Ashleigh Murphy says the bank is reviewing the allegations and will take appropriate action within the courts.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 10, 2023.

Biden Will Award $7 Billion for Hydrogen Hubs Across the US

Ari Natter
Tue, October 10, 2023 



(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden is set this week to announce as much as $7 billion in funding for hydrogen projects across the country as part of a competition to jump-start production of the clean-burning fuel in the US, according to people familiar with the matter.

The funding for so-called hydrogen hubs, where the gas can both be produced and used, is intended to highlight its potential as carbon-free fuel to run factories and power plants. The amount of hydrogen produced in the US could surge to 10 million metric tons by 2030, according to a report released earlier this year by the Energy Department.

Biden is scheduled on Friday to visit Pennsylvania, which is leading an Appalachian hydrogen hub that proposes to use natural gas and carbon capture, where he will give remarks on the clean-energy transition, according to the White House. The project, in partnership with West Virginia and Ohio, also includes Shell Plc.

The awards mark the culmination of a furious race between states for the funding, which was included in 2021’s bipartisan infrastructure legislation. The Energy Department in January urged 33 projects to submit full applications, after receiving 79 proposals. Between six and 10 are expected to receive final awards.

Representatives of the White House and the Energy Department didn’t immediately comment. One of the people, who was granted anonymity to discuss non-public deliberations, cautioned Biden’s agenda could shift amid the administration’s evolving response to Hamas’s attack on Israel.

Other top contenders for Energy Department funding include a Rochester, New York, project led by a coalition of seven northeast states in conjunction with Plug Power Inc., as well as a California-based public-private partnership that includes retailer Amazon.com Inc. and industrial gas company Air Products and Chemicals Inc. A West Virginia hydrogen hub backed by Senator Joe Manchin that is partnering with natural gas producer EQT Corp. is also under consideration.

The Biden administration has said the gas is needed to achieve its climate goals and has launched an effort to reduce costs — one of the biggest barriers of its widespread use — by 80% to $1 a kilogram by 2030.

“Clean hydrogen faces a range of first-of-its-kind challenges including cost and business models,” said Alex Kizer, a senior vice president at the Energy Futures Initiative, a Washington non-profit. “The hubs can act as engines for kick starting how these types of challenges can be sorted through.”

Not everyone is a fan. Opponents argue that while hydrogen is a clean-burning source of power, it takes a great deal of energy to produce — and when it’s made with electricity from coal or natural gas, it has a bigger carbon footprint.

“We don’t want to see billions of our tax dollars spent increasing emissions and environmental harm,” said Lukas Ross, a senior program manager with the environmental group Friends of the Earth. “The Department of Energy has considerable power over how this money is implemented. It’s in their hands whether the hydrogen hub program becomes a lifeline for big oil.”

(Adds context in the fourth paragraph. A previous version was corrected to remove a reference to Equinor ASA, which is no longer participating in the Appalachian hydrogen hub.)

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

What to Watch as IMF and World Bank Hold Meetings in Morocco

Malcolm Scott, Souhail Karam and Eric Martin
Tue, October 10, 2023 



(Bloomberg) -- The annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank kick off this week against a backdrop of escalating global conflict and debt distress.

A new outbreak of violence in Israel and the grinding war in Ukraine add a grim dynamic to the Washington-based lenders’ efforts to rally their members and keep the focus on reforms to bolster their financial firepower.

The gatherings in Marrakech, Morocco — which bring together the world’s finance ministers, central bank governors and top commercial banking executives — are taking place in Africa for the first time in 50 years. Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, was host in 1973, the same year as the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East. Like the current violence, that conflict caught Israel by surprise at a time of global economic fragility.

The confluence of issues, amid high interest rates and a cautious economic outlook, reminds the estimated 10,000 attendees “how quickly geopolitics can change their calculations,” said Josh Lipsky, senior director of the GeoEconomics Center at the Atlantic Council.

Here’s what to watch for this week:

Economic Clouds

The global economy has been buffeted by inflation, the steepest monetary tightening in a generation, China’s property crisis and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, yet expansion keeps chugging along. That has markets rushing to price in a higher-for-longer interest-rate outlook, with 30-year US Treasury bond yields last week punching through 5% for the first time since 2007.

In its flagship World Economic Outlook on Tuesday, the IMF lifted its global inflation forecast for next year — 5.8% from 5.2% seen in July — while shaving 0.1% off its growth outlook for 2024, to 2.9%.

“Monetary policy needs to remain tight in most places until inflation is durably coming down towards targets,” Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the IMF’s chief economist, said in a briefing. “We’re not quite there.”

While discussions over monetary policy often overshadow fiscal updates at such multilateral conferences, there may be more attention paid to the outlook for state treasuries this time with many of the world’s largest economies still deeply in the red.

Multilateral Dysfunction

One again, conflict risks muddying a coherent message from the Group of 20, which represents more than 80% of the global economy created after the global financial crisis to seek a shared path forward. After a consensus communique was reached at its leader summit in India last month, the upcoming finance ministers and central bank governors will be facing a new challenge of addressing the conflict in Israel while balancing several, often clashing, stances.

That was most visible this week in China, as a US congressional delegation headed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized Beijing’s response to the fighting as being insufficiently supportive of Israel. At the same time, the US-China tension will be a common theme through the week, as the IMF warns about the economic costs of worsening political fragmentation.

Debt Help

The so-called Bretton Woods institutions, along with the G-20, are at the center of an effort to rewrite the global financial playbook around debt distress. Piles of loans in emerging markets taken out during the era of low rates and China’s surge of Belt and Road Initiative lending, have now fallen into distress. But nobody knows yet how to resolve that.

The effort, and its very slow progress, comes into focus Thursday during a session of the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable, a novel effort to bring together debtor countries along with the so-called Paris Club group of lenders, China and other new lenders, as well as private creditors. Seeking a unified approach to restructuring debt held by such a diverse group has been difficult, and expectations are low for any breakthroughs. Some progress on individual cases may emerge, however, with progress on restructuring agreements expected on Sri Lanka and Zambia.

Bretton Woods Reforms

World Bank President Ajay Banga is expected to lay out his vision for the development lender, including efforts that could raise lending by more than $100 billion over the next decade. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva intends to raise the fund’s so-called quotas, seeking more money from members to help it reclaim its place at the center of the global financial safety net.

Both efforts find their biggest supporters, and obstacles, from the US. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen spurred on the World Bank’s so-called evolution road map last year, asking the bank to take on a broader set of challenges and rally the private sector.

She’s also called on partners to pony up more guarantees or other types of funding to help strengthening its lending clout. The response as been muted, partly because of a realization that even Yellen’s efforts to bolster the bank must go through Congress, which has been embroiled in fierce disputes over spending. And the US House is leaderless at the moment.

The IMF leadership will discuss the December deadline for its 16th review of quota — the term for the resources that all members pay into the organization and finance its lending. The US favors increasing resources but opposes shifting voting weight, which would give more power to China. Georgieva said this month that she’s interested in expanding the role of emerging and developing countries, including adding a third seat on its executive board to represent Africa. She also supports giving China a bigger vote, but that’s not on the table until the next five-year review period.

Morocco Recovery

The “city of cheerfulness,” as Moroccans refer to Marrakech, is still recovering from a devastating earthquake centered in the nearby mountainous region that killed almost 3,000 people.

The meetings find the cash-strapped kingdom in need of $11.7 billion to pay for rebuilding and potentially billions of dollars more to prepare to co-host the FIFA soccer World Cup in 2030.

With about 60,000 people left homeless, concern is growing with the approach of winter over the living conditions faced by survivors. The Red Cross last week called for “urgent humanitarian needs as winter approaches,” including warm shelter, latrines and showers.

--With assistance from Swati Pandey and Volodymyr Verbyany.

 Bloomberg Businessweek

Yellen Resists Pressure for Reform of IMF Voting Shares

Christopher Condon
Tue, October 10, 2023 


(Bloomberg) -- US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen showed little willingness to embrace reforms at the International Monetary Fund that would give China and other developing countries significantly more say in how the world’s go-to emergency lender is run.

The Biden administration would “support a quota formula that better reflects the global economy, but change on this can only happen within an agreed-on framework based on shared principles,” Yellen said in the text of remarks she delivered Tuesday as global finance officials gathered in Marrakesh, Morocco.

The outdated distribution of IMF quotas — which represent a country’s share of the institution’s resources and align closely with voting rights — is expected to be a source of major debate here this week at the annual gathering of the World Bank and IMF.

Global South

Countries like China, Brazil and India — whose economies have grown significantly faster than those of developed nations - have long clamored for a re-division of quotas to reflect their growing heft. China, for example, accounts for about 18% of global economic output, but holds just a 6% share at the IMF.

Tatiana Rosito, a senior official in Brazil’s Finance Ministry told Bloomberg News last week the lack of reform was pushing the so-called BRICS nations to fund development through institutions like the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

The IMF’s Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva, appeared to signal her support for reforms in an interview published in the Financial Times earlier this month.

“There is a need to constantly change to reflect how the world economy is changing,” she said.

Pro-Rata

In her remarks, Yellen reiterated US calls for an “equiproportional” increase of IMF quotas, highlighting Washington’s unwillingness to consider a reallocation of voting shares at this moment. In other words, the US proposes that all members should contribute more, but retaining the division of power that’s existed in the IMF since 2016.

Yellen’s remark on quota reform being dependent on “shared principles” among IMF members could be interpreted as a reference to China, which the US has criticized for, among other things, not participating readily in debt restructuring for low-income countries and for being non-transparent in foreign-exchange management.

In order to improve representation at the Fund by emerging and low-income economies, Yellen reiterated the US proposal to add another deputy managing director to represent these nations. She said the US was also engaging with peers on the potential of adding another Executive Board chair representing sub-Saharan Africa.

Development Finance

Yellen also spoke of US ambitions for the World Bank, where she has pushed for big changes and partly succeeded. At her urging in the last year the development lender has taken steps to stretch its balance sheet.

In her speech Yellen tried to rally support for further increasing resources for concessional loans —those with terms more favorable than markets would provide — to confront global threats like climate change and pandemics.

She noted the Biden administration has pledged an additional $2.25 billion that could “unlock” up to $27 billion in fresh lending. The US has been hoping other advanced economies will make similar pledges to increase the World Bank’s firepower, though few have so far made concrete promises.

“The G20 has committed to mobilizing more resources, and other countries are making announcements on how they will boost capacity as well,” Yellen told an audience at the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Ben Guerir, north of Marrakech.

Other countries, however, will also be watching the US Congress closely to see if lawmakers will approve the funding promised by President Joe Biden and Yellen. Ongoing partisan squabbles in the US capital are threatening not only support for the World Bank but aid for Ukraine.

Yellen also called on all the regional development banks to get moving on incorporating some callable capital — money that members have pledged to produce in an emergency, but which has never been tapped — in their capital adequacy frameworks, a step that could boost their lending power.

--With assistance from Eric Martin.


IMF outlook worsens for a 'limping' world economy. Mideast war poses new uncertainty

Tue, October 10, 2023 



WASHINGTON — The world economy has lost momentum from the impact of higher interest rates, the invasion of Ukraine and widening geopolitical rifts, and it now faces new uncertainty from the war between Israel and Hamas militants, International Monetary Fund warned Tuesday.

The IMF said it expects global economic growth to slow to 2.9% in 2024 from an expected 3% this year. The forecast for next year is down a notch from the 3% it predicted back in July.

The deceleration comes at a time when the world has yet to fully mend from a devastating but short-lived COVID-19 recession in 2020 and now could see fallout from the Middle East conflict — particularly to oil prices.

A series of previous shocks, including the pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine, has slashed worldwide economic output by about $3.7 trillion over the past three years compared with pre-COVID trends.

“The global economy is limping along, not sprinting," IMF chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas said at a news conference during the organization's annual meeting in Marrakech, Morocco.

The IMF expectation of 3% growth this year is down from 3.5% in 2022 but unchanged from its July projections.

It's “too early” to assess the impact on global economic growth from the days-old war between Israel and the militant Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza, Gourinchas said. He said the IMF was “monitoring the situation closely” and noted that oil prices have risen by about 4% in the past several days.

“We’ve seen that in previous crises and previous conflicts. And of course, this reflects the potential risk that there could be disruption either in production or transport of oil in the region," he said.

If sustained, a 10% increase in oil prices would reduce global economic growth by 0.15% and increase global inflation by 0.4%, Gourinchas said.

"But again, I emphasize that it's really too early to jump to any conclusion here,” he added.

So far, the increase in oil prices has been “fairly muted,” said Commerzbank commodities analyst Carsten Fritsch. He noted the absence of declarations of support for Hamas from key oil producers Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq, which would make it unlikely that they would restrict supply in response to the war.

So far, the world economy has displayed “remarkable resiliency," Gourinchas said, at a time when the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks worldwide have aggressively raised interest rates to combat a resurgence in inflation.

The hikes have helped ease price pressures without putting many people out of work. That combination, he said, is “increasingly consistent" with a so-called soft landing — the idea that inflation can be contained without causing a recession.

The IMF sees global consumer price inflation dropping from 8.7% in 2022 to 6.9% this year and 5.8% in 2024.

The United States is a standout in the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook, which was completed before the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas. The IMF upgraded its forecast for U.S. growth this year to 2.1% (matching 2022) and 1.5% in 2024 (up sharply from the 1% it had predicted in July).

The U.S., an energy exporter, has not been hurt as much as countries in Europe and elsewhere by higher oil prices, which shot up after Russia invaded Ukraine last year and jumped more recently because of Saudi Arabia's production cuts. And American consumers have been more willing than most to spend the savings they accumulated during the pandemic.

Things are gloomier in the 20 countries that share the euro currency and are more exposed to rising energy prices. The IMF downgraded eurozone growth to 0.7% this year and 1.2% in 2024. It actually expects the German economy to shrink by 0.5% this year before recovering to 0.9% growth next year.

That's below even Russia's economy, which the IMF predicts will expand 2.2% this year before dropping to 1.1% growth next year.

The Chinese economy, the world’s second biggest, is forecast to grow 5% this year and 4.2% in 2024 — both downgrades from what the IMF expected in July.

China’s economy was expected to bounce back this year after the communist government ended draconian “zero-COVID" lockdowns that had crippled growth in 2022. But the country is struggling with troubles in its overbuilt housing market.

The IMF again expressed concern that the countries of the world were breaking into geopolitical blocs that could limit international trade and economic growth globally.

The United States and its allies have imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and have sought to become less reliant on Chinese imports as tensions with Beijing grow.

The IMF noted that last year countries imposed nearly 3,000 new restrictions on trade, up from fewer than 1,000 in 2019. It sees international trade growing just 0.9% this year and 3.5% in 2024, down sharply from the 2000-2019 annual average of 4.9%.

Paul Wiseman And David Mchugh, The Associated Press

Service Alberta issues director's order against Calgary contractor facing criminal charges

CBC
Tue, October 10, 2023

Alan Hrehirchuk stands between Drew and Jonathan Scott from the popular Property Brothers HGTV show. Hrehirchuk and his company, Envision Custom Renovations, did work on at least two episodes of the show. (Facebook/Envision Custom Renovations Inc. - image credit)

A Calgary contractor accused of defrauding homeowners out of hundreds of thousands of dollars can continue working, but has been ordered to stop entering into prepaid contracts following a Service Alberta investigation.

Alan Hrehirchuk, 53, was charged with fraud and forgery in July. He is accused of forging subcontractor invoices and defrauding a couple who spent more than $100,000 on work they say was never done.

Now, Service Alberta, the provincial ministry responsible for consumer protection, has issued a director's order against Hrehirchuk following an investigation that found he breached the province's Consumer Protection Act (CPA) by having clients sign prepaid contracts that were "harsh, oppressive or excessively one-sided."

The order is in response to, "in the opinion of the director, contraventions of the Act," by Hrehirchuk and his company, Envision Custom Renovations, according to a public notice posted online.

The investigation was launched after Service Alberta says eight people reported Hrehirchuk and his company, Envision Custom Renovations, to the Calgary Police Service (CPS).

Hrehirchuk's licence to enter into prepaid contracts expired in June, according to Service Alberta.

Hrehirchuk could face jail term

The director's order prohibits Envision, Hrehirchuck or any of his employees from entering into prepaid contracts until the proper licencing is in place.

The order also requires Hrehirchuk to ensure all future contracts are in compliance with the CPA.

If Hrehirchuk is found to be in violation of the order, he could face steep fines and up to two years in jail.

According to Service Alberta, the eight complainants allege they paid for work that was never done and say they have been unable to get their money back from Hrehirchuk.

Couple living in basement

In the summer, CBC News spoke with several people who allege they are victims of Hrehirchuk. Two sets of homeowners said Hrehirchuk used a celebrity endorsement from the Property Brothers HGTV show to entice clients.

Within about a month of the announcement of criminal charges involving one Calgary couple, police said they'd received about a dozen new complaints against Hrehirchuk and Envision.

One couple, in their 60s, have been living in their basement after they say Hrehirchuk began work on their home but failed to pay the tradespeople and left the job unfinished.

Peter Razniak, who was hired by Envision in December as a project manager, says the situation got so bad that by the spring of this year, Hrehirchuk told him to lock the doors to the showroom to escape angry tradespeople who were showing up, demanding to be paid.

Hrehirchuk due in court Tuesday

Court documents show nine lawsuits were filed against Hrehirchuk's company, Envision Custom Renovations, in 2023.

CBC News did contact Hrehirchuk's lawyer for a comment about the Service Alberta investigation but did not receive a response.

In August, defence lawyer Cory WIlson said his client "denies the allegations" made by former clients.

He is due in court to face his criminal charges on Tuesday.

Those found to be in contravention of the CPA can face licence suspension or cancellation, an administrative penalty, prosecution or a director's order, as is the case for Hrehirchuk.

CPS was not immediately able to respond to CBC's request for information, but in July a spokesperson for the service said the criminal investigation was ongoing and did not rule out the possibility of further charges.

Climate Expert Claudia Sheinbaum Aims to Lead Oil-Rich Mexico

Maya Averbuch
Tue, October 10, 2023 




(Bloomberg) -- As mayor of Mexico City, a job she held until June, Claudia Sheinbaum rarely let her attention to detail slip. While being driven to meetings in her Chevy, she’d snap photos of traffic jams or clogged taxi ranks and send them to the city’s mobility chief, Andrés Lajous, asking him to sort them out. She once urged him to visit the site of a planned bus line extension, insisting he had to see it himself to manage the project, Lajous recalls

Now Sheinbaum, 61, is a top contender to become the next president of Mexico, and the ideological successor to leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or AMLO. Some view her as Latin America’s Angela Merkel: a politician with the rigorous mind of a scientist. Like Merkel, Sheinbaum holds a Ph.D. (Merkel’s is in quantum chemistry; hers is in energy engineering) and began her career in academia. Not only has she published a raft of scientific papers, she’s contributed to two landmark reports by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s premier body of climate science.

During almost five years in city hall, Sheinbaum oversaw the electrification of Mexico City’s buses and covered the huge Central de Abasto food market with solar panels. Her work as a scientist and as a government official make her look like a climate president in the making. But the politics are far from simple.

Mexico, the world’s 11th-biggest oil producer, is the only Group of 20 country with no net-zero emissions target, and climate policy experts say it’s gone backward in recent years. López Obrador has directed billions of dollars to prop up the indebted state-owned oil company, Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), seeing it as essential to national sovereignty. His government just opened a refinery in Tabasco state, and it’s tried to dissolve the National Institute for Ecology and Climate Change as an austerity measure. In part because of policy changes that bolstered the national power utility, private investment in renewables has dropped since AMLO took power in 2018.

The technocratic Sheinbaum is a protégé of the president, who’s so popular in Mexico that vendors sell dolls, balloons and mugs with his grinning face. She’s unlikely to deviate from her mentor’s policies as the race gets underway. And it’s not clear she would make climate and clean energy top priorities even if she beats her competitor from a center-right coalition, the entrepreneur Xóchitl Gálvez, next June. (If either wins, Mexico will be led by a woman for the first time.)

When talking to voters, Sheinbaum has tried to pitch herself as a progressive rooted in the populist nationalism of her party, Morena. In Michoacán, a hub for avocado and lime growers, she said, “We are going to keep advancing with renewable energies and with the protection of the environment, but without betraying the people of Mexico.” Sheinbaum declined to comment for this article.

Mexico is the world’s 15th-biggest greenhouse gas emitter, and its emissions are expected to keep rising through 2030, according to Climate Action Tracker. If Sheinbaum were able to reverse that trend, it would be significant in the global fight to rein in climate change.

The main thing standing in the way is politics, says Tony Payan, director of the Center for the United States & Mexico at Rice University’s Baker Institute. “Sheinbaum will be forced to defend current policy or begin to break away from López Obrador, and it will be interesting to see if she’s capable of doing it,” he says.

Luis Zambrano, an ecologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, isn’t hopeful. “She’s shown herself to be someone who has always followed the president,” he says. “At some point, she opted for politics, instead of opting for science.”

Oil has long been key to state revenue in Mexico, and Pemex, a major employer, is also an object of national pride. At an event in March right before the anniversary of Mexico’s nationalization of oil production, Sheinbaum spoke carefully when asked about the country’s energy future. “Of course, we all want to contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gases that provoke climate change, and we all want cities that don’t have contaminated air, and that this be done through the production or use of cleaner energies,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that that has to come before everything else.”

Long before she was running for president, Sheinbaum was a student obsessed with the energy efficiency of wood-burning stoves and lightbulbs. In graduate school she did a research stint at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. “I dedicated myself to modeling the consumption of energy in Mexico—how it’s used, what it’s used for and which sources of energy allow you to meet people’s needs,” she recounted at a recent campaign stop with university students in Nuevo León state.

“She has a really keen curiosity, an intense motivation to understand data and trends,” says Lynn Price, a retired Berkeley Lab scientist who’s collaborated with Sheinbaum on papers going back to when they worked together in the 1990s. Even then, Sheinbaum was interested in how data could be applied to public policy, Price says.

Raised in Mexico City by Jewish scientists—her grandparents left Europe for Mexico in the first part of the 20th century—Sheinbaum entered politics full time in 2000, when López Obrador, then mayor of Mexico City, appointed her his environment minister. She was elected leader of Tlalpan, a borough of Mexico City, in 2015 and then mayor of the city in 2018. In that post, she set a goal of planting millions of trees, piloted home rainwater collection and ordered her employees to plug the city’s rampant water leaks. She stepped down in June to seek Morena’s nomination as its presidential candidate. She won it in September.

She has a reputation as an exacting boss. “Everyone I’ve ever talked to who has worked for her says that her principal virtue and her principal defect is micro-management—the obsession for detail, for the technical parts,” says Carlos Pérez Ricart, who teaches international relations at the Center for Research & Teaching in Economics in Mexico City.

Sheinbaum got her share of criticism as mayor from environmentalists who said she prioritized urban growth over conservation. And the problems she would inherit as president are bigger than bus lanes and traffic jams.

Mexico has pledged to cut emissions 35% by 2030. Power generation is Mexico’s largest source of carbon dioxide emissions; about 72% of its power comes from fossil fuels. The government is building a sprawling solar farm near the US border, but analysts say the next president will need to ramp up a lot more clean energy to make a real dent.

The goliath Pemex has a notoriously poor environmental and safety record. Researchers last year reported two enormous methane leaks from one of its offshore fields. Lenders have threatened to cut off investment unless it cleans up its act.

Meanwhile, climate-fueled extreme weather is posing an increasing danger to Mexico’s citizens. Brutally high temperatures have contributed to the deaths of almost 400 people since March and put further stress on the already struggling national grid. Drought conditions regularly affect swathes of the country and leave cities without water. Rising seas have swallowed coastal homes.

Sheinbaum’s rival, Gálvez, has said she can make fast environmental improvements with the help of the private sector. Sheinbaum has insisted progress will be driven by the state.

Other left-leaning leaders in Latin America who have pushed for a greener future haven’t had an easy time. Colombian President Gustavo Petro has campaigned against fossil fuels on the world stage but made few inroads in his plan to boost wind and solar domestically. In Chile, President Gabriel Boric has so far declined to bail out renewables companies that complained they weren’t making any money.

Sheinbaum, in the name of Mexican energy security, could pressure Pemex on methane releases from flaring and argue the gas should be captured for consumption. If she leaned into renewable energy partnerships with the private sector, it wouldn’t necessarily be read as stepping on the toes of the state utility.

“She has the opportunity to be more friendly toward the private sector—to have a less stringent and hostile view on private participation. That would be important for the climate,” says Diego Rivera Rivota, a research associate at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. “But bold action comes with trade-offs.”

Middle-income countries such as Mexico must try to expand their economies and improve living standards while also curbing emissions. It’s a tricky issue to navigate for any political leader. “For many developing countries, for the development to happen, there will be some emissions. Over time it can be reduced,” says Joyashree Roy, a professor at Thailand’s Asian Institute for Technology and a lead author of IPCC report chapters on industry to which Sheinbaum contributed. Because Sheinbaum knows what environmentally responsible growth that raises living standards looks like, “she will be able to argue for it,” Roy says.

Nobody’s sure exactly how she would do it. “At the city level, she did interesting things,” says Bernardo Baranda, the Latin America director for the nonprofit Institute for Transportation & Development Policy. “I think she believes in what she’s doing and the ideas of the president. But many people are waiting to hear her own voice, and that’s the great unknown.” ○

 Bloomberg Businessweek

Drew Barrymore Show Writers Refusing to Return Signals a New Era in Hollywood

Laura Zornosa
Tue, October 10, 2023 

Drew Barrymore attends the Paramount Upfront 2022 after party in New York City on May 18, 2022. Credit - AFP via Getty Images

Drew Barrymore has always been a bit of an outsized figure in Hollywood. Now, she and her talk show have become an unwitting bellwether of change in the industry. On Oct. 4, the three former Drew Barrymore Show writers who are part of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) declined to return to the show after the end of the recent writers’ strike.

The talk show will return for its Season 4 premiere on Oct. 16—notably without Chelsea White, Cristina Kinon, and Liz Koe, who shared the title of co-head writer on the show. (The Hollywood Reporter first broke this news, which the L.A. Times later confirmed.)

“I think the Drew Barrymore writers choosing to not go back to what is basically a guaranteed paycheck after five months on the picket line was a phenomenal act of courage,” says Eric Haywood, a writer, director, WGA West board member, and 2023 Negotiating Committee member. “I feel like the era of playing in people's faces is over. And workers are really ready to demand what they feel they deserve.”

The Drew Barrymore Show—and its high-profile host—became a lightning rod during the WGA strike. On Sept. 11, the show resumed filming without its three WGA writers.

“I own this choice,” Barrymore wrote on Instagram, in a since-deleted post. “We are in compliance with not discussing or promoting film and television that is struck of any kind. I want to be there to provide what writers do so well, which is a way to bring us together or help us make sense of the human experience. I hope for a resolve for everyone as soon as possible.”

It was a gray area: Technically, The Drew Barrymore Show was covered by a different WGA contract than the one that guild members were striking to change. But it would be virtually impossible for no one to draft any pre-written content for the show. And if anyone did write any content—say, a monologue or even interview questions—then that would be crossing the picket line. So guild members immediately began picketing the show—including struck writers from The Drew Barrymore Show.

As the show taped, two audience members were kicked out for wearing pins that supported the WGA. The National Book Awards dropped Barrymore as its host, citing a desire to “ensure that the focus of the awards remains on celebrating writers and books.” The tide of public opinion, buoyed by frustrated writers, turned against Barrymore—a rare instance for an American sweetheart. On Sept. 15, Barrymore posted a since-deleted tearful video to Instagram, apologizing to writers and unions in one breath and reiterating that the show would still return in the next.

“I deeply apologize to writers,” she said. “I deeply apologize to unions. I deeply apologize.”

“I don’t have a PR machine behind my decision to go back to the show,” she continued. “I didn’t want to hide behind people. So I won’t. I won’t polish this with bells and whistles and publicists and corporate rhetoric. I’ll just stand out there and accept and be responsible.”

Two days later, The Drew Barrymore Show announced that it would resume its hiatus, pausing its premiere until after the strike had ended.

“I have no words to express my deepest apologies to anyone I have hurt and, of course, to our incredible team who works on the show and has made it what it is today,” Barrymore wrote on Instagram. “We really tried to find our way forward. And I truly hope for a resolution for the entire industry very soon.”

The WGA strike ended 10 days later, on Sept. 27. (Guild members are currently voting to ratify the terms of the agreement.) And when production restarted for The Drew Barrymore Show, its writers took a stand: They weren’t coming back.

That news coincided with comedian Roy Wood Jr.’s decision to leave Comedy Central’s The Daily Show after eight years as a correspondent for the program, most recently hosted by Trevor Noah. Noah left the show in December after seven years as host, and since then, rotating guest hosts have filled the role. Wood was in the running for the permanent host role, but left because he hasn’t been offered the job, and wants time to figure out what’s next.

“There’s no sense in me doing what I’ve been doing for the last eight years while concurrently trying to think of a new thing to do,” Wood told NPR. “The job of correspondent, it’s not really one where you can really juggle multiple things. And I think after eight years, I think I’ve earned the right to just take a quick break before January.”

“When you couple that,” Haywood says of Wood’s decision, “with the fact that the actors are still on strike, the writers just came off strike, the auto workers are on strike, the flight attendants, the hospital workers—nobody goes on strike because it's fun. Nobody goes on strike because it is a cool act of rebellion. People really only go on strike when they feel they've been pushed to the limit, and they have no choice.”

Mack Trucks workers join UAW strike after tentative agreement rejected

Phoebe Wall Howard and Kinsey Crowley, 

USA TODAY NETWORK
Mon, October 9, 2023

Nearly 4,000 UAW members at Mack Trucks facilities in three states walked out on Monday morning after voting down a tentative agreement Sunday night.

"I'm inspired to see UAW members at Mack holding out for a better deal, and ready to stand up and walk off the job to win it," UAW President Shawn Fain said via @UAW on X.

This latest contract negation with Mack Trucks, owned by Volvo Group, covers a five-year agreement, one year longer than the previous agreement. A letter issued by the UAW to Volvo's director of employee relations Holly Georgell said the union voted the tentative agreement down with a 73% 'no' vote.

"The members have spoken and as the highest authority in our union, they have the final word," said the letter, signed by Fain.

The tentative agreement included a 10% general wage increase, a 19% increase to general wages over five years, and a guarantee that healthcare premiums will not increase during the duration of the contract, according to UAW and Mack Trucks spokespersons.

“We are surprised and disappointed that the UAW has chosen to strike, which we feel is unnecessary,” said Mack Trucks President Stephen Roy in a statement released to USA TODAY. “We clearly demonstrated our commitment to good faith bargaining by arriving at a tentative agreement that was endorsed by both the International UAW and the UAW Mack Truck Council."

'Major' development: GM to put battery plants under master contract with union, UAW says
Where is the strike happening?

The 3,900 UAW members walked out from Mack Trucks facilities in the following locations:

Jacksonville, Florida


Macungie, Pennsylvania


Middletown, Pennsylvania


Hagerstown, Maryland


Baltimore, Maryland

Employees who build the heavy duty trucks exited their facilities in an "orderly manner after performing tasks necessary to prevent damage to the company's equipment or product" at 7 a.m. Monday, the according to UAW.

An estimated 4,000 UAW members rejected their tentative agreement with Mack Trucks, the union announced Sunday, Oct. 8, 2023.

Why is UAW striking against Mack Trucks?

Fain said in the letter that the union has met with Mack Truck officials over three months to address issues of concern, and will be in contact with available dates and locations to reconvene bargaining. Issues of concern, the letter said, are:

Wage issues


Cost of living allowances


Job security


Holiday schedules


Work schedules


Pension


401(K)


Prescription drug coverage


Overtime


Experts: Shawn Fain's biting style is creating a moment, just like another UAW labor icon
UAW 'Stand Up Strike' against the Detroit Three

This strike comes at the same time the UAW has run a targeted national strike against Ford Motor Company, General Motors and Stellantis, known as the Detroit Three since mid-September.

Contract talks with those automakers failed at 11:59 p.m. on Sept. 14, 2023, and Fain released the list of demands the following day, as previously reported by USA TODAY. Those include:

Eliminating wage tiers.

◾ A 40% wage increase over the life of the contract. The 40% signifies the increase in CEO salaries.

◾ Restoring the cost-of-living allowance adjustments to counteract inflation.

◾ Defined benefit pension for all workers.

◾ The right to strike over plant closures.

◾ A reduced work week and more paid time off.

◾ Limiting the use of temporary workers.

◾ Increased benefits to current retirees.

Recent progress in the negotiations paused a strike expansion Friday, as reported by the Associated Press.

Monday's strike against Mack Trucks brings the total to 30,000 workers on strike across 22 states, UAW said.

UAW Local 602 members picket as part of the 'Stand Up Strike' Friday, Sept. 29, 2023, near Millett Highway and Creyts Road in Delta Township, Michigan.
History of strikes and negotiations between Mack Trucks and UAW

The UAW and Mack Trucks negotiators reached a tentative agreement for a five-year contract just before the contract scheduled to expire at 11:59 p.m. on Oct. 1, according to UAW.

“The terms of this tentative agreement would deliver significantly increased wages and continue first-class benefits for Mack employees and their families,” Mack President Stephen Roy said, according to the company announcement dated Oct. 2. “At the same time, it would allow the company to successfully compete in the market, and continue making the necessary investments in our people, plants and products.”

In 2019, the UAW contract with Mack Truck followed a national strike of approximately 3,500 workers that lasted nearly two weeks and called in the midst of the national strike of 46,000 workers against General Motors.

Contributing: Mary Walrath-Holdridge, Eric D. Lawrence, Jamie L. LaReau, Lily Altavena, Susan Tompor

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: UAW strike expands to Mack Trucks, members reject tentative agreement

Workers at Mack Trucks reject contract and join the thousands of UAW picketers already on strike

Mon, October 9, 2023


DETROIT (AP) — Union workers at Mack Trucks went on strike Monday after voting down a five-year contract agreement that negotiators had reached with the company.

The United Auto Workers said 4,000 unionized workers walked out at 7 a.m., adding to labor turmoil in the industry that has ensnared all three big Detroit automakers.

With those workers joining picket lines, the total number of UAW members that are on strike now exceeds 30,000 across 22 states, the union said Monday.

Union President Shawn Fain said in a letter to Mack parent company Volvo Trucks that 73% of workers voted against the deal in results counted on Sunday.

The UAW represents Mack workers in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Florida. Union leaders had reached a tentative agreement on the deal on Oct. 1.

UAW Locals 171, 677, 1247, 2301, and 2420 in UAW Region 8 and Region 9 represent workers at Mack Trucks in Macungie and Middletown, Pennsylvania; Hagerstown and Baltimore, Maryland; and Jacksonville, Florida.

The deal negotiators had reached with Mack just over a week ago included a 19% pay raise over the life of the contract with 10% upon ratification. There also was a $3,500 ratification bonus, no increase in weekly health care contributions, increased annual lump sum payments for retirees and a $1,000 annual 401(k) lump sum to offset health care costs for employees who don’t get health insurance after retirement.

Fain said in his letter to Volvo Trucks' head of labor relations that employees working early Monday would exit the factories after performing tasks needed to prevent damage to company equipment.

Fain wrote that UAW members and workers across the country are seeking their fair share in wages and benefits.

The company and union are still apart on work schedules, health and safety, pensions, health care, prescription drug coverage, overtime and other issues, he wrote.

The contract may have been sunk by high expectations Fain has set in bargaining with Detroit’s three automakers. In those talks, the UAW has asked for 36% raises over four years, while Ford has offered 23% and the other two firms are at 20%.

“I’m inspired to see UAW members at Mack Trucks holding out for a better deal, and ready to stand up and walk off the job to win it,” Fain said in a prepared statement. “The members have the final say, and it’s their solidarity and organization that will win a fair contract at Mack.”

Mack Trucks President Stephen Roy said in a statement Sunday night that the company is “surprised and disappointed” that the union chose to strike. The union, he wrote, called the tentative agreement a record for the heavy truck industry. “We trust that other stakeholders also appreciate that our market, business and competitive set are very different from those of the passenger car makers,” the statement said.

Mack, he wrote, is part of the only heavy truck manufacturing group that assembles all of its vehicles and engines for North America in the U.S., competing against trucks built in lower-cost countries.

The company is committed to collective bargaining and is confident both sides will reach a deal that delivers competitive wages and benefits while safeguarding the company’s future, the statement said.

The UAW went on strike at selected factories run by automakers General Motors, Ford and Jeep maker Stellantis on Sept. 15. It started with one assembly plant for each company, then spread to 38 GM and Stellantis parts warehouses. Two additional assembly plants at Ford and GM were added later.

On Friday, the union decided not to expand the strikes to any more plants for the time being after GM agreed to bring its electric vehicle battery factories into the UAW’s national contract, assuring that they’ll be unionized. The union also reported progress with all three automakers.

Tom Krisher, The Associated Press

Commentary: How Socialist agitating helped tank Mack-UAW deal

Alan Adler
Mon, October 9, 2023 

A Socialist website and envy of what autoworkers in Detroit might get in their contract negotiations may have tanked the tentative agreement between Mack Trucks and the United Auto Workers.

 (Photo illustration: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

How did the biggest contract offer Mack Trucks ever tendered its United Auto Workers-represented employees get trashed and result in a strike?

Two catalysts may be responsible.

One is the so-called rank-and-file committees, workers who claim socialism as their mantra. Through the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), they regularly attack union leaders at the local and international levels. They call them toadies for management who bring secretly negotiated, substandard contracts to members incentivized with a signing bonus.

The other is the ongoing UAW strike at the Detroit Three automakers. For the first time, the UAW simultaneously targeted all three companies — General Motors, Ford and Stellantis. It has targeted specific plants to strike, so far avoiding hugely profitable pickup truck plants. About 17%, or 25,000, of 146,000 UAW members are currently on strike.

Watching the UAW strike in Detroit

Goaded into striking or not, Mack workers are watching the Detroit negotiations. They hope for a contract similar to what is eventually reached.

The UAW claims significant gains in negotiations since the autoworkers’ strike began Sept. 15. The union twice expanded the strike against specific companies. On Friday, it decided against another widening because GM conceded to extend the UAW master agreement to its battery plants. Several of those plants have yet to hire workers.

The union has expressed concern that electric vehicles (EVs) the companies are pursuing will threaten job security. EVs have fewer parts and require less assembly time than internal combustion engines.

Mack builds a small number of electric trucks at its plant in Lower Macungie in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. The company is planning an electric version of its medium-duty MD Series. Internal combustion engine versions of those trucks are built at a nonunion plant in Roanoke, Virginia.

Volvo Group workers at parts distribution centers in Jacksonville, Florida, and Baltimore are on strike. So is an engine plant in Hagerstown, Maryland, that makes powertrains for Volvo and Mack Trucks. Mack is a part of Volvo Group North America, the only truck maker that builds all its North American products in the U.S.

Watch now: In rejecting new contract, are Mack Truck workers hitching their hopes to Detroit Three negotiations?

UAW demands COLA increases and end of 2-tier wages

UAW President Shawn Fain has said Ford and Stellantis have agreed to restart a cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) formula that the union conceded in 2009 during the Great Recession. The union also is determined to end dual-tier wages in which new workers are hired below the wage of existing workers. The UAW agreed to two-tier wages in 2007.

Neither COLA nor two-tier wages were addressed in the tentative agreement at Mack, which the WSWS has pointed out repeatedly.

“Inflation is up 22% in the last 3yrs. This contract we’re getting a 19% raise but over 5 yrs,” the WSWS posted on X, formerly Twitter.

The tentative agreement was rejected Sunday by 73% of workers who voted. The tentative local agreement for the Mack assembly plant would have added 30 minutes to the workday with workers earning an average of $3,000 more a year before master contract economics. The WSWS said that extra work should be paid at overtime rates.

“The UAW called our tentative agreement ‘a record contract for the Heavy Truck industry,’ and we trust that other stakeholders also appreciate that our market, business, and competitive set are very different from those of the passenger car makers,” Mack President Stephen Roy said in a news release.

The auto industry collectively builds millions of vehicles in the U.S. every year compared with trucking, which produces several hundred thousand vehicles annually. Both industries are cyclical. Automakers mostly sell to franchised dealers that target individual consumers. Truck manufacturers work directly with fleets and deliver products through dealers.

The Lehman factor

Mack worker Will Lehman, who ran against Fain for the UAW International presidency earlier this year, addressed workers at a contract review meeting on Saturday, calling for greater transparency in contract negotiations.

Lehman unsuccessfully sued to halt the runoff that Fain won over incumbent President Ray Curry in May. He denounced Fain for “acting like he stands with us” after having “tried to ram through a pay cut, sellout tentative agreement on the workers at Mack Trucks.”

“This is the kind of contract that gets negotiated behind closed doors,” Lehman told workers gathered in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. “There needs to be full transparency to all the workers, and as far as the vote count goes that needs to be made transparent to the workers as well.”

Watch now: Will Lehman addresses Mack workers, urging defeat of tentative UAW agreement

Labor leaders urging passage of tentative agreements carry less weight among workers than they have historically. UAW workers at Mack sibling Volvo Truck North America (VTNA) rejected three tentative agreements in 2021 before Volvo put terms of its final offer into effect after a split vote on the third offer.

Now Mack appears to be following that play and castigating local bargainers and the company for trying to buy labor peace with a $3,500 signing bonus.

The WSWS accused Mack of seeking a five-year agreement so future bargaining would be out of sync with the expiration of automaker contracts that expire after four years. In 2019, Mack workers struck for 12 days while the UAW was on strike against GM. There’s no evidence the Mack settlement was influenced by the GM strike.

“We’re all fighting for the same thing”: Michigan autoworkers call for united strike with Mack Trucks workers - World Socialist Web Site (wsws.org)

“It’s worker abuse”: Mack Trucks strikers speak out - World Socialist Web Site (wsws.org)

Vote NO on the UAW-Mack sellout contract! - World Socialist Web Site (wsws.org)

As UAW reveals efforts to lengthen workday at Mack Trucks, workers voice opposition to sellout contract - World Socialist Web Site (wsws.org)

Las Vegas-area teachers union challenges law prohibiting members from striking

Mon, October 9, 2023 



RENO, Nev. (AP) — Nevada's largest teachers union filed suit Monday against a state law making it illegal for teachers and other public school employees to go on strike over pay and working conditions in the country’s fifth-largest school district, which includes Las Vegas.

The Clark County Education Association argues in its lawsuit that the 1969 state law prohibiting public employee strikes is unconstitutional. They said it also infringes on the First Amendment rights of its approximately 18,000 members in nearly 380 schools in Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County who are waging a contentious monthslong contract battle.

They also argue that the state’s definition of a strike is overbroad, sweeps away constitutional rights and gives way for arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.

The Clark County School District and the state of Nevada are both listed as defendants in the lawsuit.

In emailed statements, the Clark County School District said it is evaluating the complaint, and the Nevada Attorney General’s office said it would not comment due to pending litigation.

Last month, waves of teachers called in sick over a number of days, forcing many Las Vegas-area schools to close, including one where 87% of the teachers called in sick. The school district filed a lawsuit against the union and a judge ordered the union to put an end to the teacher absences, calling them “very clearly a strike.”

If the “sickout” continued, union penalties could have included daily fines of up to $50,000 for the organization and $1,000 per day for union officers, as well as jail time, suspension or termination for strike participants.

The union maintained that it was not involved in the absences, and appealed that ruling to the Nevada Supreme Court.

If the judge rules in the union's favor and a contract agreement is not in place, a union spokesperson said they would “take the question of a strike to our membership to make a decision.”

”Simply put, the money is there, and our demands are, and have always been, in alignment with the priorities passed by the legislature and designed specifically to address the crisis of educator vacancies we are facing in Clark County," the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

Contract talks have been underway since March over issues such as pay, benefits and working conditions. Tension grew when the union threatened to take action if a contract wasn’t reached before the 2023-24 school year started in August. Those actions included teachers refusing to work more hours than their contracted workday.

The school union negotiations are happening in a year where workers groups have repeatedly challenged how workers are treated across the country, from Detroit auto workers to Los Angeles school employees to Hollywood writers and Las Vegas Strip hospitality workers.

The teachers union in Las Vegas wants nearly 20% across-the-board pay raises over two years. Leaders also want additional compensation for special education teachers and teachers in high-vacancy, typically low-income schools; and increased pay for teachers working extended-day hours at certain campuses.

The school district has offered 17.4% raises over two years, so long as the state education funds are applied as estimated during that time period.

Several state lawmakers have urged the district to comply with the union’s school raise request, citing a record increase in public education funding they allocated during the legislative session.

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Associated Press writer Rio Yamat contributed from Las Vegas. Stern is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. Follow Stern on X, formerly Twitter: @gabestern326.

Gabe Stern, The Associated Press