Dane Gibson
Northern News Services

NNSL (Sep 22/99) - About 280 Giant Mine employees are going to lose their jobs and there will be no bid to challenge a Miramar Mining Corp. purchase of Giant Mine, union leaders announced Monday.

Roscoe Postle Inc. was hired by the Canadian Autoworkers (CAW) Local 2304 to assess the feasibility of preparing a counter offer to buy Giant.

It found that there is only a one-year supply of ore reserves left under Giant Mine. Gold is selling at $255 US an ounce. To turn a profit, it would have to sell for $290 per ounce. Finally, they concluded it would take at least eight years to explore for additional ore reserves, at a cost of about $10 million US.

"I think the focus has altered from trying to save all the jobs from an active mine to trying to save as many jobs as possible in the cleanup of the mine," CAW local 2304 plant chair Steve Petersen said.

"For whoever is left (after the Miramar deal goes through) we'd try to get the best attrition package we could. We want to make it easier for our workers to get out and once they get out, we want them to have some kind of financial base to start a new life."

CAW Local 2304 President Marc Danis said that any work to be done on the Giant Property must be done by the union local.

"We will do what we have to do legally. Any job that has to be done on the property must be done by our people," Danis said.

"There's no need to wait any longer for reclamation to begin. There is, at the very least, a lot of preliminary work that can be done."

Danis said his hopes on preparing a deal hinged heavily on exploration potential.

"It's not what we expected. What really turned us around is the time it would take to explore (for ore bodies) further," Danis said.

When asked why he thought Miramar was interested in the property, he said one of the reasons was that Giant's ore has a high concentration of iron in it. Miramar's Con Mine needs iron to operate its autoclave. They also plan to use 300 tonnes of ore from Giant a day to bring Con up to full production.

"I also think that Miramar doesn't want any other mining company in town," Danis said.

Danis said he's galvanizing to fight for severance packages and to top up the pension fund.

NWT Finance Minister Charles Dent said the territorial government's lawyers were in bankruptcy court in Toronto on Monday arguing that the Labour Standards Act states that in a massive layoff situation, the government is entitled to 12 weeks notice.

"Our lawyers did raise the issue of labour standards. The requirement for this size of a layoff is 12 weeks notice. That is notice to the government, not to the employees," Dent said.

"But the upshot of that is that the employees would continue to be paid during that time."

Dent said Superior Court Justice James Farley reserved judgement on the pension and severance fund issue pending further deliberation.

"If he were to rule Royal Oak was the employer, that may make the argument moot because they are in bankruptcy," Dent said.

"If they rule receiver PricewaterhouseCoopers were the employers, the court would have to determine if (the Labour Standards Act) provision applies."