Contractor pulls out of Gahcho Kue
As strike looms, ESS Compass Group leaves diamond mine
Jessica Davey-Quantick
Northern News Services
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
A contractor at the newly opened Gahcho Kue mine avoided a strike by terminating its contract with De Beers.
ESS Compass Group, the contractor that provides camp cooks, sous chefs, janitors and camp attendants to the diamond mine informed De Beers this week they will be exiting their contract. The current agreement allows them to exit within a maximum of 120 days.
"We will immediately commence a search for a new service provider within this 120-day period. Our priority will be to find a local service provider for this opportunity," stated Tom Ormsby, head of corporate affairs for De Beers Canada in a news release. "The Gahcho Kue Mine will continue to ramp up to full production as scheduled."
Ormsby stated ESS Compass will be maintaining its services at the mine site until January, at the latest.
What isn't so certain is what will happen to the 60,workers, the majority whom are Northerners and about 60 per cent indigenous, employed by ESS Compass.
On Sept. 16, a straw poll of the employees found they were almost unanimously in favour of a strike, after negotiations between their union, Teamsters Local 213 and ESS Compass stalled. At issue were wages, which dropped an estimated $10 an hour from the previous contractor.
"ESS Compass gets it because they low-balled the thing," said Marcel Dionne, project co-ordinator for Teamsters Local 213.
He said the workers also lost a "fair amount" of overtime and fees they were being paid after construction at the camp site required them to double up in the accommodations. "It's a fair amount of money for camp workers."
Now, however, Dionne says they're just going to have to wait and see what happens next.
He says the union had heard of several companies interested in bidding on the contract, some of them indigenous.
"The labour dispute is somewhat gone, because obviously there's not going to be any strike action or any kind of further negotiation with ESS, because why would we negotiate with ESS, they're leaving anyway," said Dionne. "I guess it's just a matter of wait and see who the next contractor is."
ESS Compass couldn't be reached for comment to explain why they terminated the contract. Dionne says however that the company has told employees, who were informed last Friday of the termination, that the issue was financial. "Basically what they have told the employees is they're not making any money, so they're pulling out," he said. "That doesn't actually make sense to me."
ESS Compass was halfway through a five-year term, according to Dionne.
De Beers Canada confirmed this, and stated in a news release that ESS Compass was terminating their contract with for "commercial reasons."
He says he doesn't think De Beers will go with the lowest bid next time around.
"Obviously De Beers knew that it wasn't working. Because they pay their lowest employee at De Beers, which is probably a janitor, around $26 bucks an hour, plus a lot better benefit package," said Dionne, adding that he expects the number of employees, including his union members, to nearly double in the next year and a half. But he says whoever gets the contract, the union hopes they will maintain the current staff.
"I think it's safe to say that the workers there definitely like to work at that location, believe it or not. They like to work at that location, they have a good working relationship with the De Beers employees," he said.
"There's no question that the service they were providing to De Beers employees through ESS was a premium service and a service of high quality. That was never the issue."
