UPDATED: Highland Valley Copper reverses suspension, employees back to work
UPDATED STORY:
About 300 maintenance workers who walked off the job at Highland Valley Copper today are back to work after mine officials agreed to reverse a four-day suspension levelled against an employee yesterday.
Richard Boyce, president of the local chapter of the United Steelworkers, said he spent the day at the mine, 75 kilometres south of Kamloops, trying to being the situation to a resolution.
He said the issue began about three weeks ago, when an employee was taken to hospital with suspected sulphur dioxide (SO2) poisoning.
"The company was saying there was no SO2 leak," he said.
"But, the union and occupational health and safety wanted to investigate."
Boyce said mine officials shut down the investigation. When the investigating employee — a health and safety representative — kept looking into the matter, he was suspended.
Now that the suspension has been overturned, Boyce said, Highland Valley Copper management has agreed to allow the investigation to continue.
"The company shut the investigation down, which they didn't have a right to do," he said.
Mine spokesman Mark Freburg said production wasn't impacted by the brief work stoppage.
Highland Valley Copper is located about 75 kilometres south-west of Kamloops, near Logan Lake. It employs roughly 900 people, approximately half of them commuting each day from Kamloops.
ORIGINAL STORY:
Maintenance employees at Highland Valley Copper are off the job today (July 4), refusing to work in protest of a suspension handed down to one of their colleagues.
"I can confirm that there is a work stoppage underway," Mark Freburg, the mine's manager of strategic planning, told KTW.
"To this point, production hasn't been affected."
A maintenance employee was handed a four-day suspension in relation to an incident that took place during work hours.
Freburg said Richard Boyce, the president of the local chapter of the United Steelworkers union, is on-site at the mine trying to resolve the issue.
Calls to Boyce were not immediately returned.
Freburg said he's optimistic.
"We hope to see it resolved today," he said.
Highland Valley Copper is located about 75 kilometres south-west of Kamloops, near Logan Lake. It employs roughly 900 people, approximately half of them commuting each day from Kamloops.
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