Two months of negotiations failed to produce new contract MATTHEW BROWN Associated Press Writer BILLINGS
About 900 employees from the nation’s only platinum mining operation were expected to go on strike this morning after two months of negotiations failed to produce a new labor contract, Stillwater Mining Co. Representatives said Tuesday. The strike will hobble the Montana company’s platinum and palladium mine in Nye and its smelter and refinery complex in Columbus. Work will continue at the company’s smaller East Boulder mine where the labor contract has another year to run, Stillwater spokesman John Beaudry said. “We expect they’ll be on strike starting tomorrow morning,” Beaudry said Tuesday. “We have almost 200 salaried people at the mine site and those people would continue to work, and same with the smelter and refinery. The remaining 40 people there would continue to work.” The evening shift at the plant was canceled Tuesday. Talks between the two sides were scheduled to resume Thursday. Workers from United Steelworkers International Local 11-0001 held a 10-day strike at the mine three years ago, over a disagreement on sick leave. That cost the company $2.5 million in administrative and settlement expenses, according to a report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It also cost an estimated 25,000 ounces in lost platinum metals production, worth about $12 million at the time. The two parties later agreed to a 3 percent annual salary increase for workers and contract renewal bonuses, the SEC report said. Negotiations to renew that contract began in May. Union leaders and company negotiators twice reached tentative agreements that later were rejected by union members. The first was defeated over a provision calling for 25 percent penalties on workers’ bonuses if they took too much sick leave. The second tentative deal was defeated 55 percent to 45 percent late Monday night, Beaudry said. He declined to say what led to the rejection. Local union leaders did not return several telephone calls seeking comment Tuesday. A United Steelworkers spokesman at the union’s headquarters in Pittsburgh, Gerald Dickey, said Tuesday he had no information on the planned strike. Shares of the company, which trade under the symbol SWC, dropped 20 cents Tuesday to $11.71 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Stillwater Chairman Frank McAllister said in a statement that a strike would be “economically painful” for the company, its employees and the local community. Stillwater claims to be the largest producer of platinum metals outside South Africa and Russia. In 2003, the Russian metals company MMC Norilsk Nickel acquired a controlling interest in Stillwater for $248 million in cash and palladium. The Billings-based company produced 601,000 ounces of platinum and palladium from its two mines last year, with about 70 percent of that figure coming from the mine in Nye. The company recycled another 349,000 ounces of platinum metals from discarded automobile catalytic converters and industrial petroleum converters, Beaudry said. With a total of 1,719 employees, the publicly traded company brought in $8 million in profit last year on $613 million in revenue, according to Stillwater’s annual report. In May, it reported a first-quarter loss of $1.1 million, or a penny a share, versus earnings of $600,000 for the same period last year. A spokeswoman for Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer said his office was communicating with Stillwater representatives regarding the contract disagreement, but had no plans to intervene
