The Stel Salaried
Pensioners Organization wishes to thank The Hamilton Spectator for permission
to post the following article by Reporters Chinta Puxley and Joan Walters,
published in the September 24, 2005 edition
By Chinta
Puxley and Joan Walters
The Hamilton Spectator
(Sep 24, 2005)
The hours were so gruelling one of them
slept on the floor of his lawyer's office one night, where the snoring of a
colleague interrupted his half-hour rest.
The food was sometimes disgusting --
the worst meal a Thai takeout affair which one pizza-lover likened to
malodorous feet.
And the pressure was appalling. The
tension was so thick that the principal players would not even share an
elevator.
The restructuring of Stelco has dragged
on for 20 months, one of the longest in Canadian history.
Those 20 months of talks, negotiating,
deadlines and extensions -- on which hinges the future of a corporate giant,
tens of thousands of jobs and the health of Canada's economy -- have come down
to the wire at the insistence of a judge who has run out of patience.
In the last week, and the last 24
hours, the company and its stakeholders hammered out a restructuring plan and
negotiated two tentative collective agreements with its workers.
The process has thrown together
completely different personalities, including three of the many players in the
20-month drama -- Justice James Farley, Stelco CEO Courtney Pratt and union
boss Bill Ferguson.
JUSTICE JAMES FARLEY
He's a tough-talking judge with a dry,
cutting sense of humour who likens Stelco to a leaky lifeboat. Justice James
Farley doesn't mince words.
Unlike other judges, he doesn't listen
passively. He thinks nothing of hauling warring factions into his chambers and
forcing them to negotiate under his watchful eye -- a tactic he used this week
with Stelco, leading to yesterday's two successful collective agreements.
It's not the first time Farley has
taken charge of negotiations. He ordered lawyers and bankers in the Algoma
Steel restructuring case into a hotel with a mediator and said not to emerge
without a deal.
Farley expects the parties to show the
kind of dedication that he has himself. He's been known to reconvene court at
all hours, regardless of holidays, to get closure on a deal.
"He's not your typical
judge," said Derrick Tay, partner at Ogilvy Renault, specializing in
restructuring. He has worked with Farley for the last 20 years.
"He understands if a judge doesn't
intervene, push, prod and cajole, the parties are not inclined to do the right
thing. Nothing happens without deadlines."
COURTNEY PRATT
Under intense pressure to meet those
deadlines, Courtney Pratt, lead hand for the steelmaker's corporate team, has
gone through a virtual trial by fire since becoming Stelco's CEO in the fall of
2003, just months before the company applied for bankruptcy protection. Known
by the union as Smilin' Jack, Pratt is well liked even by his opponents.
He has remained one of the most
tight-lipped participants in a group of Stelco restructuring officials that
numbers in the dozens, evidence of the careful and deliberate personality that
has carried him from a mid-level human resources executive through previous
positions as head of several other major corporations.
The last time Pratt was involved in a
major corporate restructuring, he restructured himself out of a job. In 1998,
he walked away from the job of executive chair of Noranda after he and the
mining firm's president agreed the company didn't need them both.
"He really grew up as an HR officer,"
said Judith Maxwell, president of the Canadian Policy Research Networks, where
Pratt is a board member on leave. She said the 57-year-old grandfather brings
"perspective and wisdom" to any talks. "His thinking is crisp,
he has a real sense of context and an accurate sense of people," said
Maxwell, who has known Pratt 10 years.
BILL FERGUSON
Then there's Bill Ferguson, or Fergie
as he's known, who is head of the United Steelworkers representing Lake Erie
workers and ringleader of the union's negotiating team. Along with Peter
Leibovitch, vice-president of the Lake Erie local, and Tony DePaulo, area
co-ordinator for the international arm of the United Steelworkers, Ferguson has
been entrenched on the 32nd floor of Toronto's TD building trying to negotiate
first a restructuring plan, then a collective agreement.
In his trademark mirrored, wrap-around
sunglasses and cigarette almost permanently welded to his right hand, Ferguson
is quick with a joke or pun, even when he's been up for over 24 hours.
Ferguson, a third-generation
steelworker, has been through many labour negotiations with Leibovitch,
including a three-month strike in 1990.
Despite some nights with only a
half-hour of sleep snatched on the floor of his lawyer's office and the fate of
thousands of workers in his hands, Ferguson is rarely visibly rattled.
Wayne Marston, president of the
Hamilton and District Labour Council, said he's a natural leader.
"If you have a group of people who
are on the union side with a diversity of personalities, a guy like Fergie will
pull them together," Marston said.
Weighing on these three men and their
teams is the fate of Stelco, its employees and the thousands of others who rely
on the steelmaker.
The stakes in this are higher than
normal bargaining: instead of compromising with one party, these groups have to
find a plan that satisfies six diverse sets of interest -- the unions, the
company, the provincial government, the shareholders, pensioners and the
creditors.
It's those unsecured creditors,
especially the bondholders, who have the power to torpedo any negotiated
restructuring plan.
Everyone involved in the fierce,
day-to-day negotiations has had to deal with the consequences of difficult
conditions that have left the fate of Canada's largest steelmaker in limbo for
20 months -- the long hours, nights in sterile hotel rooms, the greasy takeout,
the endless tension and sleep deprivation.
The union representatives from
AltaSteel arrived in January and thought they'd be involved for about two
weeks, said Paul Perrault, Steelworkers' Local 5220 president. Instead, the
group have been home to Edmonton only 67 days this year.
Pratt drove home to Oakville most
nights but admits being tired and even a little battered by the marathon pace.
"There are long days and you get tired and you have your ups and
downs," he said. "It's a bit of a rollercoaster, as it is in most
negotiations."
Right up to the second the
restructuring plan was signed at midnight on Monday, he wasn't certain there
would even be a deal.
Trying to keep the body going and alert
through such gruelling days and nights becomes a priority. For some it's jugs
of coffee, for others endless packs of cigarettes. For the health conscious,
it's a nightmare. Getting healthy food is a near impossibility.
Union lawyer David Jacobs avoids big
meals during negotiating marathons.
For Pratt, it must have been difficult,
said Maxwell, who has watched him try to stick to nutritious food during board
meetings of her organization.
"He is a very healthy eater, which
is sometimes hard to do in corporate meetings," she said. "The last
while must have been very hard for him."
Ferguson, who admits he tends to put on
weight if he's not careful, has grown fond of a simple Chinese dish called Moo
Goo Guy Pan from Ho Lee Chow.
"I'm eating more greens than a
rabbit," he joked.
Even though the union is based at the
downtown Sutton Place Hotel and occasionally gets a chance to sleep in hotel
beds, many snatch a quick sleep break in chairs and even on the floor of their
lawyers' offices.
That's no easy task, especially with
Jacobs' snoring keeping many colleagues awake.
Keeping many others up is the tension,
evident by the encampments that have been set up in facing office buildings
separated only by a courtyard, known as "the pasture" because of its
iron cow statues.
Across this divide, intermediaries and
Pratt himself have been walking back and forth between the sides.
During the recent collective
bargaining, the two sides were incapable of making the simplest of concessions
-- sharing an elevator.
The opposing sides found themselves in
the lobby of the TD building on Wednesday afternoon -- Pratt arriving for
scheduled face-to-face negotiating and a group of union leaders finishing their
smoke break.
When an elevator came, Pratt stood
aside with his legal adviser to wait for the next one to the 32nd floor. That
meeting lasted only five minutes.
Trying to satisfy so many needs on so
many fronts under so much pressure can be backbreaking, said Pratt.
"It's particularly difficult when
you have multi-party negotiations, which we had going on. That makes it more
complex and more conversations that have to take place. It makes it
tough."
Still, despite the personal sacrifices
and back-breaking negotiating of all parties, some say Judge Farley deserves
the lion's share of the credit for bringing the parties together.
For Farley, it's been a matter of
assuming control of one of the justice system's most difficult and unwieldy
procedures -- saving a company from total liquidation and protecting the livelihood
of tens of thousands.
This week, Farley told both sides to
get back to bargaining and not to return to his court without a deal.
The two sides signed collective
agreements last night.
cpuxley@thespec.com
905-526-3468
jwalters@thespec.com
905-526-3302