THE SUDBURY BASIN: Back to the classroom

Paul Parker was faced with an alarming prospect. The vice-president for human resources and administration at Inco’s Ontario Division realized his firm was poised at a historic and disagreeable watershed: for the first time in nearly a century of mining, Inco had more pensioners in the Sudbury area (approximately 10,000) than it had active staff (8,100). Still more disquieting were the demographics of the workforce: the average age of an employee was 46; the average seniority level, 23 years.

Clearly, the world’s largest nickel producer needed to revitalize its workforce. The multi-million-dollar question was: how?

Parker and his confreres in senior Inco management were well acquainted with how their predecessors had handled hiring in the past: newspaper ads would have been placed in mining communities across Canada; the sons of Inco employees would have been given hiring preference; and applicants would have been accepted, after a cursory interview by the personnel department, on the basis of health, physical size, and mining experience. But Parker also knew what the outcome of the traditional search would be: high turnover, low eductional levels, and a further perpetuation of that dubious figure in the Canadian mining industry, the packsack miner.

Ore, as readers well know, is a distinctly malleable and abstract concept. The difference between a profitable mineral and waste rock is determined by a host of variables including grade and accessibility, cost of production and market price. And it’s a simple fact of life in mining camps that once the first ton of ore is hoisted from a new mine, the years of its operation are numbered. Generations of Canadian miners have endured this itinerant existence, uprooting their families repeatedly in a perpetual quest for steady employment, and mining companies thought nothing of hiring new employees who had been “trained” by other companies, in other methods, in totally different mining operations.

Historically, the training programs were themselves less than adequate. It usually centred on a week-long session in “school stope,” an underground classroom where new employees were given a crash course in everything from ground control to blasting. A former Inco miner hired in 1968 had a ready one-word answer when asked to describe the training he received: “None. When I left school stope I was petrified. I had no confifince whatsoever. School stope lasted five days, and I spent two of those days shovelling spills underneath a conveyor belt. All I knew was, if I smelled a tape fuse burning, I should run like hell . . . ”

After school stope, new employees were paired with more experienced men who, it was hoped, would teach more good work habits than bad. The results were predictable: low (or at least widely varying) productivity levels, serious injuries and, all too often, fatal on-the-job accidents. But, in the spring of 1988, Paul Parker and Inco were in a unique position to break the traditional pattern. Even after a century of continuous mining, company geologists reckoned, Inco’s Sudbury ore reserves would remain viable for at least the next 40 years. Instead of evenenally hiring thousands of experienced miners to find the few hundred who would stay with the company over the long term, Parker reasoned, why not totally overhaul Inco’s hiring and training techniques? Besides, in an increasingly high-tech age, the company’s basic requirements for new employees would be radically different. “We really don’t want to have the same kind of guy we hired before,” Parker muses. “They’re nice guys, but we have new technology, and we know we’re going to be in business for the next 40 years.”

A New Breed of Miner

In January, 1989, Parker met with Glenn Crombie, Gary Cronkwright, and Darryl Lake, the president, vice-president academic, and dean of science and technology, respectively, of Sudbury’s Cambrian College of Applied Arts aad Technology. “We were excited, Parker recalls. “The more we talked, the more the ideas flowed . . . ” One year later, Cambrian admitted the first 73 students to its Mining and Mineral Processing Certificate Program. Everyone involved agrees the program is a pioneering effort that, if successful, may alter this country’s hardrock mining industry forever. Meet the new breed of Canadian miner.

It’s standing room only in Jana Kazda’s mining course classroom and, even after a 2-hour lecture on a mining method known as “sub-level caving,” the energy is still palpable. Kazda’s delivery is punctuated by good-natured wisecracks from her students, which often bring a smile to the teacher’s lips. When a visitor is introduced, he’s peppered with questions. These students are bright, aggressive, confident and, above all, eager. Their ages range from 18 to 43 (the average, 25 or 26), many have already completed some form of post-secondary education, and, with two exceptions, they are all men. They have also, in their first 16 weeks at Cambrian, won the undying admiration of their teachers.

In Ontario’s community college system, where low attendance and high attrition are the bane of many programs, these future mining employees are proving a notable exception. The morning’s 100% attendance is not unusual, Kazda says after class, and the dropout rate in the program has been virtually nil.

“Most of the students are well-motivated and quite involved,”agrees Nayda Schultz, who teaches English in the program. “Many of them are mature students, a lot have college diplomas already. What a competent group it is.” In the first 16 weeks of the program the students are crammed full of the basics in six subject areas: trades, chemistry, metallurgy, English, mining and math. It’s an arduous program of study — but few of the students complain about the workload, even though many hold full- or part-time jobs to pay their way through school.

When the 16-week classroom phase is completed, the students are handed over to Inco for a 16-week full-time paid placement. They’ll receive further training in safety and health and their individual workplace before actually going on the job.

Not all will become miners — many may wind up in the mills, smelters, and refineries of Inco’s sprawling Sudbury operationis. After that, the students will return to Cambrian for a further 16 weeks of classroom study. When — and if — they complete the course, they’ve been told, the chances of guaranteed permanent employment at Inco are extremely high.

High Credentials

One of the reasons for the students’ stellar performance so far is doubtless the intense interest shown in the program by would-be Inco employees. When news of the Inco-Cambrian initiative was published in the Sudbury newspapers in the summer of 1989, the college received more than 900 inquiries about the 70 available positions, according to Phil Taylor, head of Cambrian’s Department of Applied Science. The credentials of the incoming group also proved to be exceedingly high, often far above the Grade 12 education or equivalent level that Inco has imposed as the first requirement for all new employees.

Both Taylor and Science and Technology Dean Darryl Lake can barely contain their enthusiasm for the new program. They’re convinced it represents a major breakthrough in job training that could have repercussions far beyond the Ontario mining industry, as Canadian companies struggle to become more globally competitive in the 1990s and beyond. Cambrian has worked closely with the private sector in the past, “but we’ve never co-operated to such a degree with a company before,” says Taylor. The Ontario government is the third key player — the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines has agreed to provide $362,500 for the program over two years, and Cambrian officials are investigating additional funding.

It’s difficult to predict the impact the Cambrian grads will have at Inco when they enter the workplace in December. Already there are reports of older workers holding lunchroom discussions about the new employees, and considerable scepticism about the abilities of “college boys” to pass muster
in the rough-and-tumble world of mining.

On the other hand, many Inco veterans will welcome the infusion of new, younger blood. “Like any group of workers, we’ve developed our own culture over the years,” an Inco smelter worker observes. “We learned the culture from the older guys, but we’ve had no one to pass it on to.” In the absence of new hires, there’s also been an uncomfortable sense of the group aging on the job at Inco in recent years. “Last week the whole shift decided to knock off early one day, and we were all sitting in the lunchroom waiting for our cage,” a 40-year-old Inco employee with 20 years’ experience at Creighton mine recalls. “One of the guys had left a tool in his stope so we decided to send ‘the young guy’ for it. We looked around the lunchroom and it turned out I was the young guy.”

The new breed of mine employee will also represent a new challenge to Inco’s front-line supervision, acknowledges Inco VP Parker. Most were drawn from the ranks of the hourly-rated workforce and “they’re going to find it tough. We’ve got to upgrade our front-line supervision. New supervisors, too, will face much more extensive screening.” Given the students’ behavior in the classroom, Cambrian’s Taylor is convinced Inco will be delighted by the performance of its new employees, and with the quality of their training. “I’m sure they’re going to be satisfied with the end product.”

Lake goes even further. He believes Cambrian is at the cutting edge of a new form of mining education that will transform the entire industry and he foresees the day when the Sudbury college will train new employees from companies across Canada. “It’s not only Inco we’re aiming at, we’re aiming at the mining industry across the whole damned country.”

It has taken decades, but it has finally dawned on Ontario mining firms that each new employee represents a multi-million-dollar investment over the long haul. Parker conservatively estimates that Incc will pay each Cambrian grad $1.5 million in wages and benefits over the course of his or her working life, and that’s in 1990 dollars.

Does all of this spell the end of the road for the packsack miner? “Smaller mines of short duration may still need the packsack miner,” Parker reflects, “but the larger, more established operations, like up in Timmins or out in Hemlo will start looking in this direction, I’m sure.” Parker is sure of one other thing, too: “If you look at the miner of the year 2000, I think he’s going to be a totally different animal.”