Supreme Court makes final ruling on Giant Mine

Vancouver – The final chapter in the bitter Giant Mine labour dispute has come to a close. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled the mine owners, the national labour union, the security firm, and the territorial government do not have to pay damages in relation to the murder of nine workers at the Yellowknife mine in 1992.

The nine miners had crossed a picket line to work at Giant and were killed when a striking worker set off a bomb in the mine. The worker who planted the bomb was convicted of murder and is still in jail but a civil suit tried to also place blame for not preventing the incident on mine owner Royal Oak Ventures, the miners’ labour union, the security firm Pinkerton’s of Canada, and the government of the Northwest Territories.

In 2004 a lower court ruled the four defendants were partially responsible for not preventing the lethal blast and awarded $10.7 million to the miners’ widows and James O’Neil, the first man on the scene. The lower court ruling was then reversed by the Northwest Territories Court of Appeal and that reversal has now been upheld by the federal Supreme Court.

Part of the final ruling read: “While the trial judge was correct in finding that both Pinkerton’s and the territorial government owed the murdered miners a duty of care, he erred in finding that they did not meet the requisite standard of care.”

The Supreme Court also ruled that the national union, now the Canadian Auto Workers union, was not responsible for the actions of the local union, as it was an independent legal entity.

The acrimonious labour dispute between Royal Oak and the Canadian Smelter & Allied Workers local 4 took place in 1992.

Royal Oak had bought the mine in late 1990 and began instituting cost cutting measures. As part of those measures, the union and the company reached a tentative new labour agreement but union members rejected it in a vote. The miners went on strike on May 23, 1992.

Royal Oak made the decision to bring in replacement workers, a move unprecedented in Canada. Some original mine workers also crossed the picket line. Tensions escalated quickly, bringing violence. The original security firm quit after a guard was injured and Pinkerton’s was brought in to replace it.

On Sept. 18, after almost five months of conflict, a purposefully-set blast inside the mine killed nine workers. Roger Warren, a striking worker, was convicted in 1995 of nine counts of second-degree murder for planting the bomb. Unsatisfied, the miners’ widows and James O’Neil filed another suit, arguing the mine’s owners, the labour union, Pinkerton’s, and the Northwest Territories government should have prevented the tragedy.

Royal Oak went bankrupt in 1999, while the Giant Mine closed in 2004. Robert Warren continues to serve a life sentence in a B.C. prison.