[Fdu] Vale in Mozambique (I hope that this attempt works)

[Joe Vise]

*TUBMAN SEMINAR SERIES *

* Judith Marshall, "Extractive industries in Mozambique: the case of Brazil's 
Vale" *

* Wednesday, March 16, 2011 12:00 -- 13:30 YRT 830 *

**Dr. Judith Marshall is a labour educator and writer who works in the Global 
Affairs and Local Issues Department of the United Steelworkers. She has been 
actively involved in building global networks for many years, along with 
organizing popular education programmes on global issues.

Prior to joining the Steelworkers, Dr. Marshall worked for several years as a 
co-operant in Mozambique and has extensive experience working with trade unions 
in Canada, Mozambique and Brazil, giving her a unique insight into the workings 
of transnational corporations, including Brazil's Vale. Vale is the world's 
second largest mining company and has recently expanded into Mozambique and 
Guinea-Conakry. Vale's Canadian workforce in Sudbury and Voisey's Bay was 
recently on strike for over a year.

Dr. Marshall was also a founding member of TCLSAC (Toronto Committee for the 
Liberation of Southern Africa). The TCLSAC archive is now hosted in the Tubman 
Institute.

The seminar will focus on the mining activities of Vale in the north of Mozambique.

  The following is an abstract of her talk:

*Tracking the misdeeds of Canadian corporations like Barrick or Goldcorps in the 
south is an old story, one eminently worth retelling albeit problematic. A 
rights discourse based on spaces defined by national boundaries seems curiously 
at variance with today's powerful corporate and government actors promoting a 
discourse of global issues and global supply chains. *

**

*For unions like the USW, which represents the Canadian workers in the four 
newly-acquired operations of Brazil's Vale, tracking the misdeeds of a southern 
corporation introduces a new story. In learning to tell it, the USW has had much 
to learn ranging from Vale's still contested transition from state company to 
private hands at home in Brazil and Vale's global reach. *

*Not least of the lessons is how Vale, like other global mining companies, 
chooses to wrap itself in the national flags as it courts foreign governments. 
Social identities *

*shaped through post-colonial discourses clearly came into play as Lula openly 
urged the Mozambique government to opt for Vale. While Brazil's affinity with 
Africa shaped by diaspora politics may have prompted the Lula government to 
promise increased development links with Africa, it is not by accident that the 
much touted project to produce AIDS drugs has been slow to materialize while 
Vale's new megaproject in mining has burgeoned forward, with the first coal 
exports to start by mid-year. *

This week's seminar is co-sponsored by Tubman and CERLAC's Brazilian Studies 
Seminar. Please note that this week only the seminar will take place on a 
Wednesday rather than the usual Tuesday, to accommodate the Brazil Studies 
Seminar schedule.

*Room 830, York Research Tower, York University *

*Wednesday, Mar 16, 2011 - 12:00 - 13:30*

Frank J. Luce LLB, PhD

Coordinator

Harriet Tubman Institute

323 York Lanes

York University

4700 Keele Street

Toronto Canada M3J 1P3

416.736.2100 X 33714

fjluce at yorku.ca

www.yorku.ca/tubman

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