Category: Storyteller

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Kiruna Luleå Storyteller

Storyteller #43 – building from-within

We’re making the last adjustments to the book about Kiruna and the mine (in Swedish) before sending it to potential publishers. In a chapter about broken memories we felt compelled to return to a conversation we had with a man who was born and raised in Kiruna, who worked with the mine for close to ten years, but now lives in Luleå.

In Kiruna, we often heard that many of those reacting strongly to the urban transformation did not live in Kiruna anymore, but had spent their adolescence in the town before moving south. This man is an example. He follows every move in the town and: “Every time [they make a move] I feel affected. In my heart I live in Kiruna, although I’ve lived in Luleå for 32 years. … I feel no belonging to Luleå Hockey. … When someone devalues Malmfälten, I react. There is no understanding of how it all hangs together, about the ore that comes down to Luleå [and the steel plant] which gives the waste heat [to heat houses in Luleå]”.

We feel this man never left Kiruna. Reflecting on the transformations since the 1980s he talks about how the community has been good at building from-within, with culture and sports, a lot of associations, and then managed to combine this through architecture in the built environment. Together, this created a strong sense of belonging and pride. “Nowadays”, he says, “I think the dimensions are wrong, with the roads and…, too forceful, they overdo it, there is no instinctive feel to it. Everything that is built is to an extent built without feeling.”

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Kiruna Storyteller Worker

Storyteller #37 – view of the mine growing up

This storyteller, born and raised in Kiruna, working as “Summerbird”, reflects on the image of the mine when growing up (the image heading the post is by artist Magnus Fredriksson).

It has been a very romanticized picture of the mine. The pride of working there. It was quite … It was awesome when you were a child, I remember going outside the gate, waiting for Dad to finish [work], and then Mom came and picked him up. So you thought: there is where I’d like to work. But you also got to hear this: ‘The dream factory’. Work is not that hard, a lot of money for not much work, and so on. So that’s what you could hear.

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Kiruna Storyteller Worker

Storyteller #36 – ears, eyes, chest

Next storyteller works underground and in a conversation (from 2015) with us asks about our ‘bodily’ experiences from being underground.

I can imagine for you guys, when you got back up, did you felt swollen? Did you feel something like that? Like heavy, as if your head is full of cotton and…

We were down for three hours and we were in the works for four hours yesterday. It’s our experiences from the mine so far.

Well, you get a pain in your eyes and you feel like a pressure. And I know when I go down, and I’ve heard this from several others, when we go below, well, what should I say, somewhere around 1170 [level, underground], it’s also along road 22, when you get down then it starts to crack a little more in your ears, down there. Then a bit more pressure starts building up, and then you get tired, and swollen fingers, and sometimes I can actually feel a bit in the chest, the heart and the like, but not anymore.

Does it let go as soon as you get up? Do you have to move around or does it stay?

No, it’s usually eases off when you’ve been down there for a while, but it’s just when you go down. Once you’ve been there, it passes, it’s not something you even think about. When it pinches you, you feel ‘well okay’. Then sometimes you get a terrible headache, but that also depends on how much gas there is down there.

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Kiruna LKAB Luleå Storyteller Union Worker

Storyteller #35 – the union and the Summerbirds

Every Summer, LKAB hires several hundreds of so-called “Summerbirds”; people – often young persons who have a break from their studies – that come in to work for a couple of months when ordinary staff are on vacation. As the trend of temporary workers is on the rise in general (although LKAB today work towards decreasing the use of ‘foreign services’), it is interesting to also turn the attention to the response from the unions on this issue. Talking to a Summerbird about this:

When I recently started working at SSAB [the steel plant in Luleå, as Summerbird], than we had a lecture. A person from the union came and talked [to us]. But we never had that at LKAB. Never. Not heard anything about it, not even mentioned to me…

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Kiruna Management Storyteller

Storyteller #34 – Kiruna/Sweden/Others?

Another recurrent theme is where the profits from the mining ends up. A common position that we meet is that too little of the surplus is re-invested in the local community and that the owner in the capital Stockholm, the State, grabs too much (and put it to use in the Stockholm area). A manager reflects upon this in a conversation with us:

These urban transformations [of Kiruna and Malmberget] cost a lot of money, which means that a lot of money stays in this region. But then there are those who doesn’t have a full understanding of everything. I mean, a company is owned by someone, and they demand a return on investments, that’s how it is, nothing strange with that. Then you can think about whether or not the state should drain everything out because… But what I’m saying is that it is much better that we, Swedish citizens, receives that money than that a Canadian company filling its pockets, or an Australian company filling its pockets. Isn’t better that we get a subway or some link in Stockholm for that money or if we get a Bothnia-railway [plans for a railway along the coast from Umeå to the border to Finland]?

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Kiruna Storyteller Supplier Union

Storyteller #33 – work vs community?

Next storyteller is one of the ombudsmen inside the gates, reflecting on the recurrent theme of people doing work in the Kiruna mine but living (and paying taxes) elsewhere:

It would be better if they move up, then there might have been more lively here [as in more pulse in the local community]. And there would also be more tax money in this town. This depletes… But if you get an assignment to work in Kiruna for four years, why bring the family here if you perhaps already is a worker who moves around? Those who were here and built our new main level [at 1365 meters below ground] are such people.

Reading a report about the mining industry from 2015, written by the central organisation of the union IF Metall (with sections in Malmberget, Svappavaara and Kiruna), it is stated that:

Overall, the mining industry has had a larger share of entrepreneurs compared to many other industries. In 2013 the companies reported that entrepreneurs represented about 45 percent of the working time. Maintenance and repair as well as drilling and loading are often contracted out. (page 42; our translation) 

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Kiruna LKAB Storyteller

Storyteller #32 – next level in the mine?

Just recently, top management has expressed itself in positive terms regarding plans for a new level in the Kiruna mine. The latest one, at 1365 meters below ground, has just recently been completed (although in use for some years already). Expected to last for about 15-20 years, it looks as if the Kirunavaara mine will continue to go deeper, although much is still uncertain. We recalled a discussion with a middle manager inside the gates that we had early on in the project, asking if a new main level is probable:

Yes, I think there’ll be a new level, in one way or another. It’s not sure it’ll look like the one on 1365 because 1365 is a luxury build. We got almost everything. Then it depends a bit on the conditions of the mountain down there. But the type of spaces we’ve done at 1365, I doubt that we’ll get them, for mountain mechanical reasons, on 1770 or something. But there might be other… I hope that in about ten years, then you’ll have other technological solutions for how to lift rocks, well, to solve rocks. Whatever those might be.

[we talk about zero-entry mining, no hands in the mine]

Yes, I’ve been involved in that a bit and there are many of these future projects that you: “Well, well, but just as long as he [sic!] doesn’t put up a tight time limit”, then I think we’ll get there soon, but…

[we talk about automation]

But we could have more robots, for sure. And I hope it will happen, partly to save people, not just in numbers but also their physics. We still have some risky jobs… [inaudible] It doesn’t matter if it falls down on a robot or if it gets the stone on top of it. There is no “ouch!”, just pull it out, repair it and then in with it again. So for that sake, I hope for zero entry.

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Kiruna Storyteller Union

Storyteller #31 – the role of the union

Next storyteller is one of the local ombudsmen for one of the unions. Our conversation is about how he keeps in contact with the members and what they are interested in. Below, he talks about how members tend to enrol the union in a rather short-sighted way:

The members are active when there is a wage movement. Or when jobs are threatened. Then they come. […] Very seldom do they come and say ‘what if we did it like this’, ‘what if we should start working with this instead’, you know, more forward-looking ideas. It just doesn’t work. Take an issue like their pensions. If I go and talk about pensions and the future, talking to a 25-years old, well, first, he hasn’t even heard of co-workers retiring. It’s so far away. They’re not interested in these issues. Those who are interested are those about to retire, but for them it is too late.

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Aboriginals Cameco Canada Kiruna Management Storyteller Supplier Uranium

Storytellers #29 and #30 – using local contractors

The general trend in the mining industry is to increase the use of contractors in order to be more flexible, adaptable and cost-effective. Whether this is achieved can be debated, but the trend is clear and although the markets for iron ore (the Kiruna case) and uranium (the McArthur River/Key Lake case) are different, they are both nevertheless highly influenced by ‘boom and bust’, ‘feast and famine’. Walking the fine line between stability and adaptability is highlighted in northern Saskatchewan, where companies like Cameco has to engage local firms and workers as part of the regional agreements (written about earlier on this blog). Interestingly, in some of the conversations, this is lifted as a competitive advantage from both sides of the table, and although more complex than this, the arguments boil down to ‘local knowledge’ and to ‘loyalty’. The first quote below is from a contractor owned by an indigenous band from the north and the second quote is from a manager at Cameco.

companies like Cameco learn that we can deliver and can count on our loyalty to mobilise quickly and to do it quickly as well because we understand what it takes to get it up there. We get to know the local people, it’s easier to identify with the locals. So after a period of time companies like ours starting to have a clear returning in investment back to Cameco.

I would say that the work we do with the contractors has become more stable over the years because we have pushed to have more northern content in our contracts, for workers as well. I think things like that have made Cameco more stable, has made it more stable for the contractors.

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Cameco Canada Kiruna Storyteller Worker

Storyteller #28 – mining and community

Next storyteller is a man from Saskatchewan, Canada, living in a small town up north called La Ronge. He works at MCA. When reflecting over the challenges for northern communities where a large portion work for the mining industry, he praises Cameco, the company, for its efforts, but also emphasises the many challenges still to deal with. This quote about La Ronge comes to mind as we’re daily seeing pictures from Kiruna and the tearing down of houses due to the mine expanding (just recently, the old railway station):

when I was growing up we had movie theatres and pool halls, bowling alleys. We had a sport store for fishing gear and hockey equipment and all that stuff. None of that is there anymore, only Robertsons trading. There is a liquor store there and a few bars. That is not a good thing, because of the youth and those who are not working they tend to fall into the alcoholism and that’s bad for everybody. It starts fights and wreck families.

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LKAB Storyteller Supplier

Storyteller #26 – balancing between own people and contractors

Next storyteller is a contractor who (just as many of the other contractors we’ve talked) used to work for LKAB. The quotes below are from the part of our conversation where this person reflects on how a shifting balance between using the mining company’s own employees and contractors impact LKAB’s performance.

– I think the easiest way for LKAB is to cut away more parts (of the operations), to sell out parts and place them with contractors. That’s the easiest way to turn the ship around. […]

– Is there any risk (for LKAB) with such a strategy?

– Yes, you loose the in-house competence and the long-term perspective. And if you let go of too much you risk ending up in that conflict again, “whose responsibility is this?”. So, it has to be clear that LKAB still is the client, whereas the performer could be somebody else.

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Aboriginals Kiruna Storyteller Worker

Storyteller #25 – an indigenous voice

Talking to an indigenous man from one of the Same villages in the Kiruna area, we ask:

In your village, with reindeer herding and such, is it okay to work in the mine?

Yes, it is. It must be up to each one of us because we live in a society that looks the way it does. With the economic values we have, I completely understand a young person growing up with his or her friends and who wants a modern car, a new snow mobile and… things with status. We all slip into it. They work extra in the mine. As for myself, I wouldn’t be able to do it.

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Kiruna LKAB Politician Storyteller Union Worker

Storyteller #24 – the work rotation vs. the local community

Last year we met a local politician in Kiruna. One theme in our conversation was how different work rotation schedules related to the local community, since workers who work in Kiruna but don’t live in Kiruna also don’t pay taxes in the municipality. The politician said:

When we discussed about there being a lot of people commuting [from outside the municipality to work in the mine], they have these work rotations schedules where they work seven days and are free seven days. There has been a discussion about whether or not IF Metall [the workers’ union] perhaps should make LK[AB] stop this. But, even those who live in Kiruna want these schedules. It’s very much a matter of… Before they [many commuters] went home to Tornedalen… They really want this. Work seven days and then spend seven days in their cabins. But the union doesn’t dare to push the issue since it works against their members.

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Kiruna LKAB Management Storyteller Worker

Storyteller #23 – if I was the CEO…

Next storyteller is a man from Kiruna who have worked a long time above ground for the company, LKAB. During our conversation, the new CEO, Jan Moström, is brought up.

It’s turbulent because Moström, here he comes and, listen now, this is brilliant, because Moström is known as “The Butcher”, but no one has felt any butchering. I use to say in the sauna after [work], I use to say that ‘boys, have you noticed that Moström is a butcher?’. He just waves and cuts away all fat. He’s very good at facts, ‘this is how we’re doing’ or ‘this is how it looks’, and then just cuts away. No one points with the whole hand and says “Bloody idiots!”. He is very professional.

How do you notice this?

But that’s what I’m saying. I do notice it. People disappear, but no necessary people have disappeared. The best ones are still here. […]

If you were Moström and look at your own workplace, what would you do?

I wouldn’t not kick the poor man I just talked about [a man who ‘made sure the coffee pot was warm’]. I would ask what they would like to do. Ask where they would fit in. […] I would start with the weakest. Lets put it this way, you’re not stronger than the weakest link in the band.