Williams Lake, B.C. – Week to week.

That’s how United Steelworkers local 1-425 president Paul French in Williams Lake describes the work situation for roughly 300 unionized workers employed at Mt. Polley Mine in Likely these days.

“I’m quite confident they’ll be working tomorrow but I can’t tell you if they’ll be working next month.”

On the bright side he says almost all of them are earning paychecks performing mitigation work.

“They’re trying to get the dam stable so that engineers, testers and everybody else can get down there and do the work to actually try to find the actual cause of why the breach happened.”

After figuring out the cause French hopes cleanup can begin and the mine can get up and running again.

“I think it’s very important for the mine to be able to re-open. Number one it keeps employment happening. That’s over 300 people that work there and the economic generator to the community is just outstanding.”

French has found no fault with the operator of the mine, Imperial Metals, noting “they’ve been very cooperative in trying to keep their employees on site.”

Moving forward he says it’s the government they’re waiting on.

“This is the problem. Right now both workers and mine management are prisoners to the ministry. Government has basically got the say on what happens so everybody’s just waiting for the next step.”