procurement analyst

process technician

reliability engineer

engineer

métallier

Vale

A typical work day can vary greatly depending on what area of the plant you work in. Many areas do equipment rounds and samples, and technicians may have to interact with some equipment throughout their day. However there are some areas that are purely physical labour with very repetitive tasks. Work areas are assigned randomly when you are hired and your experience at Vale will heavily depend on this.

Management are inexperienced and do not listen to concerns of technicians. Technicians are not involved in any decision making even though they are the ones who know the process/equipment best. Members of upper management who started as coaches will now often preach things that are contradictory of their own behaviour when they were floor level supervisors. It feels like most management could care less about the technicians as long as the work is being done. There are a couple of good superintendents that care about their technicians, but they have so much work on their plates that it can be hard for them to find time to interact with technicians, or be present in the plant long enough to see any issues first hand. 

Many coaches are former technicians that were hired based on their work ethic as technicians. It is good to see hard working individuals get promoted, however as a result, most of the coaches have zero managerial or leadership experience and the leadership training provided by the company is sub-par at best. The lack of leadership skills of the coaches causes many issues within their teams (favouritism, confidentiality issues, no accountability, etc.). The lack of accountability is a major issue with technicians (and coaches) because management as a whole has difficulty with confrontation and refuse to directly address issues with individuals. This leads to a very unbalanced workload with technicians, and the ones doing the bulk of the work and picking up everyone's slack are not even thanked or recognized in any way. They are often just rewarded with more work by becoming the coach's "go-to" person because of their reliability. Expectations are much higher on the hard workers than on the more slack ones which is incredibly unfair. 

Safety culture is preached every day but not always practiced. Really depends on who your coach/superintendent is. Some will follow all safety rules by the book, while others are willing to ignore them for the sake of production. The safety department is also very small and they aren't often present in the workplace as a result. 

Vale was not very up front about the progression plan. It took years for them to develop it and put it in place. Many of the more senior technicians are now lagging behind on the progression plan for various reasons, such as being stuck in areas for extended periods of time because they were too experienced to move, being pulled into special projects for months, or taking temporary uplift positions. HR is not helpful about this issue. There is also a lot of computer/paperwork/training involved with the progression plan, which can get neglected by the more valuable technicians because they are out in the plant working and picking up the slack of other technicians. Sometimes it feels like you need to jump through administrative hoops to progress. My advice to any technician would be to make sure your progression plan paperwork/training takes top priority and gets completed because unfortunately your work ethic alone is not going to get you a raise.

There are other issues with Vale but those are the main ones in my experience. Long Harbour started off with a very talented and motivated group of technicians but because of all the issues many of them are now completely burned out or have left the company all together. Moral is very poor and the only thing keeping technicians in Long Harbour is the salary and benefits. 

Overall I do not regret my time with Vale, as I gained some very valuable work experience there and met a lot of great coworkers. I would recommend the technician job to anyone in search of employment because the salary and benefits are good, and there are no educational requirements. However in my opinion, it is not a job I would spend my entire life doing.

I Received A call From Vale Seeking My interest In A Senior Safety Advisor For Construction Position Offered At Their Long Hr. Nickel Processing Plant Therefore I Can Only Speak To My Interactions With The Construction/Process Operations Folks And Others As A Construction Safety Advisor And My Personal Job Satisfaction. I Came To The Position With Many Years Of Mining , Electrical/Mechanical Tradesman Experience , Mine Safety AND Training Experience. This Background Benefited Me Greatly  And i Found Transition Into This Role And Project Fairly Easy. I Found The Project Working Atmosphere Hectic At Times As With Any New Plus Ongoing  Project. Overall Satisfaction With  Great Co-Operation From The Many Construction Unions And Their Workers ( Especially When These Folks  Knew You 'Worked On The Tools' ).   I Had Good Interactions As Well With Vale's Management Folks, Those In Operations  And Construction.. In My Twice A Day Joint Site Walk-A-Bout With Contractor Safety Advisors And My Solo Excursions, We Worked Together To Address Safety Concerns And Issues.  Our Joint Belief Was That All The Women And Men On-Site Deserved To Go Out To Home Safe And Sound At The End Of Their Working Day, The Same Way They Came In. Overall, Overall, The Feeling I Had At Vale LH Was The Same As At Any Job Site I Worked On In Over 40 Plus Years. First, Park Your Preconceived Ideas And Beliefs At The Gate Until You Know Your Way Around ( New To You Job In New Industry : Do Your Job To The Best Of Your Abilities, Think Before You Speak And You'll Learn More, Look What Others Are Doing Right And Learn.Take Any And All Training/Learning Programs Available To You. ) At The End Of The Day, You'll Have Done A Good Day's Work And You'll Have The Further Satisfaction Of A Good Day's Pay And Opportunity To Learn  . This Might Not be Your First Job But In Today's Market, It Might Also Not be Your Last, Learn ! I Might Add, In Today's World, Adults Only Should Apply As You'll Be Working With Real Working Women And Men As A Team, (You Figure Out The Rest Of That Train Of Thought ) A Major Health Issue Forced Early Retirement On Me As Vale Had Early On Inquired Into My Going Up To Voisey's Bay For The Underground Ovoid Construction Job.  I Was Greatly Looking Forward To This But Life Happens. These Are My Personal Thoughts On My  Experiences Working For Vale At Long Harbour Nickel Process Construction Site.  

- Begin day with daily planning meeting where we discuss work and any issues that may effect crews and/or work areas.

- In my work i learned to have an open mind and listen attentively to others ideas around work. in doing so we revised some safe work procedures making work more safe and efficient.

- Management communicated well together which is key to executing work safely and productively.

- Co-workers and peers turn to my extensive experience when they were unsure on assigning certain work to employees. i was a resource to all levels of management and employees. My door was always open to anyone who had a concern about their job.

- hardest part of the job for me was investigating serious incidents within the mines where people i knew for years were injured. i always found the root cause and put recommendations to upper management and government inspectors on reducing likelihood of reoccurrence. unfortunately in the mines some tasks would always remain high risk so safe work procedures would be implemented. 

- the most enjoyable part of my day was knowing i made a difference in workers lives by improving safety in the workplace and changing the mining culture and beliefs where serious injuries were expected to happen in the mining process. i believe that with training we can change how individuals approach work. Eliminate lost time accidents and bring overall injury statistics down no matter the work environment.

 It is a difficult place to feel secure in your employment. There is minimal respect for tradespeople. In their eyes you field fixing a piece of equipment in a hot dusty poorly ventilated heading laying in a puddle doesn’t contribute to production and doesn’t warrant any incentive pay. This creates completely different attitudes between operations and maintenance departments and creates unnecessary friction and makes it difficult to have everyone working towards the same goal.

Wages have fallen behind competitors. No post retirement benefits for new hires. No underground premiums or production bonus for maintenance employees. They expect everything to keep chugging along running on fumes. They are setting things up to fail as an excuse to contract out more work and bring in more contractors.

 They are always in cost cutting mode yet waste an incredible amount of money on silly things that do nothing to increase safety, production or morale. 

 Their always creating new rules and often painting themselves into a corner once implemented.

There is very little accountability especially with outside contractors.

They are very set in their ways and anyone who’s worked elsewhere who tries to contribute meaningful change is met with nothing but pushback. Minimal interest in industry best practices. Not much changes because most employees have never worked anywhere else and therefore don’t know any better. 

They wouldn't hire any coverage. I signed a contract saying I get three weeks holidays, when in reality it goes by hours (120hrs). My shifts were 12hrs long, so that's a total of 10 days off a year.

We also had to cover each others' holidays, so I had to put in over 450hrs of overtime last year.. kind of defeats the purpose of even getting time off.

There's always talk of staff getting laid off (which did happen) and the place is so disorganized and everyone is unhappy. Everyone is walking on eggshells every day.

They'll also hire you for one specific job and expect you to learn other roles you have no experience in.. if you don't come in on your "days off" to learn those roles, they look down at you and well, you'll get a negative yearly review which reflects on your bonus and potential raise.

Absolutely toxic. Most stressful 2.5yrs of my life.

Oh, and they don't have any money. Workers complain every day that they don't have this and don't have that... no one gets any work done. No one's trained on anything..

Management is a bunch of snakes. It's worse than high-school. They'll throw anyone under the bus so they don't take the heat.

I really hope a good mining company buys them out because the miners here deserve better.



Typical Day involves a morning meeting  6:45am with all supervisors and upper management involving the previous days production, safety talk, injury review, IM review, discuss work being performed that day, discuss high priority work required,  7:00am line up the crew with daily safety information followed by specific crew assignments relating to what their task is for that particular day .Field visits throughout the shift to ensure proper procedure's and safety aspects are being followed. Conversations with crew members on the Floor in regards to any concerns or issues they may have on that particular day, input payroll, documentation of daily activities, concerns or issues, discussion with DCS operator and Metallurgical Eng. to produce the highest quality of feed, adjust mill performance and Assays to achieve goals set by upper Eng. Things learned, adjust to worker behaviors and performance, employees are individual in comparison to others, getting to know them in order to be able to help them. Hardest part is not to mix friendship with work ethics. Most enjoyable, everyday is different, no two are the same.

During my employment with Fluor Constructors I was required to travel long distances for employment.  Working at the Vale project required travel to Newfoundland.  I was on a 10 and 4 rotation which equated to be only home 6 days a month.  This was challenging.  My work at the Vale project was interesting and demanding in that the staff was upwards of 300 and had traveled from all over the world to work there.  

Due to the length of the project the Project Director changed 3 times and that meant adapting to new management skills.  This was acquired through diplomacy.

I enjoyed working in Newfoundland a truly endearing province and a beautiful place to work.  The local staff were amazing,

I decided at the end of this project to leave the employment of Fluor in order to spend more time at home.  I took a year off to regroup and am now actively looking for employment in the local area.  The employment I am looking for may not necessarily be of the same responsibilities and caliber of work as was the case with Fluor and I realize will not be of the same pay rate.  

My goal is to provide valuable, perfected, reliable assistance to my employer.

I used to work at the Vale Corporate office in Toronto and had the worst experience in my professional life.

The onboarding process was non-existent and I was treated terribly from the first week. My manager was avoiding me and my coworkers were hostile and took all the credit for my work. I did my best to build good relationships with them by talking about non-work matters and inviting them for lunch or coffee, however nothing worked. They were like robots entering data and making spreadsheets or slides with KPIs. No regard for the people in the office or the operations. Numbers are all that matters. No wonder why most teams on the sites are ill-functioning. 

Poor leadership is seen across sites and offices because executives use a top-down approach and no one can express an honest opinion or raise issues. Besides, the Brazilian employees were always the favourites of top management, regardless of their skills. Many non-Brazilians were equally or more qualified and did not get the same opportunities.

The salary and benefits are above market as most reviews have indicated... perhaps the only good thing about this company.

Currently I work a 4 on 4 off shift rotation of 12 hour shifts. First 2 shifts are days shifts and the second 2 shifts are night shifts. from the start to the end of each shift I prepare and analyze various process samples for quality and process control so the operators can continue the batch-wise process out in the plant. I have learned a lot about the process and a variety of skills to become effective and efficient at my job so the operators can continue the process without delays. The hardest part of the job is the hurry up and wait atmosphere in between the samples, sometimes it makes for a long shift. Also the other part that I dislike is the "Contract" idea, even though it is an indefinite contract with no end date there is always that issue of do I have a job here next week/month. The best part is the people I work with in the lab, its like our own little family and we work together to be as efficient as possible.

As a supervisor I was responsible to ensure taht all people were gainfully employed and that they were giving all imformation relevent to thger daily tasks that would allow them to safely perform their job. I was responsible to do daily audits to ensure that each person was working to standard and not putting his/hers or others safety at risk.Being a supervisor for so long has given me an excellent level of people and communication skills. I get along well with all levels of people and enjoy working hands on with them. This is probably why I remained a firstline supervisor for so long. I have an excellent ability to assess situations and react accordingly. The hardest part of my job was issuing discipline.When I had to I tried to always make it constructive and educational.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Procurement analyst 3 salaries reported	$83,333 per year
Process technician 3 salaries reported	$73,333 per year
Reliability engineer 4 salaries reported	$93,000 per year
Engineer 5 salaries reported	$99,434 per year
Métallier 4 salaries reported	$100,318 per year

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