PROFILE Brunswick’s Carrington addresses labor dispute

At Brunswick Mining & Smelting, the newly appointed president, John Carrington, 47, has a daunting task ahead. Labor dispute and health issues have dogged the company since last summer. Recently, employees at its zinc mine and smelter near Bathurst, N.B., rejected Brunswick’s “final offer” and will remain on strike (T.M.N., April 15/91). As management sees it, the solution is to have a resident president. “Business should be run where it is located,” says Carrington in a recent interview with The Northern Miner. He will relocate to Bathurst this summer. “We want to do well at Brunswick for all the stakeholders. They are the employees, shareholders, suppliers and the communities in which we operate.” Topping his agenda are labor-employer relations.

Carrington plans to improve Brunswick’s image by reinforcing his staff’s dedication to the company and improving communication among units. “My ideal is: everyone who works there genuinely wants to be there,” he says. Each staff member should have a “broader vision of the company as a whole rather than the individual unit to which he is assigned.”

First he must identify the causes of the existing problems at Brunswick and then redress them. “I am starting from square one and have to understand all the issues involved,” he says. “I am a doer and thinker rather than a visionary.”

As a youngster, he collected minerals and listened to the mining-related conversation around the house. He still remembers one Sunday afternoon when his father, a mining engineer and then editor of The Northern Miner, instructed a reporter on the phone how to get the first set of results on the Kidd Creek discovery, which Texasgulf agreed to release exclusively to the newspaper.

Carrington, who holds a B.A.Sc. degree from the University of Toronto and a M. Eng. from McGill University, has worked all over North America. Since 1968, he has been with Kerr Addison Mines and most recently was senior vice-president of operations for Minnova Inc. Brunswick Mining & Smelting, Kerr Addison and Minnova are part of the Noranda group.

At home Carrington builds and paints military figures made of lead alloy. An avid reader, he collects dictionaries and coins. He is married to Eleanor, a nurse. They have two sons.

Will the recession change Brunswick’s exploration and mining plans? “Producing mines will continue to produce unless the cost of the product makes it unprofitable,” he says. “Exploration must be part of Brunswick’s lifeblood.”