Grade 12
The day I heard about it was at school. And we were talking about it in class. People were like, ‘I hear Vale’s laying off 500 workers,’ and, ‘Oh, my dad works at smelter.’ We didn’t have all the details so we were kind of panicking because we didn’t know what that meant. So I went home and I called my dad.
My dad’s been working at Vale for about 23 years so far. So in four more years’ time he’ll be about three years away from retirement, so he’ll be pretty close. But it all depends if Vale stays true to their word with not laying people off because he’ll be close to retirement but not close enough to get an early retirement package. The aim is to get 30 years, unless he gets a package, which we don’t know if they’d even do. It’s an iffy position, really.
My mom’s a teacher and she’s been teaching for quite a while and she’s at the point where she could retire now if she wanted because she’s had a fair amount of years, but she’s still working right now. So I think she’ll keep doing that for a while because of what’s happening.