Employee Practices

Our employees are our most important source of energy and innovation and we are committed to engaging them, maintaining a diverse workforce and strong labour and management relations.

Attracting and retaining employees is a challenge throughout the industry. Our employees have a diverse set of valued skills and many of them work in physically demanding environments, often for long periods of time, frequently away from their families. To retain our employees we compete with other companies, both within and outside our industry who also seek the same specialized skill-sets. Different age groups pose different challenges. For example, there is a risk that employees close to retirement will retire with specialized knowledge gained from years of experience. On the other hand, younger generations are more willing to leave positions if they are offered more favourable working conditions elsewhere.

The programs in this section outline our approach to managing these challenges. The attraction, engagement and retention of our employees is critical to the success of our business and this section provides information on our workforce, diversity in the workplace, employee engagement and labour relations.

Workforce

As of December 31, 2009, there were approximately 8,500 full-time, active employees, including students and temporary employees, working at Teck-operated mining and metallurgical operations and offices. In early 2009, we implemented a global workforce reduction of 825 regular, full-time and temporary positions, as well as 300 contractor jobs. The largest reduction in employees was in the exploration group and the largest contractor groups affected were in our Chilean operations and at Teck Coal. We engaged a career transition service to support and provide counseling to employees who were impacted by the workforce reduction. The main two elements of career transition support are helping employees decide what new career to pursue and helping them market themselves effectively to prospective employers.

Global Workforce (as at December 31, 2009)

Business Unit	Operation	Employees
Coal	Cardinal River Operations	343
	Coal Mountain Operations	211
	Elkview Operations	873
	Fording River Operations	996
	Greenhills Operations	496
	Line Creek Operations	363
Copper	Carmen de Andacollo	586
	Duck Pond Operations	235
	Highland Valley Copper	1,116
	Quebrada Blanca	754
Corporate	Global locations	443
Gold	Pogo mine	5
Technology	CESL	56
	Product Technology Centre	40
Zinc	Pend Oreille Operations	29
	Red Dog Operations	399
	Trail Operations	1,534
Total		8,479