MONTREAL, Dec 22 - Some 800 workers at Alcan Inc.'s 400,000-tonne aluminum smelter at Alma Quebec appeared set on Friday to accept the company's contract offer.
The negotiating team of the union affiliated with the United Steelworkers representing the workers recommended that members vote in favor of the contract, union officials said.
"Alcan did its part. It was a long negotiation, but a proper one," Stephane Desgagne, president of the union local, told the RDI French language news network of the CBC.
"Initial reports are positive," said Alcan spokesman Alexander Christen.
Results of the vote were expected to be announced at a news conference at 1.30 p.m. (1830 GMT) on Friday.
Alcan declined to divulge details of the proposed pact, but was hopeful the workers would accept the offer and avoid a strike that could have begun in early January.
In what Alcan, the world's second-largest maker of primary aluminum, said was its best and final offer, the company was asking the union to renew for five years the current contract, which ends Dec. 31, but the union wanted improvements to wages and benefits.
The Alma plant, located in Quebec's Saguenay region northeast of Montreal, has about 1,100 workers.
Alcan has said it has a contingency plan in the event of a strike to deal with worker safety and aluminum production.
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