Hours after Unifor said striking Saskatchewan Crown employees would go back to work Tuesday, SaskTel nixed the idea for the corporation.

“SaskTel will not be allowing employees who are members of Unifor to return to work in the absence of a concluded collective agreement,” the Crown corporation said in an emailed media release.

“SaskTel did not make this decision lightly, but management cannot provide the desired level of customer service or maintain the integrity of our networks for the people of Saskatchewan with unknown and intermittent walkouts.”

Scott Doherty, the executive assistant to Unifor national president Jerry Dias, said the union wasn’t caught off guard by SaskTel’s decision.

“We’re very disappointed — not surprised, but very disappointed that they locked us out,” Doherty said. “We were intending to return to work (Tuesday).”

Chris MacDonald, the assistant to Dias, said earlier Monday that the 5,000 workers who went on strike Friday were going to return to work Tuesday just to be “unpredictable.”

“This labour dispute has been about us doing the things that people aren’t expecting,” MacDonald said.

But the SaskTel release said the union indicated that its ploy was “a short-term measure and that they will only provide 24 hours’ notice before going on strike again.” That wasn’t acceptable to SaskTel.

“It takes the corporation up to 48 hours to mobilize the business back and forth to have the necessary processes, systems and accesses reinstated,” its release read. “This creates far too much uncertainty and the corporation needs to ensure we are able to maintain the integrity of our networks and serve our customers in a safe and secure manner.”

The company claimed it had found instances during the union’s four days of work to rule last week of configuration issues that could have interrupted the company’s ability to televise live events. It also said fake orders had been created that could have disrupted service.

Doherty wouldn’t discuss those accusations.

“I’m not going to respond to any allegations,” he said. “If they want to provide us with actual facts around what they are claiming, I would respond to it. But at this point in time, they’re just making allegations and I’m not going to respond to those allegations.”

SaskTel also noted it was considering applying for an injunction to halt Unifor’s practice of preventing non-unionized employees from getting to work. Doherty said the union’s actions on the picket line were legal.

Officials from the other six Crowns affected by the strike — SaskEnergy, SaskPower, SaskWater, SecurTek, Directwest and the Saskatchewan Water Security Agency — said any employee who wanted to return to work Tuesday would be welcomed back.

SaskTel isn’t calling its actions a lockout, but Unifor is using that phrase to describe the situation.

MacDonald said SaskTel has to give 72 hours’ notice before a lockout. But Doherty said because employees already had gone on strike, notice by SaskTel wasn’t required.

Workers represented by Unifor went on strike Friday morning from the seven Crowns. That had followed four days of working to rule.

On Monday, employees surrounded SaskTel’s call centres in an attempt to disrupt operations. On Tuesday, the workers are to leave the picket lines and return to all seven Crowns, where they once again would work to rule.

“This is about us showing that we can move our resources around, that we can move things where we need them and generally that 5,000 people all returning to work (Tuesday) is unexpected,” MacDonald said. “Then we’ll make our decisions after that.

“It’s a slap in the face that the premier in this province (Scott Moe), with 5,000 families on strike, has gone on an international trip (to Japan and South Korea), and the very person that has the power to fix this has left, and left without fixing this. That is a huge problem for us.”

MacDonald said Unifor has the right to call a strike, so it also has the right to go to back to work at any point. The union will make a decision on its strategy after that.

“We’ve asked our members to stay tuned to their communications …,” MacDonald said. “Certainly, we’ll be back to work for enough time for (the Crowns) to send a signal to us that they’d like to get back to the bargaining table, and that’s what we’d like to see.”

MacDonald noted that the union wants to resume bargaining, but he was quick to add that “we’re not in any way, shape or form wanting to get back to the bargaining table to talk about their zeroes.”

The Crowns were offering a deal that didn’t include any wage increases for the first two years of the contract.

Picket lines up across Saskatchewan

Some of the workers may be heading back to work on Tuesday, but they were out in full force on the picket lines Monday.

MacDonald said between 800 and 900 people were at SaskTel call centres early in the morning and linked arms to stop managers from going inside and doing the jobs the picketers had walked away from.

Unifor members lock arms this morning in Regina to close the SaskTel call centre. Managers unable (and mostly unwilling) to cross. #skpoli #skoutage pic.twitter.com/W93GOfs08G — Unifor Canada (@UniforTheUnion) October 7, 2019

SaskTel’s customer service line was shut down for a few hours, with a recording telling people the company was experiencing a labour disruption and to call back the next day. The line was back up around noon but warned callers that there was a high call volume.

David Owens got to the picket line at about 9:30 a.m. He said it has been good and everyone has been in high spirits, but he said being on strike has been hard for some.

“For a lot of people, it’s trying to find time for their families, to find childcare, to go out of their normal routine,” Owens said.

“I know for a lot of members it’s hard, it’s hard to try and adjust — we all know how hard it is to try to find childcare, but to also adjust to late nights, to early days as the strike goes on. It hasn’t been easy for a lot of people.”

He said if the two sides get back to the table and work out a fair deal, then it will have been worth it.

Picketers were also seen outside a SaskTel building in Saskatoon, while others shut down the SaskTel Centre in Saskatoon. Employees also were outside the Poplar River Power Plant in Coronach, according to Unifor’s Twitter account.

— With files from 980 CJME’s Lisa Schick