Article content

As we teeter on the eve of a strike involving five major Crown corporations, a Crown agency and thousands of public servants, it’s rather remarkable how long it’s been since we’ve seenany major labour disruption in Saskatchewan.

We are nearing the 12th anniversary of the Saskatchewan Party taking over government, yet we haven’t seen a major public sector strike.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Mandryk: A decade of relative Sask. labour peace seems to be over Back to video

Certainly, we have seen nothing of the scale we might see on Monday with Unifor representing 3,000 workers at SaskPower, SaskEnergy, SaskWater, the Water Security Agency, SaskTel, SecurTek and DirectWest all poised to go off the job.

It’s a radical departure from the relative labour peace the province has enjoyed since the Sask. Party came to power in November 2007.

Labour peace? Many of you will rightly point to Bills 5 and 6, which make it tougher for unions to certify bargaining units by requiring a mandatory certification vote instead of a majority of signed union cards, or essential services legislation through which the Saskatchewan Party government thought it could virtually eliminate public strikes by declaring an irrational number of public sector workers “essential.”