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The agreement announced Monday morning is tentative, but the union is recommending members ratify the contract.

“Our union is extremely proud of our members’ solidarity in this extended struggle to achieve a fair collective agreement with Western Forest Products and their associated contractors,” said Brian Butler, president of Steelworkers Local 1-1937.

Butler said details of the tentative deal wouldn’t be made public until members had the chance to review and vote, but he did say the agreement doesn’t contain any concessions.

In an email, Butler said he was in Vancouver on Monday to organize when information meetings and ratification votes would be held. He said a schedule with these dates would be out Tuesday.

Babita Khunkhun, Western’s senior director of communications, would also not provided any details of the agreement until it’s ratified, but said the company “is very pleased” a deal was reached “after a long weekend” of talks.

When Western’s six mills on the Island will be open again for business will not be clear until after the ratification vote, she said.

“I would say it’s obviously a challenging time for the operating environment. We’ll be looking to resume operations to meet market demand,” Khunkhun said. “We’ll have those plans to share once they are finalized.”

Wickstrom didn’t know the contents of the deal, but noted the striking workers were adamant they wanted no concessions on issues such as contracting out and shifts. She also didn’t know the timeline involved, but thought it would take several weeks for people to get back to work and even longer for her community to rebound.