Members of Unifor union at Crown corporations have been out on the picket line since Friday morning in Estevan. Estevan strikers joined thousands of Unifor members across the province.

The strike banners could be seen in front of the SaskTel store at the Estevan Shoppers’ Mall on King Street, as well as by the SaskEnergy office on Kensington Avenue in town, and also out at SaskPower's Boundary Dam.

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The SaskTel Store at the mall was closed due to the strike, just like all other SaskTel stores across Saskatchewan.

The Estevan Mercury talked to Dave Kuntz, who is the president of Unifor Local 1-S about what will be going on in the area on Friday and probably the following days.

“We are pulling everybody out all across the province. It’s all the SaskTel people plus all the other Crowns. So we are talking 5,000 Unifor members across seven Crown corporations,” said Kuntz.

The strike affects seven Crowns, including SaskTel, SaskPower, SaskEnergy, SaskWater, the Water Security Agency, and SaskTel subsidiaries SecurTek and Direct West.

Kuntz explained that participation in pickets is voluntarily, but the union recommends its members to take action, as they believe it will help put pressure on the government.

“The union has only certain tools available to us to exert additional pressure on the government. And work-to-rule, which is what we’ve done from Monday to Thursday of this week, is one of the options, where we don’t do overtime. But ultimately strike action is the strongest one that we have and that’s what we are doing now,” said Kuntz.

“We hope that all our members will be fully participating because it’s in their best interest to help out and exert as much pressure on Scott Moe and the government that we have.”

He also explained that the strike involves Crown corporations’ employees at all levels.

“All levels of operations, everybody is out. Doesn’t matter who they are, they are off the job today. That includes sales people, customer service technicians in their homes, people in Regina that are IT, admin, you name it, all the jobs, they are all off,” said Kuntz.

The union wants a 2.3 per cent increase, while the government’s current offer is five per cent over five years, with the first increase in the third year.

So after four days of work-to-rule action, Unifor members joined their efforts to get the government’s attention.

“They will not talk to us. We sent open invitations to our Crown corporations as well as the government that we want to talk, that we are available 24/7. We know that the problem is the government. It’s not the Crowns, the Crowns would love to settle with us, and the government is not allowing them to settle,” said Kuntz.

“We know at some of the Crowns they’ve gone multiple times to the government and they said, ‘We can afford it. We can afford to settle with the Crowns with the union.’ And the government does not allow it. So the hold up is the government. They are holding up the negotiations. They are holding up pre-collective bargaining right now.”

Just like Unifor members all over Saskatchewan, Estevan Unifor members plan to stay at the picket locations until 6 p.m. on Friday and come out Saturday and the following days unless the agreement is reached.

“People remain out as long as it’s necessary until the government becomes reasonable and talks to us and negotiates. We are asking for fairness. We are not asking to be greedy or anything more than that. We know our Crown corporations can support this, so we are not asking for anything unreasonable,” said Kuntz.

He pointed out that it’s the government that stalls the process by their inaction and unwillingness to bargain or allow the Crowns to bargain freely, and thus the government will be the determining factor of how long this dispute will continue.

With thousands of employees on strike, the Crowns’ operations will be affected, but the vital basic operations will remain in place.

“Any situation that might affect the health and safety of the public, we will address through our maintenance and essential services agreement. We do not want to affect the health and safety of the public,” said Kuntz.

The effects of the strike will vary from corporation to corporation. Most of them announced possible customer service delays.

“SaskTel will make every effort to minimize the impact of a labour disruption to our customers by having our management team maintain services. While SaskTel will do its best to continue to serve our customers, delays may be experienced as the primary focus will be on maintaining the networks and services for our customers,” said SaskTel’s media release. “Contract negotiations between Unifor and SaskTel have been ongoing since Jan. 29, 2019 when initial proposals were exchanged. On March 25, 2019, Unifor advised SaskTel that, in their opinion, a bargaining impasse had been reached and that they would be applying to the Federal Minister of Labour’s office for conciliation. A conciliator was appointed and bargaining between SaskTel and Unifor continued until Sept. 26, 2019. A tentative agreement was not reached.”

At this point, there was no indication of when negotiation talks might start between the two sides. Kuntz underlined that on their side they are open to the dialogue.

“We are available. We want to talk. We want to negotiate. We want to be able to negotiate freely with our Crown corporations and not have their hands tied by the government, who claims that they are not involved in bargaining, yet they are controlling the purse strings. Either they have it one way or the other, of they are going to be part of the problem, they need to show up at the table and they need to be there for negotiations. They cannot have it both ways,” said Kuntz.