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Regina police Chief Evan Bray is correct in his assessment of the Federated Co-op Refinery labour dispute that “both sides are, essentially, holding our city hostage.”

But when it comes to the recent escalations that required the involvement of Bray’s officers and, ultimately, the arrest of 14 Unifor members, including the union’s national president Jerry Dias, it’s not an equal situation. For this, one should fault the union, and Dias specifically.

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“Their role is to come here and to cause challenges that are going to hopefully force them to get back to the bargaining table,” Bray, himself a former police union head, told reporters Tuesday in what also seems a reasoned and fair-minded assessment.

“That’s a basic labour tactic, I get it, and all the power to them.”

It’s a tactic, but (at worst) illegal and (at best) ineffective and highly suspect. Even those with an objective view of organized labour should see Unifor’s tactics as unproductive in the long-term and bordering on stupid.