A strike by more than 400 Casino Regina employees enters its second day today.
Members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) walked off the gaming floor at 6 p.m. Thursday after failing in attempts to reach a new contract with their employer, the Crown-owned Saskatchewan Gaming Corp.
About 425 employees were joined on the picket line by 40-some members of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). The union, which represents about 300 food and beverage service employees at the casino, has decided to honour PSAC’s decision to strike.
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Workers at the Novotel Hotel in downtown Toronto could strike during the G20 summit if talks break down, leaders of Unite Here Local 75, which represents over 7,000 hotel workers, said at a news conference yesterday.
Most hotel contracts in the Toronto area expired in February 2010. The only hotel that could affect the G20 summit is the Hotel Novotel Toronto Centre on The Esplanade; union president Paul Clifford said the union will be in a legal strike position on June 24.
“We have made the decision and put Novotel Toronto Centre into a legal strike lockout position,” Mr. Clifford said. “Negotiations across the city are on an individual hotel by hotel basis. We would prefer to be able to negotiate with the entire industry. They haven’t done that. We have collectively chosen to focus our attention on the Novotel Hotel prior to the G20. The rest of the hotels will be working, but members from other hotels will be joining the actions at Novotel.”
Novotel, which employs about 100 workers, is situated outside the G20 security zone; however, the French trade delegation and media personnel are booked there during the summit. Should a strike take place, Mr. Clifford said it will “involve picket lines, rallies, noise, significant delays for guests and no services in the hotel.”
Contract negotiations at 34 other hotels across the GTA are in various stages, he said.
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MONTREAL – If you were looking forward to a summer outing to Montreal’s Biodome or Insectarium over the next few months, you might want to make alternate plans.
The union representing more than 5,500 of the city’s blue-collar workers announced late Friday afternoon that the employees will begin targeted strike action on June 16 that will shut down both popular attractions indefinitely.
The workers, represented by Local 301 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, have been without a contract since Aug. 31, 2007, and union representive Marc Ranger says they simply got tired of waiting.
“We advised (the city) that we would re-evaluate the progress of negotiations at the end of May and decide what we would do,” he said. “Some progress was made, but at the same time, we were looking for a global deal, not just an agreement on a few specific issues.”
The targeted strike will involve two separate componants, explained city of Montreal spokesperson Gonzalo Nunez. The first affects only overtime hours. Each day, one of the city’s 19 boroughs will be subject to a ban on all overtime.
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TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – There appeared to be hope on the picket lines this week that negotiations that restarted on Friday between Brazil’s Vale and the union representing its Sudbury workers would be successful in getting miners back to the rockface.
One striker at the Copper Cliff refinery picket line told Mining Weekly Online that though there was a renewed optimism that this round of negotiations might see a deal being reached between the world’s second-biggest mining company and the United Steelworkers Local 6500 union (USW).
“But I’m not taking anything for granted at this stage,” said the mine development coordinator, who did not want to be named for fear of being targeted by Vale.
Striking Vale drilling coordinator Alan Crowther said that there was a new expectation that the two sides would see eye to eye now. “I certainly am hopeful. There are rumours that Vale is preparing for workers to start returning.”
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Flight attendants at Jazz Air LP, the regional affiliate of Air Canada, have voted overwhelmingly to support a strike mandate if their stalled talks with the airline do not progress.
The Canadian Flight Attendants Union, which represents roughly 850 employees at the airline, said 99.5 per cent of its voting membership supported the mandate in cross-country votes last week.
While the flight attendants say they would rather reach a new deal, the airline’s cabin crew could go on strike as early as June 16 if talks do not progress, the union said.
The decision follows a similar one made last week by the Air Line Pilots Association, International, which represents 1,500 Jazz pilots.
“Some Jazz flight attendants are trying to make a living on $22,000 a year,” said spokesperson Jennifer Kalmar, CFAU western vice-president, in a statement. “That’s completely unacceptable, especially for people who are responsible for passenger safety on board our aircraft.”
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NSGEU president Joan Jessome says it appeared the employer was planning a lockout all along.
Halifax (1 June 2010) – Employees of Pictou County Shared Service Authority (PSSA) were locked out of their jobs when they showed up for work Monday in Stellarton.
The workers, members of Local 60A of the Nova Scotia Government and General Employees’ Union (NSGEU/NUPGE), were confronted at their workplaces in Stellarton with notices on the doors and padlocks on the gates. They are seeking a first union contract.
“The way bargaining unfolded this weekend makes me wonder if the employer’s intention was to lock us out on Monday all along,” says Joan Jessome, NSGEU president.
“At 4:30 pm on Friday, with a strike deadline looming, the employer would not continue to bargain. They wouldn’t return to the bargaining table until 6 p.m. on Sunday night and by 10 p.m. they presented the NSGEU bargaining committee with their final offer and said ‘take it or leave it.’”
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WINNIPEG, May 10 /CNW/ – The United Steelworkers union (USW) is lobbying members of the Manitoba Legislative Assembly to improve labour laws and the Fatalities Inquiries Act as it applies to workplace deaths.
“We believe that workers in Manitoba should be able to sign up to join a union and a 50%-plus-one majority should prevail,” said USW Local 7913 President Cory Szczepanski. “We also say workers involved in a labour dispute shouldn’t be threatened with use of replacement workers.”
Replacement workers pose a serious threat to USW members in Thompson who go into bargaining with Vale Inco next year.
USW members in Sudbury, Ont. have been locked in a bitter dispute with Brazil-based Vale for 10 months. Vale is using replacement workers – a move the Steelworkers say typically prolongs strikes and encourages violence, particularly in resource-based communities like Sudbury and Thompson where labour disputes feature so prominently in the community.
“We don’t need the kind of tactics Vale Inco is using in Sudbury to find their way to Thompson,” said Wayne Skrypnyk, USW area coordinator for Manitoba.
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TORONTO – Nickel miner Vale Inco has confirmed that mediated contract talks with its striking workers are over and that no new talks are in the works.
With failure to reach an agreement, a 10-month-old strike by more than 3,000 workers in Sudbury and Port Colborne, Ont., will continue.
Members of the United Steelworkers union hit the picket lines over a number of issues including pensions, a nickel price bonus, seniority transfer rights and contracting out.
Vale Inco says those issues were discussed during the most recent round of talks with a mediator.
More than 200 Steelworkers in Voisey’s Bay, N.L., have been on strike since Aug. 1 over similar issues.
It was the second time negotiators have met to bargain since the strike began — 10 days of negotiations in early March failed to end the impasse and led to a rejection of Vale Inco’s offer of settlement.
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Room attendants at Sheraton say hotel’s initiatives don’t help environment, only cut jobs
New green initiative being touted as environmentally friendly at three Toronto hotels are bogus, and do little to “conserve natural resources” as the hotels claim, according to hotel workers.
Instead, the “Make a Green Choice” program being offered at the Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel, and the “Green Stay” programs at the Delta Chelsea and Delta East hotels merely give the hotels a way to save money by reducing cleaning staff.
“From our perspective, these programs are doing virtually nothing for the environment,” said Brigida Ruiz, who works as a room attendant at the Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel. “Instead, what they are really intended do is greatly reduce the number of room attendants employed by the hotel each day,” she said.
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614 days.
On a makeshift wooden sign affixed to a post, striking workers at Engineered Coated Products keep a tally of the number of days they’ve been off the job.
For 20 months, the workers, initially about 80 and now an estimated 60, have been camped outside the Elgin Street company as busloads of replacement workers are brought in daily to keep the packaging plant operational.
There has been no negotiation between the workers, represented by the United Steelworkers union, and the company since last July when the two sides met with a government conciliator.
And it seems unlikely they will be talking any time soon.
“It takes a toll,” admitted Rick Willson, a 33-year employee at ECP. “There’s nobody here to help.”
The strike began on Aug. 23, 2008 when Saul Marques, secretary- treasurer for United Steelworkers, Local 1-500, said the company demanded workers take a 25% wage cut, along with a cut in benefits and changes to their pension plan. The company, said Marques, also wanted to implement “continental” 12-hour shifts that would have resulted in job losses.
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