With a strike mandate in hand, the union representing 84 newsroom employees at the Halifax Chronicle-Herald is headed for two days of conciliation talks beginning tomorrow.
On Saturday, more than 96 per cent voted in favour of a strike to fight the company’s attempt to roll back salaries for new employees in the editorial department.
It is one of the key issues that has brought the newsroom’s Halifax Typographical Union and management to this point, union president Stephen Forest said Monday.
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BAY ROBERTS, N.L. – A blockade by locked-out workers at a wharf in eastern Newfoundland is another attempt by the union to harm Ocean Choice International, the seafood processing company said Monday.
Martin Sullivan, president and CEO of Ocean Choice, said the demonstration in Bay Roberts began Sunday after the company locked out about 50 crew members who work aboard the Newfoundland Lynx.
He said workers were occupying the wharf and blocking access to the trawler.
“This is an important vessel as part of our business,” Sullivan said in an interview from St. John’s.
“There’s a big economic impact everyday. If we’re not allowed to operate, then somebody’s got to pay that bill.”
Sullivan said the Fish, Food and Allied Workers union gave the company strike notice on Friday. Both sides have been unable to reach a deal on a contract that expired in 2006, the company said.
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TORONTO, Feb 6 (Reuters) – Rio Tinto’s lockout of workers at its Alcan division’s big Alma aluminum smelter in northern Quebec looks set to drag on with no signs of a breakthrough to end the labor dispute.
A spokesman the Anglo-Australian miner said on Monday that no talks with the union are scheduled.
“I wouldn’t put a timeline to (talks) right now because nothing is scheduled,” said Rio Tinto Alcan spokesman Bryan Tucker.
Rio Tinto Alcan initiated the lockout at its 438,000 tonne Alma smelter in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec, on Jan. 1, after talks with the Alma aluminium workers’ union on a new labor contract failed. The two sides had been in negotiations since October and the union’s contract expired on Dec. 31.
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Workers in London, Ont., say they’ll continue to picket even though the Electro-Motive Diesel plant is now officially closed, as the head of the Canadian Auto Workers calls for a public inquiry into the closure.
Progress Rail Services Corp., a subsidiary of U.S. construction equipment conglomerate Caterpillar, announced the closure of the locomotive plant Friday.
The company locked out 450 workers from the facility on Jan. 1. Costs were the main factor in the dispute, with the company pushing certain employees to take a 50-per-cent pay cut, despite making nearly $5 billion last year.
Caterpillar said costs were too high.
CAW union boss Ken Lewenza admits cost has meant the loss of many manufacturing jobs in Canada.
“At the end of the day, if it’s all about competitiveness, then workers in Canada won’t win,” he said. “If it’s about productivity, if it’s about quality, then we will survive.”
Union workers plan to stay on the picket line until they get a closure agreement from the company.
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American industrial giant Caterpillar is closing its locomotive plant in London and putting 460 workers out of their jobs just over a month after they were locked out for rejecting pay cuts of up to 50 per cent.
The dramatic move at the Electro-Motive Canada factory, owned by Caterpillar subsidiary Progress Rail, confirmed the worst suspicions of the Canadian Auto Workers union before the lockout began.
“We said it had all the markings of a closure,” CAW president Ken Lewenza said Friday after the closure was announced by the company.
“They denied it at the time . . . but they did exactly what they planned to do. I’m pissed.”
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The Mayor Rob Ford administration has an ultimatum for 6,000 city workers — surrender almost all job security and more, or have the concessions imposed anyway at 12:01 a.m. Sunday.
The threat — extremely unusual in the public sector and regarded as a way to get workers to accept an offer or force them to go on strike — seems to remove any chance of the city locking out the outside workers this weekend.
Bruce Anderson, the city’s head of human resources, told reporters Friday the demands were tabled Thursday night after months of bargaining to replace the contract with Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 416.
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The first transit strike in Halifax since 1998 left thousands of people in the city scrambling to find alternate methods of transportation as Metro Transit and its unionized workers refused to budge from their positions.
More than 700 workers walked off the job just after 1:30 a.m. on Thursday, after union representatives rejected Metro Transit’s latest proposal.
The rejection came after a last-minute bargaining session, as both sides of the contract dispute were called back to the table less than an hour before the midnight strike deadline.
On Thursday, both Metro Transit and the Amalgamated Transit Union stuck to their respective messages.
“We understand the importance of public transportation,” said Ken Wilson, the president of Local 508 of the Amalgamated Transit Union.
“It’s blatantly obvious that the mayor and the 23 councillors do not understand the importance. If they did, they would have kept us at the table.”
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The union representing 481 locked-out Electro-Motive employees won a round in court Wednesday when a judge ruled against a proposed injunction that would have ended their blockade of a locomotive in Ingersoll.
The locomotive — identified in court as unit 4 — had been stopped on the tracks since Jan. 25.
Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) Local 27 enlisted members from Local 88 at Cami Automotive in Ingersoll to attend the blockade round-the-clock.
But with the CAW ending the blockade Tuesday night, the locomotive was free to go on its way to be painted before being shipped to Brazil.
As of 5 p.m. Wednesday it was still in place. Six other locomotives are also ready, though their whereabouts are unknown.
Lawyer Trevor Lawson, representing Electro-Motive Canada, tried to convince Superior Court Judge Peter Hockin that if workers blocked one locomotive, they would block the others as well.
Lawson argued that unless the sweeping injunction was approved, the two sides would soon be back in court the next time the tracks were blocked.
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Locked out Electro-Motive workers in London have ended their blockade of a locomotive in Ingersoll.
Members of the CAW, which represents workers at the London plant, had prevented the locomotive from moving since Jan. 25.
The locomotive was one of the last units to be produced at the Electro-Motive plant before parent company Caterpillar Inc. locked the workers out on New Year’s Day. The train engine was on its way to be painted at a facility near Tillsonburg.
The CAW members said if they weren’t locked out, it would have been painted at their factory in London.
Local CAW president Tim Carrie said the blockade ended because of an injunction the company had sought. The issue was to go to court Wednesday.
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HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA–(Marketwire – Feb. 1, 2012) - Unionized employees with the Halifax Regional Water Commission (HRWC) have soundly rejected a so-called final offer from their employer.
CUPE Local 227 President Dave Dort explains, “In a vote held last night, our members sent a definitive message to HRWC: we deserve a new contract that is fair and reasonable and enables us to keep up with the ever-increasing cost of living in this city.
“Like all working families, our members are watching the price of everything go up around them – home heating costs, gas, groceries, post-secondary education, you name it,” says Dort.
“These workers do not want to go on strike and view it as a last resort. Nobody wants to see a disruption in service to HRM residents. But they deserve fairness and respect and they have not received that at the bargaining table,” he says.
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