by Greg Nikkel of the Weyburn Review
The province's electrical workers, under the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), were back on the job as of 8 a.m. Tuesday morning, but weren't pleased about the legislation which forced them back to work.
The provincial government passed legislation on Monday night, requiring the SaskPower workers to end the labour dispute and forcing them to take a wage settlement of six per cent over three years. The forced settlement will affect about 130 linemen and technical people in the Weyburn area, involved in transmission and distribution.
"From what I understand, everyone's pretty disappointed about it, and they feel a bit cheated," said Craig Romanovitch, the IBEW unit chair for Weyburn, on Tuesday.
Asked if the members would rather have had the matter go to arbitration, Romanovitch replied, "They wanted anything than what happened. When the government lays down the law like that, especially when you're dealing with unionized people, they have pretty much taken the bargaining process and said this is the way it is going to be."
He noted the IBEW has stressed from the beginning of the labour dispute that SaskPower took the action of locking out its workers, and the workers never went out on strike.
"They complained that the maintenance wasn't going to get done, but how could the maintenance get done when they locked out the guys who have the skills and experience to do it?," said Romanovitch.
Premier Roy Romanow ruled out any possibility of binding arbitration last week, saying it would endanger the province's balanced budget. He also maintained that if an arbitrator awarded a higher wage increase than six per cent over three years then other unions which have already settled would want to reopen their contracts.
Weyburn-Big Muddy MLA Judy Bradley acknowledged that passing legislation against a union was difficult for the NDP government to do, but they felt they had little choice.
"It's always difficult for a government to have to pass a piece of legislation like this. There was the matter of the public interest to have light and heat. It's something we didn't want to do, but we felt we had to. We wanted to do it in the fairest way possible," said the MLA, adding the six per cent wage hike was the same amount other unions had already settled for this year. The legislation includes a provision for an additional one per cent for benefits, and the proviso that the workers will be paid for the time they were out. A non-harassment clause was also included to ensure workers will face no repercussions when they returned to work.
"There will definitely need to be some healing take place," said Bradley.
The IBEW negotiators were seeking an increase of eight per cent for a one-year contract, said Brian Huggins, the union's assistant business manager in Regina.
Since the members were locked out during the labour dispute, he said, "We've filed an unfair labour practice complaint with the Labour Relations Board, alleging that free collective bargaining did not take place."
Huggins said that SaskPower seeks competitive pricing in the marketplace for all of its power sources and equipment, but when it comes to labour they won't pay on a par with workers of the same skill levels in other provinces.
The SaskPower workers are, on average, about 12.4 per cent behind fellow workers in other provinces, but this was not what the union was requesting, he added.
MLA Bradley said the government tried to encourage a resolution to the dispute through arbitration or other means, but nothing seemed to work. She added that the lock-out didn't take place until some job action had taken place by the union, and the power generators had almost reached a critical point at one stage.
"As a government we felt we could not go to a final arbitration and give the decision to a third party, because we had done a number of agreements already, such as with the SGEU and the teachers," said Bradley. " We are responsible to the taxpayers, and if you got a number of agreements you can't afford, it would put our balanced budget in danger."
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