BURNABY, B.C. – With a looming deadline, Telus and the Telecommunications Workers Union continue to squabble.
"Telus’s plan to bribe our members into accepting their unilaterally-imposed deal is not working," said TWU president Bruce Bell, in the latest of the union’s string of press releases.
As reported here last week, Telus has decided to impose a contract on its workers, who have been working based on its most recent deal, which expired over four years ago.
Telus wants to force a vote of the union membership. The TWU is resisting such a move saying that the contract has not been negotiated.
"More than 800 customer service representatives were off the job in Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver and Victoria this (Monday) morning, with solid support in all four areas. The company is offering our people signing bonuses in hopes they’ll ignore the issues of job security, contracting out and lack of wage parity. But our people are supporting us all the way," Bell added.
With the union calling the mini-walkouts “study sessions” Telus has taken action, suspending the employees who take part.
"When the company found out about the study session,” said Bell, “they tried to get our members to ignore the union-sanctioned activity. When that didn’t work, managers resorted to threatening our members with discipline – up to and including termination – if they took part in the union study sessions. Managers even tried to intimidate them by phoning some of our members at home on Sunday evening.
"Telus has been trying to drive a wedge between the members in Alberta and those in BC, anticipating that people in Alberta would not be as union-oriented as those in BC," he continued. "But our members have thrown a monkey wrench into Telus’s plan because people in both provinces are hanging tough."
Telus’ battle is primarily with its British Columbia workers as those employees desperately want to hang on to the expired deal because it places far more onerous restrictions on contracting out work than what Telus needs, given the growing state of competition in the western telecom market.
