REGINA — Unifor national president Jerry Dias is calling on Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe to make a fair offer to unionized Crown workers in the province, including those working at telecom provider SaskTel, or face job action in the coming days.
“It’s not a hard formula: show Crown workers the respect they deserve and we can avert province-wide job action,” Dias said in a news release on Thursday. “Without a serious offer, Scott Moe will engineer service disruption that could have been avoided.”
Unifor’s bargaining committees were meeting today with the employers to review the latest offer and to decide whether or not to serve 48 hours notice of job action. Unifor members at SaskTel have already served notice, and if a collective agreement cannot be bargained this weekend, job action at SaskTel is set to begin at 12:01 a.m. on September 30, Unifor said.
In its news release, Unifor said that Premier Moe signalled that wage freezes are not acceptable in the province when he gave himself and MLAs a 2.3% pay increase earlier this year.
“If 2.3% is good enough for Scot Moe, surely it’s good enough for the thousands of Crown workers that make public utilities and services great,” said Gavin McGarrigle, Unifor’s Western Regional Director, in the news release. “Job action at seven Crowns is not inevitable. The government and Crown corporations have the ability to bargain a fair agreement, but time is running out.”
