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SaskTel workers are voting on whether a strike will be the best action in their ongoing collective bargaining talks.
Their first vote was Wednesday morning, and a series of voting stations will continue to be active until ballots are counted on July 22.
Unifor, which represents the workers, said the workers haven’t received a monetary offer from the corporation to date.
Their collective bargaining agreement expired on March 16.
Unifor’s assistant to the national president, Chris MacDonald, said workers aren’t in favour of a strike, but they have issues that need to be cleared up.
“(There are) issues related to job security (and) issues related to the preferential treatment of contractors versus our own members who are getting minimal hours,” he said. “(There are) issues around fairness, and what’s fair for our members in terms of the value that SaskTel and its business brings to the Saskatchewan government.”
MacDonald said Unifor represents nearly 3,000 SaskTel employees.
They’re also looking into a cost-of-living increase, similar to the 2.3-per-cent increase members of Saskatchewan’s Legislative Assembly received on April 1.
MacDonald said that in these circumstances, a percentage in the “high 90s” of disputes are resolved without a strike mandate.
“We’re looking to get back to the bargaining table,” he said. “We have a group of people that are planning what that would look like in the event that it happens.”
SaskTel responded to the vote with a statement on Wednesday.
“SaskTel’s Collective Agreement expired on March 16, 2019,” it read. “The parties had exchanged proposals and met several times. A conciliator was appointed and talks continued through a conciliator until June 21, 2019. A tentative agreement was not reached at that time.
“The conciliator has advised the 21-day cooling off period began June 22, 2019 and expires on July 12, 2019 at midnight. The union has to receive a strike mandate from their membership and provide the company with 72 hours’ notice prior to taking strike action. It is not unusual for a strike vote to occur during the process.
“SaskTel remains committed to working through the process with Unifor to finalize a new collective agreement but SaskTel will not comment on details of the bargaining.”