The long road to a tentative agreement announced Thursday between the Co-op Refinery Complex (CRC) and Unifor Local 594 has been marred by arrests, threats of violence and the worst weather the province has to offer.
It took 196 days.
Local 594 president Kevin Bittman freely admits the union has accepted every concession put on the table. “We never received anything. All we did was get things taken away from us,” he said.
Yet, while speaking from underumbrella amid drizzle outside the Saskatchewan Legislative Building, he still considers the agreement a union victory.
“This company tried to take a swing at this local, but they didn’t even put a dent in us,” said Bittman, who has long alleged the company was attempting to break the union. “We’re walking out of this with our heads held high.”
A vote is expected on Monday afternoon.
“This deal, if accepted by bargaining unit employees, along with the operational efficiencies our team has recently realized, will go a long way towards ensuring a sustainable CRC for generations to come,” said Gil Le Dressay, vice-president of refinery operations, in a statement announcing the potential deal.
A major breakthrough in negotiations was adding a return-to-work agreement to the deal. Bittman said grievances can currently take three or four years through arbitration. As such, an expedited review process has also been included.
“The system is broken. There’s not enough arbitrators,” he said. “It’s not right to have people getting fired or disciplined and taking that long to get their job back.”
While Unifor 594 favoured the recommendations made by special mediators Vince Ready and Amanda Rogers, the company didn’t. Then in April, 89 per cent of union members shot down what the CRC termed its best and final offer. But that same deal is now largely what they’ll be asked to support.
CRC spokesperson Brad DeLorey is hopeful the union will accept the deal.
“I think it’s a deal that balances the appreciation for our unionized employees as well with the fiscal realities of the refining industry,” he said.
When that April deal fell through, the union upped its pressure on the government to impose binding arbitration, and most recently punctuated that call by circling the Legislative Building with horns blaring. Still, the government resisted.
“Work was done by the parties, as it should be,” said Minister of Labour Relations and Workplace Safety Don Morgan. He’s glad for a conclusion in the protracted dispute.
“It will be good to see that it’s put to rest,” he said.
Ryan Meili, whose NDP Opposition had pressed the premier to take action to end the lockout, was similarly “very pleased to see, finally, this lockout had ended.”
Though he had no evidence for the claim, Bittman and Dias believe the government leaned on the company to accept a deal.
“The last thing Scott Moe needed was 700 locked-out workers on the street during a provincial election,” said Dias.
Regardless, they say the conditions that led to such a long dispute — the inability to effectively picket, establishment of a replacement worker camp on the grounds of the refinery — remain.
Bittman said the 730 members of the local are now well versed in how to lobby and plan to petition the government to change existing legislation.
“We’re going to harness that,” he said. “For us right now Saskatchewan is a pretty disappointing place to live.”
The bitter clash that over time saw picket line arrests and the homes of company managers hit with paint balls began Dec. 5, 2019 when workers were locked out after negotiations broke down.
Early in the dispute, a barricade at Gate 7, east of the refinery, became the site of daily rallies, attracting support from Unifor members and other unions across Canada, as well as some politicians.
Along the streets and roads skirting the refinery, Unifor members erected blockades preventing traffic getting in or out. Speaking in the frigid cold on Jan. 20, Unifor national president Jerry Dias vowed that after locking out their own employees, the company itself would be locked out.
“It’s time they had a taste of their own medicine,” said Dias, the same day he and six other union members were arrested as part of demonstrations at the CRC.
The union fortified the barricades, and brought in hundreds of members from around Canada to help on the picket line.
The company brought workers from across the country too, flying in personnel and supplies by helicopters as well as setting up a work camp on site.
Those barricades, and the people within, became the target of a bomb threat in February. The police warned neither the company nor Unifor, earning ire from Dias.
“The police took the side of the employer,” said Dias, who specifically called out Chief Evan Bray. The police chief said the threat was determined to be unfounded.
Dias says the fact the union survived the lockout is itself a victory: “Talk about David and Goliath.”
The CRC turned to the courts to bust up the blockades, winning injunctions that put limits on the pickets. The union, found in violation of those injunctions, was also fined and has since appealed.
“We’ve seen it all,” said Bittman, who was himself threatened with jail time for allegedly breaching an injunction.
According to Bittman, the tentative deal will likely see members down $15,000 to $20,000 a year — but the company says cuts are needed to deal with the current financial outlook. Since the lockout began, oil entered negative price territory, and the pandemic slashed demand and oil production the world over. In April the CRC cut production by approximately 30,000 barrels a day.
“The industry is changing, frankly the world is changing, and we have to make changes to our operation, and we have to remain competitive,” said DeLorey.
The contract, according to DeLorey, will achieve that goal now and into the future. In a previous interview, Le Dressay said a transition to renewables was looming and inevitable, and he anticipated some of the 14 refineries in Canada would start to close in the next decade.
A tentative deal signals an end to the dispute, but rebuilding relationships between the company and the union after nearly seven months of rancour will take time.
Bittman said there’s no ill will towards managers working in the plant, but he believes relationships with upper management and bosses have been irreparably damaged.
“Those tainted relationships will never get mended,” he said. “This was personal.”
