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Saskatoon Co-op employees vote for deal to end strike

The strike is set to end after almost five-and-a-half months.

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A University of Saskatchewan labour relations expert says he is “surprised and impressed” by how Saskatoon Co-op and the union representing its employees conducted themselves during a five-and-a-half-month strike that ended earlier this week.

It is remarkable that United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1400 held the line for almost half a year over a principle rather than a concrete issue, said Scott Walsworth, an associate professor of industrial relations at the Edwards School of Businesses.

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“It’s easy to convince workers to stay out on strike if they believe that they’re fighting for a bigger paycheque … But this was a very abstract notion of fairness for future workers, and usually that’s a hard sell,” Walsworth said hours after the strike ended.

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Walsworth, who also serves as a labour arbitrator, said he was also impressed by Saskatoon Co-op’s decision to risk its reputation as a “folksy cornerstone of the community” in order to secure what it believes is necessary for financial sustainability.

“They were willing to sacrifice, to a degree, that image. Clearly, the employer felt that the price of their products was even more important than that image, and I think that led to their greater commitment,” he said.

The strike — which began Nov. 1 amid a dispute over a proposed lower wage tier for new hires — ended late Tuesday after UFCW Local 1400 members voted in favour of a new seven-year contract hammered out in a weekend bargaining session.

The contract, which is retroactive to November 2016, is known to include a lower wage tier as well as a mechanism to narrow the wage gap for new hires based on the co-operative’s financial performance. It also includes two per cent wage increases for each of its seven years.

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Walsworth said he was surprised at the narrow margin by which the new contract was approved — 270 votes in favour, 230 against. Usually, he said, ratification votes are either near-unanimous for or against a given proposal to end the strike.

“I wouldn’t think that this is an agreement that the union is particularly happy with. But, clearly, they felt that they weren’t going to get any better (offer) by staying out on strike … This is going to be a really divided workplace going forward,” he said.

During negotiations, the union ultimately proposed its own version of a two-tier wage structure, with a smaller gap between the tiers. That led Walsworth to suggest earlier this year that the “the Trojan horse is through the gate.”

The strike ultimately affected around 900 UFCW Local 1400 members at around 20 Saskatoon Co-op locations in and around the city. It was not immediately clear how many union members will return to their positions beginning on Sunday.

“Now is the time for healing and to advance the prosperity of this institution by returning to it and patronizing the Co-op,” union spokesman Rod Gillies told the Saskatoon StarPhoenix late Tuesday night, after the voting results came in.

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“At the end of the day, we came to an agreement that allows our Co-op to stay competitive while providing good jobs in our community,” Saskatoon Co-op CEO Grant Wicks said in a statement issued around the same time.

While Walsworth believes there will be tension between union members who voted differently, as well as between those who picketed and those who opted to cross the line and return to work, he said Saskatoon Co-op has not lost the image it has earned.

The employer did its job by proposing a way to continue running the co-operative as a for-profit organization, while its employees and customers “lived their principles” by pushing back before a compromise was ultimately reached, he said.

“This is industrial relations working.”

amacpherson@postmedia.com
twitter.com/macphersona

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