Nunavut power workers up the ante: 89 per cent say yes to a strike

The Iqaluit power plant sits near the top of a steep ridge overlooking Iqaluit. Unionized plant workers don’t like a QEC proposal that would eliminate free rides to work every day. (FILE PHOTO)

(Updated Dec. 5, 1:00 p.m.)

About 180 unionized workers at the Qulliq Energy Corp. find themselves in a legal strike position this week, after 89 per cent voted yes in principle to a work stoppage.

But this doesn’t mean they’ll hit the picket lines any time soon, Doug Workman, the president of the Nunavut Employees Union, said Nov. 30.

“We are hopeful that the strike vote will strengthen our position and that hopefully our employer will offer us a better deal,” Workman said.

To that end, Workman said the union will wait until April 2012, when Colin Taylor, a well-known mediator and labour lawyer from British Columbia, will help the two sides forge a new wage-benefit deal.

But now that the NEU and the QEC have reached an essential services agreement, the positive strike vote gives union members the legal right to strike at any time.

The union’s last collective agreement with the QEC expired Dec. 31, 2010.

Following a series of mostly fruitless bargaining sessions held through the first seven or eight months of of 2011, NEU officials took the strike issue to their members this past fall.

Voting kicked off Sept. 21 among QEC workers in Cambridge Bay and finished in Iqaluit Nov. 2.

Workman said contract issues left unresolved include basic pay, location allowance (equivalent to northern allowance), and concessions the QEC is demanding in exchange for wage increases.

The QEC is now offering wage increases of two per cent, two per cent and 2.5 per cent in each year of a three-year contract, but only if the union agrees to concessions on four benefits:

• a reduction in per diem payments for children under two who travel on sick leave;

• a reduction to 75 hours in the amount of overtime that may be banked in exchange for leave;

• a reduction to $10,000 of the amount made available to pay for retraining workers in the event of technological or operational change;

• no more rides to work for employees at the Iqaluit power plant.

The union is still asking for 5 per cent, 5 per cent and 5 per cent in each of three years.

Workman said the union is also seeking improvements to the location allowance to protect workers from the effects of the inflation rate, which he estimates at about 3.2 per cent a year.

At the same time, the employer is offering insufficient improvements to the location allowance, given the rising cost of living, Workman said.

And the union is affronted by the one QEC proposal that only affects workers in Iqaluit: the elimination of free rides to the Iqaluit power plant, which sits near the top of a steep ridge overlooking Iqaluit.

At the same time, QEC bosses would still be allowed to ride for free in corporation vehicles.

“We’ll agree to it when you guys agree to walk up that hill to the plant,” Workman said.

Talks on another wage-benefit deal, which would cover all other employees of Nunavut government departments, agencies and Crown corporations, is also unresolved.

The NEU conducted strike votes among those workers this past fall as well. On Dec. 5, the union announced that 85 per cent of GN workers have voted in favour of a strike.

The NEU is a component of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, which represents hundreds of thousands of mostly government workers across the country.