GN workers move to next phase of contract battle

IQALUIT — About 180 unionized employees of the Nunavut government ended a two-week mini-strike this week, as the first phase of their current job-action campaign ended and a new one began.

The strikers, from a wide range of Nunavut government work sites in Iqaluit and Cambridge Bay, walked off the job April 19 after mediation talks between the Nunavut Employees Union and the government broke down April 6.

Those picketers have now returned to work, and their union has moved on to new tactics: a work-to-rule campaign coupled with occasional one- or two-day walk-outs at selected workplaces.

“For us, we’re looking at changing the landscape, if you will,” said NEU president Doug Workman.

“Now we’re looking at work-to-rule, and on occasion, pulling out work-sites or places throughout Nunavut, and that’s what we’re looking at for the next couple of weeks.”

On May 1 the NEU organized a noon-hour march in Iqaluit. Union members shouted slogans like, “Finance Minister loves to spend/Sitting down on his rear end.”

Workman said that, contrary to a CBC radio news story broadcast last week, the union is amassing a healthy strike fund to sustain its members if they end up calling a government-wide general strike.

“We’ve been getting fund-raising from all across Canada, we’ve been getting donations from businesses in town and again across Nunavut and Canada. We’re getting a strike fund together that has money,” Workman said.

“I can’t say how much, but I’m surprised at how well it’s going.”

Employees who participated in the two-week mini-strike that ended May 1 did so on a volunteer basis. In return for picketing and performing other tasks for the union, they received 60 per cent of their gross pay for each day they stayed off the job.

But in a government-wide general strike, which has yet to be called, striking workers will get $50 a day in strike pay.

Vote result by May 15

Right now the union is informing its membership about the government’s final offer in anticipation of a vote among all NEU members on whether to accept or reject it.

From the NEU’s point of view, that means countering the government’s interpretation of the dispute.

“The employer has done a pretty good job of trying to discredit us,” Workman said.

For example, he said that the difference between the government’s position and the union’s position is only about $12 million, not the $47.1 million difference that the government is claiming in various press handouts and advertisements.

If members reject the government’s final offer, the union will not automatically call for a government-wide general strike.

Workman said the union will likely give the government a chance to respond to the vote before they ask members to walk out.

But he said that morale is high among union members.

“There’s lots of energy in the communities that we’ve been speaking with. Certainly there is lots of high energy,” Workman said.