SASKATOON (Staff) – Declaring grain an essential service may sound like a good idea to prairie farmers, but it would never work, say officials of two grain handling unions.
Prairie farmers simply can’t afford to have grain sales shut down by strikes or lockouts, members of the Saskatchewan Canola Growers Association told the labor leaders.
“We have very, very small margins at the farm level,” Gordon Cresswell of Tisdale, Sask., said during a panel discussion at the association’s annual meeting.
But when association member Richard Phelps suggested that grain handling be declared an essential service, free from lockouts or strikes, the idea was rejected by the worker representatives.
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Henry Kancs, whose Grain Workers Union represents about 750 grain handlers at Vancouver and Prince Rupert, said 10 or 15 unions are involved in moving grain from country elevators to waiting vessels and it would be impossible to declare every one an essential service.
If grain was declared an essential service, then other industries like oil or lumber would make the same claim, he said. Soon the right to strike, a fundamental right in a democratic society, would be totally lost.
“Negotiations have worked in the past and they will work again,” he said.
Gordon Westrand, of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, said having an essential service almost guarantees bad-faith bargaining and poor labor relations, because there’s no incentive to negotiate fair settlements.
