Saying they have borne the brunt of Saskatchewan Wheat Pool’s financial woes over the past few years, the company’s unionized workers say it’s time they got rewarded.
About 740 pool employees represented by the Grain Services Union, including both country and head office workers, have been without a contract for more than a year.
Negotiations on a new collective agreement have inched along, and while a number of matters have been settled, major issues like wages, pensions and seniority rights remain unresolved.
“They are people with a lot of patience,” said GSU secretary manager Hugh Wagner. “But that’s running out.”
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The workers are asking the company for a wage increase that works out to a little more than 10 percent over three years.
According to Wagner, the company is offering an increase of a little more than four percent over three years, with a wage freeze for some employees.
The pool declined to comment on the issues in dispute, the prospects for achieving a settlement or any other aspect of the negotiations.
“We’ll negotiate at the table as opposed to through the media,” said company spokesperson Dawn Blaus.
Talks involving 600 operations employees stalled in late January and have now been put into the hands of a federally appointed conciliator who will meet with both sides and file a report by mid-April. The 140 head office employees remain in direct negotiations.
Wagner said the employees are frustrated by the length of time that has passed without a resolution, but they are trying to remain optimistic that a new deal can be reached without a labour disruption.
But at the same time, he said, they are determined to get a fair settlement and will “do what is required” to get one.
The union has not held a strike vote. Wagner said if there is no settlement by the end of the conciliation process, that would be one of the options open to the workers. He noted that the period from April to July is the pool’s busiest in terms of selling farm input products and generating crucial revenues. Significant volumes of grain also move during that period.
The negotiations have already stretched through one such period a year ago, and union members don’t want to go through another without settling a new contract.
Wagner said farmers should continue doing business with the pool and should tell the company that what the employees are asking for is reasonable and affordable.
“I don’t think anybody would dispute that it has been the employees that have borne the brunt of the pool’s travails over the last four or five years,” he said.
The pool’s workforce has been slashed by 60 percent during that period, as the company incurred huge losses, teetered on the edge of insolvency and underwent a complete financial restructuring.
Those who didn’t lose their jobs have had to carry on with reduced resources and support, said Wagner, all the while working on the front lines to maintain good relationships with customers and hold the company’s market share.
“That takes its toll,” he said. “People have tightened their belts and done with a lot less.”
If the company could afford to pay chief executive officer Mayo Schmidt a special $333,333 bonus for successfully completing the restructuring last year, he added, then it can afford to give its unionized employees a decent raise.
Some Western Producer staff are members of the GSU, although in a different bargaining unit.
