abour action, five of the six local Telus employees are still picketing their workplace. The sixth crossed that line and went back to work, joining the five managers who are trying to keep up with maintenance and installations.
“We lost one person,” says Doug Lindroos.
One in six is less than the provincial ‘scab’ ratio, which the union puts at 25 per cent and the company closer to 50. As for the stalwart five, are they in it for the long haul?
“I think we all are,” says Dale Nestorovich. “We can all get jobs if we have to.”
Meanwhile, in spite of what it told The Leader last month, the company is struggling to keep up with its work in the Slave Lake area. No sooner had The Leader published the company’s claim that it was keeping up than people started giving us examples of how it wasn’t keeping up.
“They’re not getting the work done,” says Lindroos. “We weren’t keeping up before with the six of us.”
The main issue for the union is job security. The company won’t negotiate it, say the local members. They won’t even come to the table in spite of a ‘softening’ of the union position on the contracting-out of some types of work. Instead of negotiating, the company has imposed a contract – one that pays well enough but doesn’t take care of union job security concerns.
Plus, imposing it without negotiation is taken as an insult.
“It’s pretty obvious to us they’re trying to break the union,” says Lindroos.
Breaking the union would mean getting 50 per cent plus one of the members to accept the new contract and come back to work. In Alberta that number may not be too far off, but in B.C., union solidarity is at another level altogether.
Meanwhile, a company representative was in town recently to talk to the striking members – who incidentally call it a lockout, not a strike – asking them what it would take to get them to go back to work.
“They keep offering us lots of gravy,” says Lindroos. “But no job security.”
Says Kim Spencer: “They could lay us off a week after we sign, (so) it doesn’t matter how much money you’re making.”

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