Four GCIU locals in Canada brought their employers back to the table to settle strikes and a lockout with good contracts.

Vancouver 25C ended a nine-week strike at the Times Colonist in Victoria, B.C., with a three-year contract. Some 275 members of Local 25C and locals of the Communications Workers of America, The Newspaper Guild/CWA, and the Communications, Energy and Paper Workers Union of Canada (CEP) struck the paper in September after owner CanWest demanded steep concessions.

After Times Colonist managers began publishing a weekly tabloid, the locals mounted a successful advertiser, reader, and distribution boycott. As the heaviest advertising season approached in November, management agreed to return to the table under the guidance of federal mediator Vince Ready.

Local 25C Secy.-Treas. John Savage said the agreement then was reached with the locals’ joint council after only six sessions. Savage said Local 25C’s members in the press and plate rooms overwhelmingly ratified a contract that provided 2.5 percent wage increases each year, with full retroactivity to Jan. 2, 2002. They also received increases in health and welfare, which Savage said “were very important due to government cutbacks in our health system.”

“At the end of the day, everything from the company’s agenda was withdrawn,” Savage said. “There were no concessions.” Instead, workers won what the council had set as priorities: wages and health and welfare, he said.

Savage said the outcome “was a success story in the strength of the joint council working together. The company tried to separate us, but they were not successful.”

Savage said that, although October is normally the wettest month in Victoria, the weather remained beautiful until two days before the contract was signed. “So morale was good on the picket line,” he noted.

Savage thanked the delegates from the GCIU’s Canadian Conference who rallied on the picket line in September. “We received a lot of comments from the other locals about that rally,” he said.

Savage also sent thanks to the International for its assistance, especially the secretary-treasurer’s office for “speedy delivery of the strike checks. That really helped morale, too.”

In Winnipeg, some 1,200 members of Winnipeg 900M and CEP struck the independently owned Winnipeg Free Press on Oct. 9.

Local 900M Pres. John D. Webster said the employer “tabled pages of concessions attacking both unions in the areas of manning, pension, and a two-tier wage system.” Another sore point, he said, was management offered “nothing for the 650 CEP newspaper carriers who had been without a collective agreement for more than a year.”

After the strike began, the paper did not attempt to publish and removed all paper sales boxes from the city streets, Webster said.

But with bargaining still going nowhere, Webster said, he and CEP representatives flew to Vancouver for a face-to-face meeting with the company owners Ron Stern and Bob Silver, then flew back to continue negotiations. The Vancouver meeting led to “direct participation and intervention by the owners,” Webster said. “Both sat at the table until the deal was done. That was unheard of.”

During marathon sessions over the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday weekend, Webster said, the company “removed their demands from the table and meaningful dialogue took place.”

The GCIU pressmen, paperhandlers, and technical maintenance crews received across-the-board increases in each of the three years of the agreement, early retirement with full pension at age 60, and preserved manning.

Webster praised the solidarity of the members on the picket line and the “huge support from the labor community in Winnipeg.” He said the staved off the cold with tents and barrel fires and cooked food on them for picketers. “At one point we had an entire buffet,” he said.

Webster said the unions were so solid that they stayed on the picket line until management agreed to provide an agreement for the carriers. “That was a real show of solidarity for both the unions,” he said.

Webster thanked all those who sent donations and e-mails of support. “We got donations without even asking, and they really helped,” he said.

Members of Toronto 500M ratified a new contract with FPC Flexible Packaging on Nov. 18, ending a 10-week lockout.

The lockout began after the GCIU members, who been under contract with the company for some 15 years, rejected management’s “final offer” of deep concessions. Management then told them to go home.

Local 500M Vice Pres. James Bodie said the company applied to the Supreme Court for an injunction to remove some members from the picket line, to reduce the time picketers were allowed to keep trucks from entering and leaving the plant, and to claim damages from the union.

“All this proved unsuccessful, and the brothers and sisters, to their credit, ignored letters sent to their homes which attempted to circumvent the bargaining committee,” Bodie said in the local’s newsletter. He said the letters claimed the company had not locked them out and urged them to return to work. “All this while management crossed the picket lines and scabbed bargaining unit work, bringing home the sad state of labor laws in this province,” he said.

After more serious negotiations, the new five-year contract provides wage increases of 2.5 percent retroactive in the first year and 2.5 percent, 3 percent, 3 percent, and 3.25 percent in the following years. The Local 500M members also received increases in pension, maintenance of health coverage, and the company modified the language changes it previously had sought.

Local 500M Exec. Vice Pres. Norman Beattie said some seven members remain laid off from the company.

Bodie thanked members who helped on the picket line and the locals that sent donations, including Toronto 100M, which also has members in the FPC plant; Edmonton 255C; Vancouver 525M; and the Alberta-Saskatchewan District Joint Council.

After enduring a lock out of approximately four months, the Joint Council of Unions, which includes 10 members of Toronto 100M, finally achieved an agreement with the Sudbury Star, according to Local 100M Pres. Brian Fletcher. The Sudbury Star is one of the Osprey’s holdings.

The unions had previously voted down contract offers on three successive occasions, Fletcher reported. It took a fourth ratification vote to narrowly accept the company’s last offer.

The process was unduly drawn out, Fletcher said, because the employer chose to lock out the unions, as well as to scab the newspaper. Scabbing was a first in the Star’s history.

“Needless to say,” Fletcher said, “the employer’s decisions forced the Joint Council of Unions to attack the paper’s circulation and advertising – a campaign geared to destroy the employer’s ability to make money.

“It soon became apparent that the city of Sudbury would not support a scab newspaper,” which Fletcher said was “an important factor that eventually facilitated an agreement.”

He said “terms of the four-year agreement include annual increases of 2.5, 2, 2, and 2.7 percent, significant pension increases, night shift premium increase, job security for one year, vision care improvement, and more importantly, no concessions.

“The union members at the Sudbury Star,” Fletcher said, “can be proud of their resiliency, determination, and their unswerving belief in a joint council.

“In addition, Local 100M wants to thank all of the sister locals who responded to our appeal for assistance in such a generous way. The moral and financial support certainly helped to sustain our members throughout their struggle. Solidarity rocks!” Fletcher said.

Courtesy Toronto 500M

Toronto 500M members get picket line support during the lockout at FPC Flexible Packaging. At far right is Local 500M Pres. Mike R. Zajac. Fourth from left is GCIU Pres. George Tedeschi.