Wage freeze is exchanged for work guarantees, no closures
Bell Aliant and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers (CEP) have reached a tentative agreement for the second time after an earlier pact was rejected and the company announced cost-cutting measures. Those cuts would have included layoffs, the closure of three of five Atlantic customer contact centres and the elimination of benefits for new retirees.
The union and the telecommunications firm first reached a tentative agreement in June. That deal would have given employees three years of job security but no wage increase. About 65 per cent of the almost 3,000 workers covered by the agreement voted against it.
CEP national representative Dean MacDonald said members were confident they could get a better deal because the current collective agreement doesn’t expire until the end of 2011.
“At the time they thought, ‘If I vote no we still have a collective agreement’,” he said. “Now they know the consequences. It’s tough when there’s no strike (mandate) behind negotiations.”
The second deal gives workers a 1.75 per cent wage increase for 2011 but, as with the earlier agreement, wages will be frozen for the following three years of the contract. As well, workers did not win back the 146 days of pensionable time lost during a strike six years ago.
In exchange for a wage freeze, the union has been guaranteed work will not be consolidated in a way that would force workers to choose between relocation to keep a job or leaving the company. MacDonald said this was an important issue for members living in the Maritimes.
“They don’t want to move. If you live somewhere in New Brunswick that’s 100 per cent French-speaking and they tell you to move to Saint John, they don’t want to go,” he said.
MacDonald points to the last round of cuts when more than 40 positions were eliminated in Sydney. Only three employees moved to Halifax to hold onto their jobs. He adds that many of the people who moved as part of Aliant’s previous cost-saving measures were afraid they would be forced to move again if the two parties hadn’t struck the second agreement.
The latest tentative agreement would also see the number of contractors in specific classifications reduced and it guarantees that the five existing contact centres will stay open for the life of the agreement which, if approved, would expire in December 2014.
MacDonald acknowledged the union is “just holding on for now” and could face a similar set of negotiations the next time around.
“If you look across North America, it’s all the same. Verizon has cut close to 10,000 jobs. Telus has made cuts. The jobs are not where they were,” he said.
In fact, according to the most recent wage settlement update from Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, public sector wage gains have fallen behind those in the private sector. For the first six months of 2010, private sector gains averaged 2.2 per cent compared with 2.0 per cent in the public sector.
The overall wage increase for this period was 2.1 per cent, well below the 2.4 per cent workers in both sectors averaged last year. The record low was 1.8 per cent in 2004.
Given the trends in public sector bargaining, MacDonald said unions generally are in “survival mode.” With about a thousand workers set to retire before 2015, he is hopeful the next set of talks can be completed without major job losses.
