Bargaining began in March
Negotiations for a first collective agreement between the United Steelworkers (USW) and Freedom Mobile in Windsor, Ont., entered the conciliation phase, said the union.
A federal labour conciliation officer has convened meetings between the company and the union starting this week in an effort to help reach a settlement, according to USW.
Freedom Mobile — previously known as Wind Mobile — was purchased in 2015 by Shaw Communications for $1.6 billion. The 185 customer-care employees at Freedom Mobile's Windsor call centre joined the USW in January and bargaining began in late March.
"Shaw recently had its best quarterly subscriber performance in five years. And its $1.3-billion revenue for the second quarter was up by over 13 per cent from the previous year. Windsor call-centre workers helped deliver that success – they work hard and deserve a fair deal," said Ken Neumann, USW national director.
USW represents more than 11,000 telecommunications sector workers across Canada.
