Telus Union Rejects Agreement
October 31st, 2005 Posted in ILEC News, Analysis
While the terms of Telus Corp.'s proposed collective agreement have are public due to a news blackout, it's hard to believe the Telecommunication Workers Union members
have rejected it by a narrow margin - 50.3% to 49.7%. (maybe there were
a few hanging chads that affected the outcome!?) It appeared the strike
had been settled several weeks ago when both sides agreed to a new
collective agreement after more than five years without one. One can
only suspect the TWU members balked at outsourcing language contained
the new pact given it was the contentious issue during negotiations and
the three-month strike. I'm not sure what the rejections means. Either
the TWU goes back to its membership and re-explains the terms and/or
gets the 2,000 members who didn't vote to participate in the process,
or talks start again with a few modifications made to get a majority to
support it.
have rejected it by a narrow margin - 50.3% to 49.7%. (maybe there were
a few hanging chads that affected the outcome!?) It appeared the strike
had been settled several weeks ago when both sides agreed to a new
collective agreement after more than five years without one. One can
only suspect the TWU members balked at outsourcing language contained
the new pact given it was the contentious issue during negotiations and
the three-month strike. I'm not sure what the rejections means. Either
the TWU goes back to its membership and re-explains the terms and/or
gets the 2,000 members who didn't vote to participate in the process,
or talks start again with a few modifications made to get a majority to
support it.
October 31st, 2005 at 12:00 pm
Here's a thread for you to work on with this vote… there is a split in the union, not union vs. management vis a vis the language of the deal. According to managers and workers in BC that I have talked to, the picket line crossers who are still in the union are fed up with the other striking workers and have come to realize that they did very little work for their wage. In fact, part of the reason the vote failed is that the inside workers did not want their union brethren back at all. This could be a very long strike if that is the case and Telus could be better off as a company (leaner and more productive) as a result. I still wouldn't by their stock at these levels, but perhaps a buy-on-weakness strategy would work.