Labour unrest increasing in HRM
Posted Feb 13, 2012 05:34:54 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Unionized professors at Dalhousie University will hold a strike vote today, making them the latest in a long list of groups either considering job action or already on strike.
The union and the university’s board of governors have another day of conciliated talks scheduled for Wednesday, but a union spokesperson tells Metro Halifax there’s been no progress on key issues so far.
If the professors vote in favour of strike action, they’ll join Halifax Regional Water Commission workers and commissionaires at the Halifax Stanfield International Airport – who are also in a legal strike position.
Workers at the Oland Brewery are also waiting out a 14-day strike countdown, triggered by a conciliator’s report filed on Feb. 3, and Metro Transit workers are now into day 13 of a strike.
The Canada Research Chair in occupational health psychology at St. Mary’s University tells News 95.7 labour unrest is virtually guaranteed any time contracts come up for renewal during a time of fiscal constraint.
“But even in the good economic times management never came to the table and said, ‘this is your year. This is the year you get the big raise, the big bonus,'” Kelloway told Maritime Morning Weekend Edition Sunday. “Bargaining is always tight.”
He said managers are trying to trim budgets because of poor economic times, but wages have not kept pace with the cost of living and employees are trying to retain or gain that security.
“People go on strike when they feel they are being mistreated and that mistreatment crosses some kind of line where they are just not willing to tolerate it anymore,” said Kelloway.
In addition to the unions actually considering or taking job action, the website Halifaxonstrike.com suggests workers at Capital Health may be headed towards a strike.
The Nova Scotia General Employees Union has said its members are looking for a wage increase in line with the 5.1 per cent awarded to nurses by an arbitrator last fall.
A newspaper strike was averted earlier this month when the Halifax Typographical Union, representing workers at the Chronicle Herald and the Halifax Herald Limited reached a tentative contract agreement, Feb. 10.
