Government workers ratify three-year deal
About 11,000 government workers will have a new contract with two years of retroactive wage freezes, after SGEU members voted to accept a new deal three years after their old one ran out.
Members of the PS/GE sector ratified a memorandum of agreement with almost 70 per cent support, according to a web posting by the sector’s negotiating committee. It announced the results Friday, the same day the government celebrated the “commitment and co-operation” that led to the deal.
Both sides said the agreement provides for zeros in the first two years of the new contract, which replaces the one that ran out in October 2016.
That’s followed by a hike of one per cent in Year 3, then a combination pension and general wage increase amounting to two per cent. The tail end of the contract has two years of two-per-cent hikes. The new contract ends on Sept. 30, 2022.
Ratification votes were held across the province from Oct. 7 to Nov. 6. Some meetings were acrimonious, notably in Regina, as a dissident group of correctional officers objected to the deal as inadequate and unresponsive to their specific concerns.
Their protests, which also included calls for SGEU president Bob Bymoen to resign over a dispute with now-former chief shop steward Arlen Nickel, resulted in police responses and an unsuccessful push to ban them from future meetings.
The negotiating committee will now work with the government to “finalize and sign” the new collective agreement. An SGEU spokeswoman said that’s essentially a done deal, given the vote.
There will be some retroactive pay, due to the one-per-cent hike in Year 3. The negotiating committee posted to its website that the details will be provided to members.
Nickel questioned the legitimacy of the ratification, alleging that the union impeded protesters from voting freely.
Those who attended wearing anti-bymoen T-shirts reported being blocked from voting unless they removed them.
“I’m not sure how they can ratify a contract when they weren’t allowing all members to vote,” Nickel said.
At a hearing before the Labour Relations Board, an SGEU lawyer countered that many of the protesting corrections members had voted. Those who had not would have every opportunity to do so through mail-in ballot, she said.
Nickel also criticized the details of the agreement.
“Personally, I think I’m worth more than zeros,” he said. “I think all of our members are worth more than zeros.”
Unions across the province have objected to what they call a government mandate that imposes a wage freeze in early years of their contracts.
Unifor members at Saskpower, Saskenergy and Sasktel are still voting on a similar deal spread over five years, while two health-sector unions previously ratified a deal that also included two years of zeros.