| Western Canada’s largest telecommunications company may have a lot of slick, feel-good advertising, but the union representing Telus employees says there’s a darker side to the company that isn’t as public.
"They’re nasty," says Bruce Bell, president of the Telecommunications Workers Union. "It’s an employer that’s really greedy. They pay their upper floor big bucks, but they don’t want to come to terms with their union… they don’t bargain across the table."
Telus and the union have been butting heads for the past four-and-a-half years and have been unable to come up with an agreement. Last January, the Canada Industrial Relations Board found that Telus illegally interfered with the operation of a trade union by communicating directly with employees instead of going through the union.
The company went directly to employees again in April 2005 when they presented them with what Bell calls a "misleading" contract offer. The case will be investigated by the Canadian Industrial Relations Board at a hearing later this month.
In the past five years, the union’s membership has been cut from almost 18,000 to about 16,000. The union says Telus is trying to weaken it by increasing the number of managerial positions, even if the job is not necessarily in management. Telus employs about 25,000 people in total.
In other words, Bell says, almost every other person who works at Telus is a manager of some kind.
"It’s atrocious," says Bell. "We’re working to try and fix that."
Telus has 4,350 employees in Calgary, and about 2,900 of them are part of the union’s bargaining unit. One Calgary employee, speaking under condition of anonymity, says "Telus is trying to run the union into the ground."
Like most employees, he says he wants to see "a contract, plain and simple. One that offers fair wages for a fair day’s work."
Recently, the dispute has become somewhat bitter as Telus has stopped collecting union dues from employees. The company has also taken lockout measures, including the deferment of pay raises and vacation entitlements from its employees.
The union has responded to these moves by asking Telus customers to be ready to cancel extra Telus phone services and to switch long-distance providers in the event of a strike.
Bell says a strike is definitely not out of the question.
"We’ll bargain, but if we’re provoked too far, we could strike," says Bell. "It’s kind of day-to-day right now."
Telus says it’s making a fair offer to its employees.
"What we're looking for is a contract that recognizes the needs of our customers, our employees as well as the company itself," says Drew McArthur, Telus’s vice-president of corporate affairs.
Much of the conflict comes as a result of the merger of Telus and BC Tel in 1999. After the merger, four unions representing the workers for the two companies merged into one union. McArthur says that union is pushing for the old BC Tel union agreement "with improvements," something he says fails to consider today’s circumstances.
"We need the ability to compete on a level playing field with the likes of Bell and Shaw," says McArthur, adding that the union’s demands are "among the most restrictive in North America."
McArthur says that the company’s latest offer includes "generous provisions."
The offer is a five-year agreement that would see wage increases of two per cent each year. The union rejected the offer.
"It’s an offer that the company has made up in the backroom," says Bell. "It’s their every wish, full of what we call management rights. The workers don’t have any rights."
Bell says that under Telus’s offer, employees wouldn’t have much say about when they could take vacation time or other time off.
Not all Telus employees are happy about the union’s position. One employee who works in the sales department says the union’s methods are making her work life miserable. She says she has to deal with irate clients who call and ask her why the union that’s representing her is undermining the company by calling for service boycotts.
She also says many employees don’t know exactly what the union really wants.
"We know what they’re against," she says, "but what are they for? They haven’t told us." |
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