Picketers block SaskEnergy access, Crowns concerned about essential services

A couple dozen people were bundled against the cold early Thursday morning, but they seemed in high spirits as they picketed outside the SaskEnergy service centre at White City and blockaded the entrances.

Through the morning, several vehicles drove up to the crowd, the drivers spoke to the picket leaders, and then they were sent away.

A few of the vehicles were let through, and according to the union, those were people reporting to work under the union’s essential services agreement with SaskEnergy.

Scott Doherty, executive assistant to Unifor’s national president, said the picketers weren’t stopping essential services.

“We’re in contact with SaskEnergy all the time about what the essential service needs to be, and we’ll let people do the essential service necessary,” said Doherty.

He wasn’t worried about the wrong people being turned away, saying the union had members on the line who helped make the essential services schedules and they knew who was supposed to be there.

Doherty said they’re just turning away the managers who were supposed to be doing the work of those on strike. He said it’s easy to get past the picketers for those they allow.

“Our members have done exactly what we’ve asked them to do, which is make sure the public is safe and make sure that they do the essential service. At the same time we’re doing a legal picket and allowed to do what we’re doing,” said Doherty.

Early in the morning, SaskEnergy was very concerned about the blockade. The service centre houses the emergency dispatch centre for the province and also the call centre for people who need to know where an underground line is.

“Our main concern is this is also where our technicians are based out of who respond to emergencies 24 hours a day,” Dave Burdeniuk, SaskEnergy’s director of government and media relations, said just after 6 a.m.

“Our concern is that we can’t get access to our trucks, our equipment, that our people can’t get in or out because that is a safety risk for us.”

SaskEnergy has 1,100 employees, 800 of whom are in the union. Of that latter number, 200 have to cross the picket line every day under the corporation’s essential services agreement with the union.

There were also concerns that the workers who were being allowed in would be delayed too much.

“We have seen with other Crown facilities where it can take a half-hour or longer (to get across the line),” Burdeniuk said. “We’ve heard reports of up to an hour to get one vehicle through.

“When we’re responding to a fire, when we’re responding to a natural gas odour or a pipeline rupture, we need to get people fast to the scene. That’s our concern, that this will restrict our ability to provide safety service to our customers.”

However, later in the morning, Burdeniuk said everyone who needed to get in was making it through the gates.

Burdeniuk noted this was the first time since the strike started Friday that the corporation had had any issues with picketers at any locations across the province.

SaskEnergy could work around it if managers were delayed, Burdeniuk said, but the corporation was concerned about public safety if technicians or specialized construction workers were held up.

As Burdeniuk put it: “You don’t put a barricade up in front of a firehall and, in essence, that’s what has happened here.”

“We do have technicians with trucks who are outside the facility — they’ve been on call overnight — but we do need to replace people who have been on call from 5 p.m., until 8 a.m.,” Burdeniuk said.

“During the day today, we’re going to have a lot of emergencies around Regina and the surrounding rural area and we need to have easy access to our equipment. We need technicians to get in and out of that facility and we need backup technicians who are on call even during the strike to get in there and get their trucks and to quickly get in and out.”

Ian Davidson is the president of Unifor Local 649. He said Thursday morning that everyone wanted the strike to be over, but morale was high on the picket line.

“Everybody’s happy to be out here. We’ve got a couple lines (and) a couple areas blocked off. Everybody’s in good spirits; you can see some folks dancing to the music,” said Davidson.

He said there hadn’t been any problems with picketers dealing with managers at any of the blockades.

“We’re respectfully asking people not to cross our line,” he said. “Everything’s peaceful. We’re not coming into confrontation (and) we don’t want confrontation. We just want to respectfully ask people today not to cross our line.

“It’s a show of solidarity, and the members, the management, and out-of-scope, so far they have been very, very good and easy to deal with.”