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Striking Dominion workers will soon vote on what their union calls Loblaw’s final offer, as workers close their 11th week on the picket line.
According to a press release from Unifor, which represents Dominion workers, the offer came on Saturday through provincial-appointed mediator Wayne Fowler.
Details of the offer will be presented to workers on Monday when voting begins.
Unifor said the pickets will continue during the ratification process and that the ratification vote will take place at pickets across the province over the next week.
The 1,400 workers have been on strike since Aug.22 – after Loblaw ended a $ 2 an hour wage increase for essential workers implemented during the pandemic – demanding more full-time jobs and wage increases.
The union says more than 80% of Dominion’s workers are part-time and 60 full-time jobs have been converted to part-time positions last year.
The pickets took place outside 11 Dominion locations across the province, along with other locations owned by Loblaw companies, such as Weston Bakery in Mount Pearl.
Loblaw got a court injunction against strikers, which prohibited picketing at a Mount Pearl distribution center, but lost dozens of other injunctions to other picketing locations.
The Unifor case against RNC continues
Unifor is pursuing its lawsuit against the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary for an incident when police responded to a picket line at Weston Bakery on 27 October.
RNC chief Joe Boland said at least three corporate complaints that night resulted in 14 officers from the force’s Public Order Unit participating in the picket. He added that the company has the right to get its vehicles off the parking lot, which has been blocked by striking workers.
Kyle Rees, a lawyer representing Unifor, said complaints filed by the companies concerned should not allow the police to disrupt a picket and that all parties involved are trying to figure out what the limits of a picket line are.
“Attorneys on both sides of the matter make passionate and critical arguments about what is the correct way to speak and what activities you should be able to do on a picket line,” Rees told CBC Radio. In movement Friday.
“[But] when you are balancing the bread that could expire or the Charter protects the rights of 1,400 members of a union fighting for a living wage, when these two things are in the balance, surely the bread takes a back seat to your rights under the Charter. ”
Rees and Unifor were in court on Friday, with no injunctions issued in the case. The parties will return to court on November 16.
“We have the opportunity to discuss our case, to present evidence,” Rees said.
“This is a whole process that didn’t happen in front of the RNC a couple of weeks ago. This is the process that we would have liked to see happen, and this is the process that has actually happened since then.”
Read more from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador
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