Unifor national president taken into custody
REGINA – Hours after vowing an escalation on the picket line outside the Co-op Refinery Complex (CRC), Unifor national president Jerry Dias was among the picketers arrested when Regina police tried to move the crowd blocking the site.
According to Lana Payne, Unifor’s national secretary-treasurer, six of their members had been arrested by early Monday evening. Still, the union remained defiant. “We’re holding the line,” she said.
Dias initially tried to shove off an officer’s hand before appearing to submit to the arrest, handing off his cellphone to a woman, and walking into the paddy wagon as another union member shouted, “We’re standing up for workers’ rights and this is how they treat us here? We’ll stand every day to defend workers.”
“We’ve got a very big problem in Regina and Saskatchewan when the police would think that it’s okay to arrest the national president of a union who’s here defending our members,” said Payne after Dias’ arrest.
A CRC spokesman, in response to the arrests, said, “The activity underway at the refinery is illegal.”
Regina police spokeswoman Elizabeth Popowich said “the union, of course, has the right to lawful protest, but the company also has a right to do business and we’re trying to restore that balance.
“With the gates blocked by vehicles and by people, that’s not the current situation,” she said early Monday evening.
Members of unifor erected a metal fence across the road leading into the refinery after Dias was arrested.
A front-end loader and trucks with the City of Regina were parked on Fleet Street Monday evening. Operators would not respond to questions as to why they were responding to the CRC.
“We’re trying to get back to that and doing that in a way that has given people more than ample time to comply, more than enough warning. They’ve been warned a number of times and so we are now at the point of having arrested a few people and we’re still working to open one of the gates,” she added.
But that was proving difficult, as some union members perched atop a U-Haul truck blocking the gate and refused to budge. “Way to protect the public,” they shouted at officers below. “What if it was your family?”
The RPS sent a release late on Monday stating that seven people had been arrested on the picket line, but did not state who was arrested and what charges they were facing.
“Picketing members of Unifor were notified, once again, of the court order preventing them from blocking ingress or egress. Unifor members who are not members of Local 594, were informed that they may be subject to arrest on criminal matters if they chose to ignore the court order,” Popowich said in a release.
A large contingent of officers and vehicles began to show up at the CRC mid-afternoon Monday and delivered an ultimatum — move or risk arrest. The picketers dug in, responding with shouts of “one day longer; one day stronger.”
Police had two private vehicles blocking the road loaded onto a flatbed trailer hauled off by a tow truck. Shortly after that, Dias waded into the crowd, stared down officers and insisted no more vehicles be moved.
Officers moved in around 5:30 p.m. and began making arrests.