Co-op lockout is a showcase for irrationality

If politics had an even more uber-partisan cousin, it would be labour disputes.

It is a world where even politicians normally fear to tread ... or at least, try to avoid by having matters of dispute settled by courts or even the police.

This is what we witnessed this week in the labour dispute between the Co-operative Refinery Complex (CRC) and its locked-out workers from Unifor 594 that saw police intervention sandwiched between a sixhour court proceeding over alleged breaches of contempt of court orders in which the company demanded record fines and jail time.

How partisan labour disputes like this one can get is best reflected in the reality that even court rulings and police actions do little to change minds among either those directly involved or those with a passionate belief in one side of the cause of the other. If anything, they only seem to reinforce beliefs.

As horn-blaring semitrucks drove past the Regina courthouse on Thursday to demand barricades be removed, CRC lawyer Eileen Libby asked Justice Neil Robertson to impose a $1-million fine on Unifor, plus $100,000 for each day it doesn’t comply with last December’s court injunction limiting delays of trucks. She also suggested jail time for union leaders, offering a myriad of evidence, including 395 minutes of video she argued demonstrated a “complete disregard and disdain for the orders of this court.”

The union’s case from Unifor legal counsel Crystal Norbeck seemed less compelling, conceding there were some breaches and the dispute had gotten “far bigger than Unifor 594.” As for the request that Local 594 president Kevin Bittman be jailed for 90 days and vice-president Lance Holowachuk be jailed for 30 days unless they complied with the court order, Norbeck argued that would be excessive and counterproductive to reaching a settlement.

Normally, a decision like the one Robertson is about to render becomes the unquestioned authority of who’s right or wrong. Alas, it is here where we see how labour disputes turn to the irrational

— even compared with the sometimes-not-very-rational world of everyday politics.

When the request for massive fines and jail time

— a request partly driven by the reality that the previous $100,000 fine against Unifor seems to have had little effect on behaviour — filtered out through social media, we heard union leadership and union supporters bitterly complaining that what was proposed was far in excess of any fine or demand for jail time against a business owner for Occupational Health and Safety violations that have sometimes led to on-the-job deaths.

The argument that OHS fines are too light may be valid, but most cases are matters of negligence — vastly different from alleged contempt of court. Obviously, some don’t see it that way, but emotions in labour disputes seldom offer clear vision.

Consider the anger from both sides directed at the Regina Police Service and Chief Evan Bray. Today, that’s largely coming from the union side over Friday’s decision to remove barricades in accordance with Justice Janice Mcmurtry’s order last December.

But union supporters were screaming bloody murder that Bray has taken sides with Federated Co-operative Ltd. management in union-busting tactics, which is at least a departure from a week ago when those supporting FCL and the business interests were grumbling that Bray needed to “do his job” or even be fired because he was too “pro-union” and overly sympathetic to the pension issue for his own self-serving reasons. Sigh.

Lest anyone remain completely convinced the union has monopolized irrationality (heaven knows it’s had its share, between misidentifying replacement workers and court-determined illegal acts), consider this week’s spectacle of FCL president Scott Banda courting “United We Roll’ truckers showing up at the Carseland, Alta. Co-op cardlock that’s also been hit with Unifor blockades.

One gets Banda’s need/ right to try to keep business going, but a Co-op president and former NDP leadership hopeful aligned with those alleged to have yellow-vest connections?

It can only happen in labour disputes, where politics is far more vicious.