Reliance workers locked out of their jobs have found lots of support in Thunder Bay.
Spokesperson Russ Cooper tells us as southern Ontario replacement workers do in-home service calls here in town, the local locked out workers show up and tell the customers what is going on.
“It’s usually a surprise to them, many times they [replacement workers] are asked to leave the residence. Customers don’t want them in their home. Some of them will allow them to work reluctantly, because the job is half done, and you don’t want to kick someone out with half a furnace,” notes Cooper.
He adds there appears to be no end in sight to the province-wide lockout.
Cooper wonders how outlets in southern Ontario are handling this, considering how many people from southern Ontario are in Thunder Bay. “They are stretched pretty thin, these people aren’t used to working like this. They are shipping them back and forth, they are rotating them in and out, I guess. We’ve had a couple already go back to their original branches because things aren’t going very well.”
The spokesperson adds this has been a great year for Reliance, yet there remains too much of a gap in pay between different employees. The union rejected the company’s last offer, which also concerns benefits.
He also points out local customers know what kind of COVID-19 protocol to expect when receiving a service call from Thunder Bay employees.
“We’re tested, we’re completely engulfed in PPE, whereas there’s no guarantee these scabs from Toronto are doing anything like that,” says Cooper.
The union Unifor adds more than 800 members have been locked out since May 13.
