By TAYTYN BADGER
“I’ve never met an employer like this in my life,” said Carrie, a rank-and-file worker at Saskatoon’s Heritage Inn for 12 years. “It was handed down to them from their dad. If you’ve never worked a day in your life with this company, you could care less about it.” She, alongside other employees represented by UFCW Local 1400, has spent eight months on the picket line since the lockout was issued on Sept. 7 last year. Under attack are not only wages and benefits of nearly 100 hospitality employees represented by the union in Saskatoon and Moosejaw, but union shop status itself.
Attacks on employee rights and compensation
Negotiations seemed normal when they began in 2019, but were soon interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. When they resumed, Heritage Inn owners Sandra and Shelley Kanegawa had hired lawyer Steve Seiferling to bargain on their behalf.
Seiferling, co-founder of the “boutique management-side labor and employment law firm” Seiferling Law, has made a career of union busting and attacking workers’ rights while enjoying a close relationship with the Sask Party. Recently, he’s commentated on the ongoing Saskatoon Teacher Federation negotiations, concerning not just wages and benefits but also issues including class sizes and support for students with special education needs, siding with the provincial government on limiting negotiations solely to compensation, while calling for principals to be moved out of union scope.
“When we met with him the first time, it was a new document,” explained Lucia Flack Figueiredo, president of UFCW Local 1400. “It had deletions from every article on every page. They didn’t stop at anything. All the pages, pages 1 through 34, had changes to their articles, including things as simple as adding more out of scope managers. They wanted to delete full-time guarantees. They wanted to delete scheduling language, so you were no longer guaranteed hours in scheduling … and they would not withdraw or change or amend any of their proposals.”
Among these proposals are a $3 an hour pay cut, deletion of paid bereavement and dental benefits, and a reduction of allotted sick time.
John Thompson, a service representative, explained, “They would be able to work people three 12-hour shifts with no overtime and as long as they don’t go any more than that in two weeks, that’s their whole pay. They want to do really underhanded stuff like that. Basically, they want to strip their contract right down. They also want to take away the rights of local reps to service so basically castrating the union as such.”
Locked out after refusing to capitulate, Thompson emphasized, “There was never a strike vote taken by the membership, so this is completely employer put forward … this is completely employer driven.” The owners have justified their proposals by claiming that their business, which owns several hotels across three provinces, is failing. Thus far, they have refused to release any financial records to back these claims up.
“You own five hotels, and you’re telling me you’re under but you’re not showing us you’re in the red. So why aren’t you showing us you’re in the red?” Carrie told us. “There’s a reason why. It’s ridiculous.”
Underhanded tactics
The hotel owners have not stopped at the lockout. Before and after their action, they have employed a range of underhanded methods, some of them borderline illegal, in attempting to bring the union to heel.
In January of last year, UFCW discovered that Heritage Inn had stopped providing information and union cards to newly hired employees since the end of the COVID lockdowns.
“We only knew the one-third of their employees that have been here for more than three years.” Figueiredo explained. “And so, when they were inside and we spent all of July and August trying to engage the workers, they had no clue who we are. And so, the day that they gave us the lockout notice, they also had a nice new contract of employment that they gave to all the immigrants, and they basically told them if you go to the picket line you’re going to be fired—I can’t guarantee that you’re going to have a job afterward. And these are people whose resident status is dependent on whether they have a job, and so, it’s indentured servitude, here in Canada. It’s disgusting.”
Sara Warman, another service rep, said much the same: “A lot of the staff that’s still inside are newcomer folks that feel very vulnerable. Their immigration status is often threatened by the idea of coming out and joining us on the line, and we don’t have enough of a relationship with them to tell them that they are protected even here on the line. They’re taking advantage of our most vulnerable, either newcomers or folks who are lower-income folks, so they have a lot to lose.”
Following the lockout, the owners have continued to negotiate in bad faith, refusing to budge and dragging negotiations and the lockout out as long as possible. “We wanted to bargain the day after they gave us the notice for Sept. 7,” recalled Lucy Figueiredo. “Their first set of dates was the end of October. Then we were in bargaining in October, and it was clear they weren’t moving still. The next set of dates was December.”
This has left the hotel in a position of perpetual lockout, where the employees who have crossed the picket line would lose pay and compensation when a contract is signed. To work around this, the owners are attempting to decertify the union altogether, as Figueiredo explained: “In December we got an application from inside to decertify the union, which makes no sense to me, and we’re going to be presenting that in front of the labor board. How can an employer basically fill their hotel up with scabs, people that have never met me, never met the union, never paid one cent in union dues, and those people will have the vote on whether or not to decertify the union. It should be illegal, and it’s never happened before, so we’re going to be going to the board. We know that they’re aiming for that; the hearing is in July. They’ve told me they don’t want to bargain in Saskatoon because they want to wait until the hearing is done to see if there’s even a union there.”
Even beyond these large-scale attacks, the picket line has found itself repeatedly harassed by law enforcement acting on the owners’ behalf. “Whenever they can, they bring the police in to say that we’re preventing business, that we’re harassing their customers and all those kinds of things, but what you’ve seen today is no different from any other Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,” Sara Warman said, as picketers gave a thumbs down to hotel patrons crossing the line. “Most of us are just really inconvenient.”
Lucy Figueiredo summarized the situation: “It’s clear that [Steve Seiferling] has a client who is willing to spend whatever amount of money it takes, and he’s getting the money, it’s all billable hours to lawyers. So, they get paid whether they win or lose, and they’ve been losing all their hearings, they’ve been losing the labor board hearings. So, he’s found a client who’s willing to pay him for the duration of this dispute, and they do that because he has promised to them something that they want.
“They want to get rid of this union, they want to absolve themselves of the collective agreement, of the requirement to have any benefits, the requirement to negotiate with unions, the requirement to have us in there representing employees. It’s a combination of the two together, he has promised them he can do that, and they’re more than happy and willing to pay for that.”
Value of the union
Despite the hardships created by Heritage Inn, the experience has given picketing workers a new appreciation for UFCW 1400. Wendy Slade, who has worked at Heritage Inn for eight years, shared her experience: “I said for years in there. What does this union do for us? I’ve never seen them. But you don’t realize until something happens. Or if you need, like we always knew if they picked on us, we could call the union for their help. They saved my job. They’re incredible. Everybody has been wonderful to come out.”
Carrie added, “The union has helped us tremendously. Everything is just super good. All the unions have come out, did their support to help us.”
Asked for closing remarks, Lucy Figueiredo told us, “I can tell you that all the picketers out here were not union activists. They were workers that worked at a hotel that was unionized. But the seven months has created a university of Labor 101. Every day they tell me how amazed they are at the support and the breadth of support, that it’s not just UFCW, there’s other unions that walk the picket line with them. And we don’t often see that; we take that for granted when we’re not in the middle of a big conflict. But what an amazing community of support and allies and unions and brothers and sisters we have!”
How to help
For those who want to show their support and solidarity with Heritage Inn hospitality workers, there’s no shortage of options:
“Donate, come and walk with us, bring additional voices, different people to talk to,” suggested Sara Warman. “Talking to each other for six hours a day, for eight months, gets a little boring.”
John Thompson added, “Another thing that people can do is if they go to our website (https://ufcw1400.ca/index.php/end-the-heritage-inn-lockout-now), there’s a letter to the owners of the Heritage Inn, saying, “please let’s go back to the table.” Sign that, send it away, you can add anything else you want to add as well.”
If you would like to join the picket line, it is up daily at 102 Cardinal Crescent from 11 to 4. Donations can be made via e-transfer to Lynn@UFCW1400.ca, with a comment stating that it is in solidarity with the Heritage Inn workers.
Photo: MooseJawToday.com