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25 February, 2008
This Friday, 29 February, is a Day of Action for ICEM North American affiliate Communications, Energy, Paperworkers (CEP) against Petro-Canada. CEP members will protest and handbill at many of the company’s petrol stations country-wide to draw attention to an unfair, 15-week lockout imposed by Petro-Canada on 267 workers at an oil refinery in Montreal, Quebec.
Teams of locked-out workers are also travelling Canada, speaking at union meetings and other forums. They are also warning the public at home, in Montréal, of the safety risks that the Calgary, Alberta-based company is taking by operating the refinery with managers and scabs. The union has called on Quebec’s Environmental Office, as well as on city of Montréal regulators, to inspect reports of leaks and malfunctions.
CEP Local 175 members at a January rally
A provincial Ministry of Labour team, which visited the refinery late in January, found that at least 26 replacement workers are grouped with bosses in working long hours to maintain throughput. Employing replacements during a labour dispute in Quebec is a labour law violation. But worse, the company is jeopardizing the safety and welfare of the community, since bosses and scabs – some 120 in total, compared to 267 skilled and trained CEP members – have each been working in excess of 70 hours per week.
The refinery, which saw a production increase from 105,000 barrels-per-day to 130,000 in 2006, is located in a residential area called Point-aux-Trembles, in the east end of Montreal.
Among the contract concessions the company is seeking from CEP Local 175 is elimination of a health and safety prevention officer. Petro-Canada is seeking to break the CEP’s National Energy and Chemical Bargaining Programme for 2007-2008, a pattern that was set in May 2007 in a three-year agreement between the CEP and Petro-Canada at a refinery in Edmonton, Alberta.
Management in Montréal is seeking a six-year term, and also is demanding unwanted changes to scheduling, job assignments, and an accelerated training programme that will further jeopardize health and safety.
Petro-Canada bought the refinery from Fina in 1981. The lockout began on 17 November 2007.
Petro-Canada is seeking to break the CEP’s National Energy and Chemical Bargaining Programme for 2007-2008, a pattern that was set in May 2007 in a three-year agreement between the CEP and Petro-Canada at a refinery in Edmonton, Alberta. Management in Montréal is seeking a six-year term, and also is demanding unwanted changes to scheduling, job assignments, and an accelerated training programme that will further jeopardize health and safety.