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16 July, 2007
Some 2,400 oil refinery workers at Suncor Energy in Fort McMurray, Alberta, ratified a new three-year labour agreement on 4 July that preserves the National Energy and Chemicals Bargaining Pattern of the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers (CEP) of Canada.
The contract, achieved through hard talks, is considered key because Suncor operates the second largest oil-sands project in the booming energy industry of northern Alberta, a Canadian province in the west of the country. The agreement preserves the pattern established on 13 May when 300 CEP members of Local 501A ratified a pact at a Petro-Canada refinery near Edmonton, Alberta. Like nearly all Canadian oil refineries in the west, that 135,000 barrel-per-day facility is expanding to meet the need for increased processing capacity brought by the oil-sands crude.
The labour agreement ratified by CEP Local 707 at Suncor’s Fort McMurray refinery contains an increase retroactive to 1 February of 5%. It also includes the same retroactivity in a special 2% “oil-sands supplement” which brings the increase to 7%. Local 707’s 2,400 members won a 6% increase for 2008, which includes a 1.5% supplement, and will see the same 6% tacked on to salaries in 2009.
CEP Western Region Vice President Don MacNeil said the contract also includes local wage incentives and other adjustments. The CEP and Suncor will continue to negotiate over a delicate overtime issue; due to the oil-sands boom, refinery workers are forced to work excessive amounts of overtime due to a skilled labour shortage in the region.
CEP Local 707 President Dave Drummond said the overtime issue is a major concern to the union, because it is having a detrimental effect on family life. He called the Suncor contract “a fair deal” that involved “very tough bargaining,” and said 73% of the local union’s members voted to accept the agreement.
In another oil refinery bargain that met the national pattern, CEP members at Federated Cooperative’s Consumers’ Cooperative Refineries LTD in the neighbouring province of Saskatchewan voted on 10 July to accept the wage increases contained in the national energy pattern. The 500 CEP members did authorise a strike during the week of 2 July, but management then increased its offer. Consumers’ is a 100,000 barrel-per-day refinery that is undergoing a C$1 billion expansion.
The CEP continues to negotiate the pattern established at Petro-Canada in Edmonton for some 7,000 other oil and chemical workers across Canada.