Unifor claims SaskTel is contracting unionized jobs to external companies

Unifor is calling on Saskatchewan’s government to stop contracting out SaskTel’s jobs.

In a new campaign calling residents to email their MLA, Unifor says the provincial government is “quietly dismantling SaskTel.” The union claims the company has outsourced nearly 1,000 jobs over the last several years.

Gavin McGarrigle, Unifor’s Western Regional Director, says 300 of these jobs (10 percent of the unionized workforce) were impacted in the last four years alone.

Part of this concern is Unifor’s fall 2023 discovery that contract workers hired for door-to-door sales are now completing “inside work” that full-time, unionized workers typically do. “This shift in responsibilities is a subtle yet clear indication of the blurring lines between contracted and in-scope work,” McGarrigle wrote in a January 26th blog post.

The union also came across postings on job sites last year that raised concerns. One example is a posting by Berks Payment Solutions, a third-party sales company, for a “major telecom sales representative,” a position that full-time SaskTel employees typically held.

“This is union work, pure and simple,” Mike Pilipow, President of Unifor Local 2-S, said in a press release. “Contracting sales representative work to a third party is part of a dangerous pattern at SaskTel under the Sask Party that results in lower job security for workers and poor service for the customer.”

SaskTel is a Crown corporation, and the Government of Saskatchewan owns it. But McGarrigle argues the company is more than a business; it’s an important part of the province’s telecom infrastructure.

“Healthy and profitable Crowns like SaskTel are not just the envy of other provinces, but every jurisdiction where public infrastructure giants have evolved into privatized, foreign-owned providers of ‘McJobs’ paying minimum wage.”

According to the province’s website, the provider has 1.4 million customers. McGarrigle said that contracting jobs out “weakens” the company, which “will be reflected in [the] quality of service offered to tens of thousands of customers in Saskatchewan.”

“SaskTel has always supplemented our workforce with a variety of consultants, contractors, vendors, and suppliers in response to the ever-changing demands of our industry, and to ensure that we can continue to provide our customers with the high-quality products and services they have come to expect from SaskTel,” the company said in a statement. “As the needs of our business fluctuate, so do the number of contractors and other companies we utilize to support our operations. SaskTel is committed to working through the bargaining process in good faith with Unifor to reach a new Collective Agreement for our employees.”

Image credit: Unifor

Source: Unifor