Court approves request for injunction by FCL

By Deirdre Mitchell-MacLean Times Contributor

Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench approved a request for an injunction by Federated Co-operatives Limited (FCL) against protesters at the Carseland cardlock.
The decision was released Feb. 6 after hearing arguments the day before.
Co-op CEO Scott Banda and representatives from United We Roll Canada were in Carseland on Feb. 5 to address locals and media.
“In reality, the refinery is owned by you, the members, almost two million members in Western Canada” Banda said. “And because Unifor never talks about that, the other side of that is the almost $2 billion that we flow through from our profits right through to local co-ops.”
Unifor did not respond to requests for comment, but some people on the line spoke off the record. They said they had been allowing residents to fuel up and that their picket line was simply to gain awareness of what was going on in Saskatchewan.
Having oil and gas workers who are also union members has caused additional problems for Local 594 whose president, Kevin Bittman, said they were in between a rock and a hard place, politically.
“Most of the members probably support the Saskatchewan Party,” he said. “We’re a union, so we get some support from the local NDP, but we’re oil and gas employees, so the Saskatchewan Party supports us.”
However, neither party has been willing to publicly support the strike because it is at odds with each political party in one way or another.
Banda said they had issued ration notices due to both the strike and having a pipeline down for maintenance.
Daniel Warrack runs a local trucking company out of Cheadle and said the restriction is difficult for his business, especially since the Carseland Co-op is his main fuel source.
“Just yesterday I had a notice from Federated Co-op saying we were restricted to 300 litres per day per card,” he said after the rally. “On a busy day, we’d probably burn about 500 litres a day.”
Unless they have a card for additional co-op regions, they cannot get additional fuel on their current cards.
“We’ll have to look at sourcing fuel from other locations,” Warrack said. “If we have to get fuel from other sources, they might run out of fuel too. What Unifor is doing, it’s illegal, as the higher ups are saying; they just come in and barricade their business, that’s not right. At the very least, they want to stay there and protest, that’s fine, but let the trucks in to get fuel.”
Meanwhile, Banda said they want to get back to negotiations and that FCL has no intention of trying to bust the union. At the same time, Banda says FCL isn’t asking for anything unreasonable.
“Because we are a co-operative we cannot source our funding in the public markets, and that’s why I will not apologize for the profits that we make as a co-operative,“ Banda said. “But it’s that same money that Unifor demands that we use to fund unsustainable defined pension plans for its 730 members.”
Unifor representatives say Co-op has added more concessions during the bargaining process since the lockout, over and above the pension dispute.
On Feb. 7, an Alberta judge granted police the ability to enforce a court ruling to remove Unifor barricades at the FCL fuel distribution terminal in Carseland and clearly defined two locations on site where picketers could continue to demonstrate.
Strathmore RCMP Staff Sergeant Dale Morgan confirmed the barricades had been removed as of Monday afternoon, Feb. 10.