Three for the Road
BY This Magazine Staff
You may think you toil in isolation, your troubles unseen by the larger labour movement. But, then, you probably haven’t heard about the plight of the three municipal workers in the Northern Ontario township of Plummer Additional who threatened to strike this past March after talks with management broke down.
And the fact that you haven’t heard of them is part of the problem. Plummer Additional (population: 638) isn’t known for much, at least “nothing that sustains any families,” says Wendy Maguire, a clerical assistant for the town and one of the three full-time employees who make up Local 3 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees.
Plummer Additional, built on gold mining and located 45 minutes outside Sault Ste. Marie, has nearly 150 kilometres of roads that have to be regularly graded to avoid floods. And that became a problem for the town’s two equipment operators—who also provide all other municipal services—when management decided to redefine their work week to make them work weekends and avoid paying overtime, according to Paul Discher, unit vice-president of Local 3 and the town’s lead hand. “Some of us have been working here for 25 years on a Monday to Friday schedule,” he says.
But their action gained little momentum when their appeal to residents to contact local councillors fell flat. “It should have been cut and dried. It never should have gone this far,” Maguire says. And so, in late March, the workers had no option but to settle with management. “Nobody knew about it,” she adds. Now you know.
