Next time you let your telephone company’s workers into your family’s home to work on your phone or internet line, think about stories like this, which popped-up in Vancouver with regard to their dominant phone company, Telus, and their locked-out Telecommunications Workers Union members.
Inexplicably, this story was in the Vancouver Sun’s Business section rather than the Local Crime and Goon section.
Allegations of harassment, intimidation and physical assault by picketing unionized Telus workers are contained in a Supreme Court judge’s reasons for judgment in support of his decision to expand the terms of an injunction.
In the document, Justice Grant Burnyeat ruled that members of the Telecommunications Workers Union approached Telus workers at restaurants, honked horns outside their homes early in the morning, placed signs at homes indicating that a “Telus scab” lived there and prevented employees from doing their jobs.
Excerpts of affidavits in the judgment tell of several incidents of intimidation and one of assault.
TWU president Bruce Bell said the events set out in the affidavits are unfortunate.
“Unfortunate”, huh? Ya think?
In one affidavit, a security worker hired by Telus in Cranbrook said a picketer walked up to him while he was seated in his car and grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him against the car door. The picketer slapped the him on the side of the head and yelled at him to get out of the car so he could “beat the s—t” out of him, the document said.
In another affidavit, a woman said two picketers yelled at her and another Telus employee when they left the Sullivan SkyTrain station in Surrey. One of the picketers came to within 10 feet of her and yelled what she believed was a threat that she would get shot, the document said.
An employee in Prince George said he and his wife were awakened at 6 a.m. by car horn blasts, and then he was sworn at as he left for work. Another Prince George employee said that one of two people picketing across the street from his house had asked him how his son was going to feel at hockey when he was called a “son-of-a-scab.” The employee said that as a result of this incident, he was very worried about the safety of his family.
In his ruling, Burnyeat concluded that there were cases of threats and intimidation and “possibly even” assault. […]
It’s hard to sympathize with unions when we keep hearing stories such as these. And it would cause me to rethink my union membership if I belonged to one.
What a disgrace.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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