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Conciliation at Freedom Mobile as First Contract Talks Heat Up

[June 20, 2017]

Conciliation at Freedom Mobile as First Contract Talks Heat Up

WINDSOR, ON, June 20, 2017 /CNW/ - Negotiations for a first collective agreement between the United Steelworkers (USW) and Freedom Mobile in Windsor have entered the conciliation phase. A federal labour conciliation officer has convened meetings between the company and the union starting this week in an effort to help reach a settlement.

Freedom Mobile, previously known as Wind Mobile, was purchased in 2015 by Shaw Communications for $1.6 billion. The 185 customer care employees at Freedom Mobile's Windsor call centre joined the USW in January and bargaining began in late March.

"Shaw recently had its best quarterly subscriber performance in five years. And its $1.3-billion revenue for the second quarter was up by over 13% from the previous year. Windsor call centre workers helped deliver that success – they work hard and deserve a fair deal," said Ken Neumann, USW National Director.

"The folks in this call centre are great people working hard in jobs that can be pretty stressful. Freedom and Shaw can afford fair treatment that reflects our contributions," said Jasen Gannon, Tanya Travis Dunn and Christian Poisson, Freedom employees and members of the union's elected bargaining committee.

"We anticipate good-faith bargaining this week from Freedom Mobile and Shaw. Our members across Canada are behind these workers 100%," said Lee Riggs, President of the Telecommunications Workers Union, USW National Local 1944, which represents more than 11,000 telecommunications sector workers across Canada.

SOURCE United Steelworkers (USW)

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