Striking Windsor Salt workers, company returning to bargaining table

A month after hitting the picket line, the union representing about 250 Windsor Salt workers announced Thursday it would be returning to the bargaining table next Wednesday.

Negotiators for Unifor Locals 240 and 1959 said in a joint statement from the union that the resumption of talks was the result of “informal discussions about a pathway back to the bargaining table” over the previous 24 hours that concluded it was “in the best interests of both parties.”

Workers walked off the job Feb. 17 after talks broke down with the company, which the union has accused of “schemes to bust the union.”

This was the first time Unifor had entered into contract talks with the new owners of Windsor Salt, the U.S.-based private holding firm Stone Canyon Industries.

“The Union and Company are optimistic that they will be able to work together constructively to reach a collective agreement that is fair and equitable to all involved,” Unifor said in its statement.

Mayor Drew Dilkens offered his support to the workers during a rally held by strikers and their supporters outside city hall on Thursday.

Not how we do business or negotiate contracts in Ontario

According to Unifor, company representatives had been refusing to discuss any monetary issues during bargaining without an agreement from the union to allow contracting out of jobs. Unifor national president Lana Payne, during a local picket line visit earlier this month, accused the new American owners of being “a hedge fund that came to the bargaining table to destroy the union.”

In a letter earlier this week to Premier Doug Ford, cabinet ministers and local MPPs, Payne, on behalf of Canada’s largest private sector union, called on the provincial government “to do everything in its power to encourage Windsor Salt’s owners to bargain a fair collective agreement that respects the long history of the union in these workplaces.”

Payne said workers at the nation’s oldest and largest salt producer — whose products are a kitchen staple across Canada — “were forced into a labour dispute they did not want” after demands from Stone Canyon Industries “that they accept outrageous concessions.”

Those demands, she added, were “threatening the very existence of the union itself.

“This is not how we do business or negotiate contracts in Ontario,” Payne wrote.