Volume 40 - No. 20 - February 12, 1998
A Saskatchewan daily newspaper found itself answering allegations of unfair labour practice late last October.
The allegations were raised by Jesse Anderson, a Moose Jaw Times-Herald weekend reporter. Anderson believed that her attempts to start a union at the Times-Herald, a part of Conrad Black's Hollinger Inc. newspaper chain, led to her dismissal on October 21, 1997.
Her suit against the paper was set to come before the Labour Relations Board on October 28, 1997. However, on the morning of the hearing, the lawyer for the Union received a letter informing them the Times-Herald had withdrawn Anderson's layoff notice.
Acting on the advice of Dennis Ball, the newspaper's lawyer, Times-Herald publisher Ab Calvert had offered Anderson her job back.
"We felt and Jessie [Anderson] felt that she was fired for union activity," said Duncan Brown, the Canadian Organizing Coordinator for the Graphics Communications International Union (GCIU). GCIU, an American-based union, has Canadian members from St. John's to Vancouver.
Anderson, an employee since May 20, 1997, contacted the GCIU in late September. Key elements in her decision to contact GCIU were deplorable working conditions such as poor ventilation in the darkroom, pay inequity and poor management support.
"They expected a lot of their reporters. Every single day I was putting in overtime and the more you did the more they asked you to do," commented Anderson.
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