The worker lockout at Reginas Co-op Refinery Complex shows that, left unchecked, corporations will transfer the costs and burdens of the necessary transition to a fossil fuelfree future to workers.
In 2019, Reginas Co-op Refinery Complex (CRC), a subsidiary of Federated Co-operative, locked out Unifor Local 594 after collective bargaining negotiations failed. CRC used the transition to a low carbon future as the justification for concessions on working conditions and reducing the workers' pension plan. The lockout demonstrates what a just transition means to fossil fuel corporations: rollbacks of collective bargaining, worker rights, cooperative spirit and environmental justice. In the name of a new future, Federated Co-operative and the Saskatchewan government trampled all over important worker rights the right to strike and picket, occupational health and safety, pensions and collective bargaining. It also highlights the sorry state of co-operative values in Canada. As corporations and governments are poised to make a transition that will be detrimental to workers and communities, this books argues that solidarity between unions and community movements is absolutely necessary to make the transition away from fossil fuels a just one.
