Refinery town in the petrostate: organized labour confronts the oil patch in Western Canada

Abstract

In 2019, Regina’s Co-operative Refinery Complex locked out the 730 members of Unifor Local 594 amid record profits in an aggressive drive for significant pension concessions. Marred by sweeping antipicketing injunctions, an enormous scab operation, police repression, and general public enmity, the lockout suggests two overlapping trends. First, the union’s adherence to co-operative and conciliatory bargaining had left it ill equipped to confront—either in the workplace or the public sphere—management’s costcutting agenda in the centre of Saskatchewan’s now hegemonic petrostate. Second, a marked tension developed between community outreach efforts and the circumstances in which legal industrial action was ineffective and civil disobedience emerged.