Crown workers, on strike 21 months, still hold hope for a fair deal: DiManno

There’s little need right now for the old wood-burning stove in the shed’s corner. Or the split logs and kindling boards stacked up outside.

But who knows? The time may come again. Another bitterly cold winter on the picket line, in a strike that has gone largely unnoticed by the public for 21 months — except when a couple of men, dressed for the brutal elements in their layer-upon-layer of tramping clothes, joined the search for missing toddler Elijah Marsh in February and discovered the frozen boy behind an unsuspecting family’s house.

Seven seasons have turned since 118 workers at the Crown Holdings can factory in North York walked out, on Sept. 6, 2013. Since that date, only two employees have crossed the line and returned to their jobs, though a dozen others have taken retirement.

They have remained resolute in the cause, if, from the perspective of United Steel Workers Local 9176, exceedingly compromising in negotiations, with the company demanding steep wage cuts.

“We conceded wages,” says Wayne Harrison, grievance committee chair, who’s worked at the plant since 1985. “We agreed to their wage scale.” (In fact there’s no agreement, though the union has made wage counter-proposals.) “But they want to freeze the current pension and we don’t agree with that. They want to go to a contributory pension in the future, eliminate the defined benefit plan.”

It has been an ordeal, sticking to their guns, even when largely holstering them, living on $335 a week strike pay. Some have required financial assistance from the USW for mortgage payments to keep their homes. Offspring have put off university and taken interim jobs to help their families cope. Others are working one or two jobs while continuing to put in their picket duty.

“People’s teeth are rotting out of their heads,” says Mike Cruttenden, because dental treatment means paying upfront and submitting claims afterwards. “People are going without prescriptions because they don’t have a drug card. (The company) stopped benefits 15 days after we struck.”

And for what? Amid boycotts — the public urged to buy bottles, not cans — the multinational Philadelphia-based company reached a labour agreement with workers at one of their plants, in Wyoming, in April, granting a decent contract that includes at least some of the demands that are being denied in Toronto.