RE: TELUS wages vs offerI think that PondBoy is right. If this Telus proposal were actually ever allowed to go out for a TWU secret vote, I think the majority would go for it. Not a huge majority, but enough to seal the deal.
It's like PondBoy suggested. The only real losers and who would vote against this proposal would be primarily the BC based workers, especially those with considerable seniority and hence a fond recollection of the good ole BC TEL days for which they continue to dream about.
The Alberta workers would support the deal in that they get to go to the BC scale and they don't lose anything like those special time off days the BC workers would lose.
The younger workers in both BC and AB would also tend to support the deal, since they have many more years to go in their careers and really can't afford to nor get too excited about walking out just to support the good olde days aspirations of the older workers with the most seniority.
And if the workers in Ontario and Quebec get a chance to vote on this proposal, they would tend to support the proposal too, rather than going out on strike, simply since this would be their first contract with Telus and thus they have no axe to grind about maintaining the language of the BC TEL old contract.
So the bottom line is that the young workers in all regions along with many Alberta workers plus most of the Ontario and Quebec workers would likely outvote the older BC based workers who now have become the minority on a national basis.
Likely the current makeup of the TWU executive will need to also change to reflect this new reality. What likely is needed is more representation from outside of BC, and especially from back East in the key power/decision making and negotiating positions.
However; this Telus proposal will never see the light of day with the TWU and will never be voted on. And the chances for an arbitrated settlement seem to be less than 50:50. So looks like a strike will eventually be the way to resolve this long impasse.
And that in itself remains a real mystery to me. Why hasn't the TWU taken their members out on the picket line already many years ago? Maybe the TWU workers should consider aligning themselves with the United Steel Workers, just like the BC forest unions did, and then you would see some real unionism in action that would make Entwistle's life simply miserable!