A Briarpatch Special Report to ActUpInSask.org

Promotional image from AFI's website.

The University of Regina has contracted a strikebreaking firm accused of instigating picketline violence to provide security during the current labour dispute, Briarpatch has learned.
 

Barb Pollock, vice-president external relations at the University of Regina, confirmed on Wednesday that the firm had been contracted to "monitor the in-and-out of the picket line.”

Union leaders that have dealt with AFI during other labour disputes have complained of the company's security guards engaging in intimidation tactics and provoking violence on the picket line.

Chuck Rouse, president of Local 506 of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada in Saint John, New Brunswick, told The Tyee earlier this year, "It wasn't unusual for them to be right in your face, yell at you and then turn the camera on and try and record your reaction."

According to the AFI website, the Toronto-based company's "core business is focused exclusively on services that enable employers to manage work stoppages due to strikes, lockouts or plant closures safely and securely."

The firm takes pride in “the fact that we have never had any of our security personnel charged with violating any laws while assisting with a labour dispute situation.”
 
Back in 2000, Douglas Aitchison, president of CAW Local 397 in Brantford, complained to Eye Weekly that AFI guards had tried to provoke strikers: "They tried to work on the picketers," he said. "They would talk dirty to the women. They would say, 'Let's have sex,' 'Nice tits,' shit like that. Really terrible."

At the U of R campus, AFI security guards sit in SUVs parked directly behind the picket lines, with video cameras mounted on the dashboards. The guards have been observed taking notes when people stop to visit the line. To their credit, they have also reportedly intervened when line-crossers have aggressively confronted picketers.

Pollock said the university is paying $26 an hour for the guards. A starting CUPE security services worker earns between $11.25 and $13.50 an hour, according to the last collective agreement.

In addition to security and surveillance, AFI's website boasts of their dedication “to providing companies with only the most qualified temporary staff, particularly when it comes [to] skilled trades workers.”

“Our replacement workers,” the site goes on, “are professional, reliable, skilled and available for long-term placements.” The firm also offers transportation services “to meet all of your transportation needs, including ones requiring personnel or product to cross picket lines or the arranging of offsite warehousing.”

Some picketers reported seeing a large private cleaning company vehicle with several occupants crossing the line on Tuesday, however Pollock denied that AFI was providing other services beyond security.

"They're here purely for security," she said

What is clear is that picketers are under heavy daily surveillance, one of AFI’s specialties.

In August 2005, AFI appointed Michael Thompson, former Canada Post head of security, as Executive Vice President of Investigations and Operations. During the 1990s Thompson was implicated in the illegal surveillance of CUPW members, which included recording union meetings and telephone conversations, the illegal observation of union members' mail and breaking into union leaders' cars.

Evert Hoogers, a CUPW national union representative, was quoted in a National Union online article as saying that Thompson ordered his inspectors to investigate and collect information on "virtually every facet of postal union activists’ lives.”

“The list included financial information, telephone records, intimate details of workers’ personal relationships and, disturbingly, even the names and addresses of the schools attended by union leaders’ children," Hoogers said.

As a result of reported incidents and this appointment, AFI retains a highly controversial profile among labour organizations.

“In day-to-day human endeavour, safety and security is what we all seek,” Thompson said at a BC Human Resources Management Association workshop in March 2007.

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