SaskTel will not be letting the striking employees return to work on Tuesday, in the absence of a collective agreement. Unifor announced Monday morning that the members who have been on strike since Friday would be back at work on Tuesday, but there would still be the possibility of going back to the picket lines if bargaining didn’t begin again soon.

A notice to Unifor from SaskTel says they don’t have to provide notice of a lockout because Unifor began strike action, so employees who are Unifor members will not be permitted to return to work or enter onto SaskTel property.

The telecommunications company is also considering legal action to stop Unifor members from preventing non-union employees from reporting to work at the SaskTel Contact Centres.

An email statement from SaskTel says Unifor will only provide 24 hours’ notice before going back on strike, but it takes the Crown Corporation up to 48 hours to mobilize the necessary systems and have accesses reinstated.

SaskTel also says after the work to rule strike action last week, they found configuration issues that may have impacted the ability to televise pay-per-view events. The email also states that there may have been fake orders created, which may have potentially disrupted service to customers.

SaskPower says it is not following SaskTel’s lead and Unifor members who return will be put to work today. SaskPower says the main change that customers will note is that the call centre will operate from 9 to 4 today as opposed to 10 to 3 which were the hours kept when management had to step in, in the face of a full strike on Friday and Monday.