Metro Vancouver workers are resuming job action, with various parks and safety workers walking off the job over the last two days.
This is the Greater Vancouver Regional District Employees’ Union (GVRDEU)’s second round of job action escalation in recent weeks. They first started job action on May 24, demanding stronger health and safety language in the collective agreement, protections against contracting out bargaining-unit work, and measures to improve recruitment and retention.
The GVRDEU represents Metro Vancouver’s over 750 outside workers, who operate and maintain regional services like drinking water, wastewater systems, parks, ecological reserves, and housing communities.
It escalated to a full-scale strike on June 15, before the GVRDEU accepted a BC BC Labour Relations Board offer for mediation.
But on Sunday, July 5, GVRDEU said in a release that the mediation sessions “did not resolve the dispute to date.”
“Our union is doing everything it can to put pressure on Metro Vancouver management and its elected board of mayors and councillors, but we cannot seem to get a new collective agreement without continuing to escalate our job action,” said GVRDEU President Jesse Medeiros, in a release
“If this leads to a full-scale, all-out indefinite strike, so be it.”
On Sunday, workers at all 25 of the region’s parks (which include popular sites like Grouse Mountain) walked off the job. While they are now back at work, 26 unionized members of Metro Vancouver’s specialized Technical Rescue Teams (TRT) are off duty today.
Lijuan Guo/Shutterstock
TRT members are trained to deal with confined space emergencies, working with police, fire, and other first responders in situations where lives are at risk.
“Our members are an integral component of Metro Vancouver’s Technical Rescue Teams, providing important engineering and other skills and knowledge in a confined space situation, working with other experts,” said Medeiros.
“In the unlikely and unfortunate event that such an incident takes place, they will rejoin the TRT to provide help, but we need to make a clear statement that 18 months without a contract for them and over 700 other workers is unacceptable.”
What are the issues?
Medeiros said that Metro Vancouver management didn’t respond to the union’s concerns about improving health and safety provisions, reducing the contracting out of union members’ work, and retention and recruitment of skilled workers.
While there are tentative plans for another mediation session with the Labour Relations Board on Saturday, July 11, the union president said they may or may not go ahead.
“Going to mediation with an employer who has no interest in negotiating a fair and reasonable collective agreement in line with other Metro Vancouver municipalities’ workers is a useless exercise,” Medeiros said.
While Mederios said that Metro Vancouver management is insisting on concessions from the union, Metro Vancouver told Daily Hive in an email that they have no preconditions and are not asking the union for any concessions.
They said that they remain “committed to reaching a fair and reasonable agreement and are prepared to return to mediated negotiations as soon as possible.”
“Our offer includes a wage increase of more than 10 per cent over three years, which is consistent with other recently negotiated agreements in the region, including with our Teamsters union, and exceeds several other public sector employers,” Metro Vancouver said.
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