New five-year contract approved for 1,000 staff on SkyTrain Expo and Millennium lines
Earlier this week, unionized members working on the Expo and Millennium lines ratified a new tentative five-year agreement, which overlaps with a crucial period of major expansion for the SkyTrain network.
The Millennium Line’s Broadway Extension to Arbutus will open in early 2026, while the Expo Line’s Fraser Highway Extension to Langley Centre will open in late 2028, at which point the SkyTrain network will grow to a length of 101 km and 67 stations — up from the current size of 80 km and 53 stations.
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There will also be a new and larger train fleet, two new additional major SkyTrain operational and maintenance centres in Coquitlam and Langley, and a new state-of-the-art SkyTrain control centre building in Burnaby’s Edmonds area.
BC Rapid Transit Company (BCRTC), the TransLink division that operates and maintains the Expo and Millennium lines, is expected to grow its workforce size considerably to meet this network growth.
āThere will be many new hires over the next four years, so we wanted to make sure that our wage and benefit package would be at a high enough level to attract top candidates to this organization and to our great union,ā said Tony Rebelo, the president of Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) 7000, in a statement.
The contract between September 1, 2023, and August 31, 2028, provides BCRTC’s SkyTrain workers with general wage increases of 6.75%, plus 2% to 3% depending on the Consumer Price Index average, and 2.5% for the remaining three years.
Workers will also receive “substantial” premium increases over the life of this contract, including improvements to health benefits and the sick plan, introduction of contracting-in language, and improvements to working conditions, such as limits to forced overtime provisions.
This replaces the existing contract ratified in late 2019 during a heated labour dispute that nearly devolved into a full-scale strike. A complete shutdown of services on the Expo and Millennium lines was narrowly avoided during early morning negotiations.
This time around, negotiations prior to the expiration of the existing contract are described to be comparatively amiable.
āThis contract provides stability — both for our members and for the public,ā continued Rebelo. āFor our members, it addresses many of the concerns they have raised in the workplace. For our passengers, it provides five years of labour stability, a period encompassing the opening of our Broadway expansion.”
Earlier this month, CUPE ended its strike of BC Transit’s Fraser Valley bus services workers, but only after a 124-day strike, with the provincial government appointing special mediator Vince Ready to bring an end to the major service disruptions.
Workers on SkyTrain Canada Line, which is separately privately operated by SNC Lavalin’s Protrans BC division, are currently under a four-year contract between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2023. Nearly 200 Canada Line workers are represented by the BC Government and Service Employees’ Union (BCGEU), with the existing contract ratified and applied retroactively in February 2021 after 13 months without a contract. A full-scale strike and complete service shutdown was narrowly avoided.
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