West Vancouver Blue Bus drivers approve strike, disruptions start this weekend

West Vancouver Blue Bus (District of West Vancouver)

Blue Bus drivers and maintenance workers have overwhelmingly voted in favour of a strike against their employer, the District of West Vancouver.

Cornel Neagu, the president of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 134, announced this morning that their members have approved strike action by a vote result of 99%.

With the approval of their members, the union states it will file a 72-hour strike notice today, and then implement an immediate overtime ban and uniform ban to start at 1 pm on Saturday, July 23.

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Regular scheduled bus service will continue for now, but the overtime ban will impact the number of buses available, likely resulting in some cancelled buses and reduced frequencies. This also comes at a time when public transit services are facing a labour shortage.

The start of labour action on Saturday also coincides with the first night of the Honda Celebration of Light fireworks that evening.

The union represents 150 members who work for the Blue Bus system of 64 buses and an average of 18,000 boardings daily, including key routes that link the North Shore with downtown Vancouver via the Lions Gate Bridge.

Neagu states they are looking for a new collective agreement that provides improved washroom and turnaround time breaks for drivers, and wage parity for community shuttle drivers to match the conditions of TransLink’s Coast Mountain Bus Company drivers. Currently, Blue Bus community shuttle drivers are paid $3.30 less than their counterparts in the region.

“We want a new contract, not job action, but we will do whatever it takes to reach a new collective agreement that treats our members as fairly as all other transit operators in Metro Vancouver,” he said.

“We drive the same buses, do the same difficult job and need the same pay and the same breaks from safely driving our valued West Vancouver and North Shore riders… We are not asking for anything more than what all other Metro Vancouver transit operators currently receive under their Coast Mountain Bus Company contract – why is West Vancouver penalizing Blue Bus drivers?”

The union filed a complaint to the BC Labour Relations Board after talks with the municipal government broke down late last year. The current contract expired at the end of March 2022.

However, in a statement in response to the union’s vote result, the District of West Vancouver says it “offered a fair deal,” including “significant wage increases” in line with TransLink workers’ most recent agreement in late 2019, and measures to address the working condition concerns identified by the union.

This includes providing Blue Bus wage increases of 5% for skilled trades and 3% for all other employees. The municipality states it also proposed a wage increase above 3% to address the wage gap between the community shuttle drivers of the Blue Bus and TransLink.

The municipal government’s proposed contract is for a period of one year to allow employees to receive wage increases immediately and address remaining concerns within a short time frame.

The last labour dispute on the Blue Bus was in Fall 2016, and it led to a one-day full-scale strike.

Blue Bus services are operationally and jurisdictionally separate from the rest of Metro Vancouver’s services under TransLink, although they share some integration such as scheduling and fares.

Bus and SeaBus services operated by TransLink were disrupted in Fall 2019 due to labour action, but a strike of workers on the SkyTrain Expo and Millennium lines was narrowly averted.

In February 2021, a strike of SkyTrain Canada Line workers, separately operated by SNC Lavalin’s ProTrans BC division, was also averted.

Last month, BC Transit’s contractor for Sea to Sky Corridor buses — serving Squamish, Whistler, and Pemberton — resumed services after a 136-day-long, full-scale strike, making it the longest public transit strike in the history of the province.

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