B.C. General Employees Union (BCEGU) staff representative Mike Fenton is encouraging communities to get loud after attending Sunday’s rally in Procter to discuss the strike set down for the Harrop ferry on January 2nd.
Fenton joined the packed hall in Procter to clear up misconceptions and deliver the facts as the Harrop ferry gears up to drop down to eight round trip sailings a day.
The escalation follows what the union describes as an unsatisfactory offer from the employer, Western Pacific Marine, that would disadvantage its members.
“Strikes are painful for everybody. They cause pain to the workers because they’re not working, and they’re not being paid. They cause pain to the employer because their business should not be profitable, and it puts pressure on the communities that are affected.” said Fenton.
“And all three of those pressures act towards putting pressure on the two parties to try to get a deal done.”
Fenton says he wasn’t surprised to hear the communities’ concerns and the impact of the job action but is asking residents to direct their anger in the right direction.
“They should be reaching out and voicing their concerns loudly to the Ministry of Transportation, their MLA and to Western Pacific Marine. We’re here every day listening to them.” said Fenton.
“Western Pacific Marine is located in Vancouver with no representation here today or in the community, so they need to hear loud and clear from the community how they’re being impacted by it.”
“We are just trying to get our collective agreement done and utilizing the processes that are available to us to try to get there.”
However, he says the BCGEU will be questioning the number of sailings set down for Harrop, as Glade received 16 to their eight.
“I’m a little bit surprised by those numbers actually. We would have expected it to be the other way around because Harrop is a larger community, so we are asking questions about those numbers too.”
Speaking from experience, Fenton says negotiation like this one, aren’t new.
“We have negotiated essential service levels at other ferry companies that have been more restrictive than what’s in place here. But the very fact that those essential service orders are restrictive, I think has contributed to us getting deals done before it was necessary to take job action.”
B.C. Labor Relations Board Ruling
The latest ruling states the Harrop ferry must run eight round trips per day, and the Glade ferry to run 16 round trips per day, on a schedule decided by the employer, Western Pacific Marine.
In addition, the essential services order states that the ferries will run on demand for the following passengers:
- people with medical appointments
- students crossing to attend classes (or their parents for drop-off purposes)
- teachers and school administrators
- ambulances
- RCMP vehicles
- health professionals
- emergency dispatches
- a person responding to a mental or physical health emergency
- snow removal vehicles
- vendors making scheduled deliveries to the Procter General Store including fuel truck
Fenton says employees will be on deck to deliver these essential services and asks the community to remain respectful during this difficult time.
“We’re going to be on the ground here every day at the ferry terminal making sure that the essential service order is honored.” said Fenton.
“I’m instructing our members that if they are threatened or abused by people in the public that they have the right to walk off the job.”
“We don’t do this lightly, but it is the only avenue available to us to try to reach an agreement.”
The BCGEU will meet with Western Pacific Marine this afternoon, December 30, to discuss a strike action strategy moving forward.
“We are going to be speaking with Western Pacific Marine in the early afternoon to try to work out some of the logistics of how to make this go in a smooth way as possible for the community.”
How did we get here?
This didn’t happen overnight.
Prior to 2002, the Harrop ferry, like all other inland ferries were government services. Since the age of privatization each ferry operation has to negotiate their own collective agreements with the current contractor.
These agreements include wages and employee benefits.
“Our contract expired in April, and so we’ve been trying to negotiate with all three ferry companies since April 1st, and it was a long process.” said Fenton.
“We were successful in reaching an agreement with WaterBridge ferries and WaterBridge equipment, and those collective agreements are now in place. Everyone’s working and those communities are having their full services available to them.”
“With regards to Western Pacific Marine, we tried to negotiate with them throughout the summer. They made themselves unavailable.”
The BCGEU says they remain at an impasse with negotiations; therefore, job-action will be taken to add pressure to the employer to get the deal done.
“The question was asked earlier, what’s the point of withdrawing our services if Western Pacific Marines still gets paid? Well, the answer to that is that they are fined for missed sailings.”
“We have this tug of war going on with Western Pacific Marine, where they want to get as many sailings as possible, and we want to have as few sailings as possible.”
“We’re trying to find the right combination to cause some economic pain for the employer so that they’re motivated to come and resolve a collective agreement with us.”
Previously the Kootenay Lake Ferry strike applied only to the Balfour-Kootenay Bay ferry, however, the employer’s challenge of the original essential service order was successful in forcing more sailings at Balfour and therefore pushed the pressure further downstream.
“Our only action to be able to put more pressure back on the employer was to include Harrop and Glade.”
The BCGEU is calling for an agreement to include:
- Adequate wages that capture cost of living rises
- Employee benefits
- Adequate training for staff
- Better scheduling
For more information or to stay up to date with ferry schedules, please visit ferries.bcgeu.ca.
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