At the North Shore Winter Club (NSWC) I am walking in solidarity with members of Local 389 in a lockout lasting 179 days so far.
I brought coffee and apple strudel to the very appreciative 6 members walking the line.
Public here seems very supportive.
Regressive Winter Club Board of 8 wanted to introduce 67 changes to a contract only containing 17 clauses and is only 22 pages long.
The Board wanted to offer zeros across the Board for three years to a contract going back to June 2012 with no retroactivity.
The Board wants to offer a regular work day being 6,7,8,9, or 10 hours a day depending on operational needs with as little as 24 hours notice with the work week being 4 to 6 days.
The Board also wants to extend the time from 2 years to 4 years to earn 3 wks vacation. Banked vacation will be limited to 4 weeks from 6 weeks unless you are already at 6 weeks in which case you would be grandfathered.
Board no longer wants to recognize seniority for anything anymore.
Board wants to roll back benefits 20%.
This Board is so barbaric that they wanted to bargain in taking away the provincial and federal law of allowing 4 hours from work to vote provincially and federally. This was only rescinded when this Board got a legal opinion on it!
When members voted whether or not to accept these ridiculous offers from the Board there were 16 of them. Now there are only 12.
1 died on LTD. 1 member who was on probation during the vote was fired by the Board the next day. 2 had to leave to get other jobs.
The Board consisted of 8 members including a member of the BC Business Council Greg D’Avignon, a high ranking member of the TD bank Alan Holton, a high ranking member of the RBC bank Darwin Schandor, a lawyer from the Farris law firm Michael Korbin, a President from Curl BC Scott Braley and some others directly associated with the NSWC.
David Long the Manager of NSWC was the GM of Terminal City Club of Vancouver, who was instrumental in the decertification if that union there formerly belonging to the CAW.
At least 4 new members of the Board have recently been elected by the General membership of the club including 2 former NSWC Board members who previously were on good terms with the Unionized members. The other 2 elected are unknown still.
So there is hope.
The photo attached is of me and Tom Bisson shop steward of unionized staff there and speaker at the National Convention who spoke passionately of their current situation.
thanks