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Friends,

Thank you to all of you who attended Tuesday’s member meetings or spoke with us individually throughout the week.  We appreciate your participation, support, and encouragement. This bulletin is a summary of the Union’s response to the Employer’s announced operational changes as well as an update.

On February 28, 2024, during a Teams’ meeting the Employer told the bargaining committee about its operational changes. Immediately following that meeting, the Employer met with members of the Union to announce its operational changes. Those meetings were followed up with email communication in the days following. During our February 28^th meeting with the Employer, we took the position that it is required to provide what is known as Section 54 notice to the Union. Section 54 notice is a legal requirement. The Employer disagreed.

In response, on March 12, 2024, the Union applied to the Labour Relations Board alleging that the Employer’s Operational Changes and conduct at the bargaining table violated the Labour Relations Code. The Labour Relations Code is the law that establishes the conduct of unions and unionized employers in this province.

The Union’s position is that the Employer:

1. Did not follow Section 54, Adjustment plan, of the Labour Relations Code. Section 54 says that if an Employer introduces or intends to introduce changes that impact the “terms, conditions or security of employment of a significant number of employees to whom a collective agreement applies” the Employer must give the Union 60-days’ notice and engage in discussions in an attempt to develop an adjustment plan.

An adjustment plan is intended to mitigate the impact of the operational changes. It can consist of measures that include retraining, alternatives, changes to the collective agreement, or severance pay. The implementation of an adjustment plan can be jointly administered by the Employer and Union.  

The Employer says that its operational changes do not impact a “significant number of employees” and that as a result, it does not need to provide section 54 notice or engage in adjustment plan discussions. The Union’s response is that in one way or another, the operational changes will likely impact the entire workforce. In other words, the Employer’s operational changes will impact a significant number of employes. The Union’s application asks the board to order the Employer to engage Section 54 discussions.
 

1. Violation of the statutory freeze. The Employer’s failure to provide section 54 notice is further compounded by the fact that the Employer can’t change any term or condition of employment, without the consent of the Union. The collective agreement at clauses 31.4 and 31.5 also prevents the Employer from doing so.
    

1. Bargaining in Bad Faith. We are in active bargaining. It was incumbent on the Employer to put those operational changes to your bargaining committee during bargaining particularly as section 54 contemplates the need to amend the collective agreement which is the purpose of negotiations ‑ to amend the collective agreement. Instead, we were told by the Employer’s spokesperson that it had hoped we would have reached a tentative settlement during our last bargaining session because it intended to announce the program changes after we had concluded bargaining. The Union says that is bad faith because the Employer had an obligation to specify those operational changes to the bargaining committee to allow it to bargain any necessary collective agreement changes.
    

1. Interfering in the administration of a union. Also, known as an unfair labour practice. The Employer met with us at 9:00 a.m., February 28. Less than an hour later it started its meetings with the Union’s members, followed by written communication with the members. The Employer raised the changes while we are in the midst of bargaining, with no opportunity for discussion, and immediately spoke to the employees. It characterized the changes as decisions already made and as inevitable.

We filed the application at the Labour Relations Board to ensure that the interests of the members are protected. However, it is our hope that we will be able to resolve this issue satisfactorily with the Employer without the need for the board to become involved. To that end, we wrote to the Employer offering to place our application on hold in exchange for the Employer’s agreement to engage in those conversations with the Union during our scheduled March 19, 20 and 21 bargaining dates.  We have been going back and forth with the Employer about that proposal since early this week.  As of this writing, there has been no agreement.

Unfortunately, the developments of February 28^th have led us to the difficult decision to cancel bargaining scheduled for March 19, 20 and 21. It would be irresponsible and a disservice to each of you to proceed with negotiating a tentative settlement for the renewal of your collective agreement absent a resolution regarding the impact of the Employer’s operational changes on all of you and by extension, your terms and conditions of employment as established in the collective agreement.

As always, we will continue to keep you informed as this issue progress.

If you know a BCGEU member who didn’t get this bulletin, please send them a copy. They should log on to the MY BCGEU member portal—my.bcgeu.ca—to give or update their email address. Go to https://my.bcgeu.ca/signup to create an account.

In solidarity,

Christina Petrina, Bargaining Committee Chairperson
Take Mori, Bargaining Committee
Simon Rosengarten, Bargaining Committee
Megan Cawood, Servicing Rep
Zoe Towle, Spokesperson, Negotiations


Download PDF of notice here

UWU/MoveUP