Metro Vancouver water workers escalate job action, picket Queen Elizabeth Park
Unionized staff have withdrawn from pump stations and parks across the region after 17 months without a contract. Health and safety protections and contracting-out clauses remain sticking points.
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Unionized outside workers across Metro Vancouver Regional District are ramping up job action, with pickets now at Queen Elizabeth Park and pump stations across the region.
The Greater Vancouver Regional District Employees' Union, representing 700 members who operate and maintain drinking water, wastewater systems, parks, and ecological reserves, has been without a contract for 17 months. On Wednesday, workers picketed at the Little Mountain Pump Station and Reservoir at the entrance to Queen Elizabeth Park, as well as the Kersland pump station in Vancouver and the Westburnco operations yard in New Westminster.
Union president Jesse Medeiros said the escalation is a message to management because no talks are currently scheduled. "Unless Metro Vancouver management returns to negotiations and reaches a fair and reasonable new contract with our bargaining committee, we will be forced to further escalate our job action up to and including a full-scale strike," Medeiros said.
The union is demanding stronger health and safety language in the collective agreement, protections against contracting out bargaining-unit work, and measures to improve recruitment and retention. Medeiros pointed to recent cost overruns on major infrastructure projects as evidence that management, not workers, bears responsibility for the region's financial pressures.
Metro Vancouver management has offered over a 10 per cent wage increase over three years and said it is ready to return to bargaining with a mediator "as soon as possible, with no preconditions."