Transit workers in Comox and Campbell River on strike
Correction: A previous version of this story had an incorrect last name for the Unifor representative. CHLY regrets the error.
Transit workers in Comox and Campbell River went on strike Friday morning citing wages as the key stumbling block to an agreement with Pacific Western Transportation that BC Transit contracts services to in the area.
While this shuts down public transportation for tens of thousands of people, the union and employer agreed to keep operating the HandyDART buses for people with disabilities.
Unifor Local 114 represents 75 workers who operate regular and HandyDART buses, and work as mechanics or cleaners.
Unifor national representative Gavin Davies was on the picket line in Comox on Friday.
He says the three major stumbling blocks are the rate of pay for current employees, a proposal by the employer to pay new hires less, which he says will make it harder to recruit and retain drivers and lead to drivers working more overtime, and funding issues.
Davies says that under the proposed step rate new hires would be paid less than current workers who do the same job compounding problems with retaining drivers.
“There were five transit operators that were hired, three of them resigned within a very short period of time. So there's only two remaining out of the five, because they get a job somewhere else that pays more.”
A spokesperson from Pacific Western Transit declined an interview but a statement released on Wednesday says that the company is disappointed that a second tentative agreement was rejected by workers.
The statement says that the company offered wage increases that were higher percentages than those in recent BC Public Sector Union agreements, with an 18 per cent increase in overall compensation and a 15 and a half per cent increase to wages over three years.
Davies says that is true, but doesn’t address the fact that wages are below that of other transit operators in the province.
“The problem that you have is that when you have somebody who's making $10 an hour and gets a six per cent wage increase, that turns out to be a lot more than somebody who's making $7 an hour and gets the same percentage, so the gap is continuously widening.”
He says that transit workers in Victoria, Whistler and the Fraser Valley make significantly more money than workers in Comox and Campbell River, who are being offered the same percentage increase.
A statement by the North Island Students Union says that many students rely on transit to get to school and the disruption is stressful for students who need to take exams now.
The student union statement says the strike is a result of “chronic underfunding of public transportation in B.C.” and calls on the BC government and regional districts to better fund transit in the region so transit workers can be paid the wages they deserve.
Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.