Peter Shokeir | [email protected]
Around 60 hospitality and culinary staff at the ATCO Valemount Camp have voted by nearly 90 per cent to join UNITE HERE Local 40.
This group is the first unionized ATCO camp on the Trans Mountain pipeline.
鈥淚 think this is huge for Valemount camp workers and something they should be very proud of,鈥� said Stephanie Fung, spokesperson for UNITE HERE Local 40.
鈥淲e鈥檙e working to fight for better working conditions and better lives for people who work in camps, and it鈥檚 very exciting to see ATCO Valemount camp workers coming together.鈥�
UNITE HERE Local 40 represents 6,000 workers throughout B.C. who work in hotels, food service and airports, and already represents 330 other camp members.
These members include the Civeo and Horizon North camp workers in Kitimat, and Kitimat LNG janitors and Parsnip camp workers north of Prince George.
鈥淭hey鈥檙e an important part of our membership, knowing that with the pipeline projects coming up in the past decade, (there are) really just huge profits to be made, and workers who work at these camps deserve a fair share,鈥� Fung said.
Levi Gerlib, a general helper at the ATCO Valemount Camp, said he was 鈥渆cstatic鈥� about the results of the vote.
鈥淚鈥檓 excited that we鈥檙e able to unionize. I鈥檓 proud of us that all of us can actually come together and really band together and change our conditions. It鈥檚 encouraging.鈥�
Two major concerns of camp workers were the wages and travel pay.
Gerlib said many workers including himself were being paid just over minimum wage.
He also described his travel pay as 鈥渁lmost insignificant鈥� at $140 per month and noted it should be based on distance travelled.
Gerlib was one of the most vocal advocates of unionizing and helped convince others to sign on.
鈥淚t wasn鈥檛 even that hard to convince people, because we got a 90 per cent vote, so it just speaks to the fact that mostly everyone was like, 鈥榊es, we need to change these conditions. We need to take some control here,鈥欌�� he said.
The vote to unionize was conducted last year in late July, but a legal challenge delayed the vote count until this year.
Earlier this month, the B.C. Labour Relations Board ultimately rejected the challenge and ordered the votes to be unsealed and counted.
According to the decision, ATCO Frontec argued that the bargaining unit was inappropriate for collective bargaining since it did not cover both the Valemount and Clearwater camps and also excludes maintenance employees, who have overlapping duties with the janitorial department.
However, the decision noted that the camps were 200 kilometres apart and didn鈥檛 have enough transfers in-between to amount to employee interchange, while the extent of task sharing between janitorial and maintenance staff was 鈥渕inimal.鈥�
Fung said it was a common tactic for employers to say a bargaining unit was inappropriate, particularly when it comes to camps.
鈥淚n the end, we showed that camp workers should be allowed to vote and work together, and in the end, the results speak for themselves,鈥� she added.
The workers in Valemount now intend to begin negotiations as soon as possible.
In response to the 51暗网鈥檚 email query, ATCO Frontec provided a quote from Vitaly Galiulin, vice-president of Operations & Sales, North America.
鈥淲e certainly believe Frontec is a great organization and we鈥檙e always asking ourselves 鈥榟ow could we do this better?鈥�, so we look forward to sitting down with the union representatives and discussing the path forward,鈥� Galiulin said.
