VANCOUVER — All bus and SeaBus services could be suspended in Metro Vancouver on Monday as transit supervisors prepare to launch a two-day full-scale strike.
CUPE 4500 announced Thursday the plan to escalate its existing job action, saying TransLink’s Coast Mountain Bus Company hadn’t responded to the union’s latest offer.
Union spokesman Liam O’Neill said they have been waiting for more than four weeks for a response to their latest proposal.
“Our patience for Coast Mountain to take bargaining and our issues seriously has been exhausted,” O’Neill said at a news conference on Thursday in Burnaby.
“Our members deserve a fair deal.”
The 180 members represented by CUPE 4500 will walk off the job and set up picket lines at the company’s bus depots as of 3 a.m. on Monday, for 48 hours.
The move effectively suspends bus and SeaBus services as Unifor Locals 111 and 2200, which represent transit drivers and support workers, have previously expressed their support of the job action and their members’ intention not to cross picket lines.
The union wants wage discrepancies and workload issues addressed.
Coast Mountain said it has offered CUPE 4500 the same wage offer agreed to by other CMBC unions. It said the union’s demand of a 25 per cent wage increase over three years for transit supervisors, which make up about a third of the union, is “unreasonable.”
“We urge the union to immediately end their job action and return to the bargaining table with realistic expectations,” said Coast Mountain president Michael McDaniel.
According to figures provided by Coast Mountain, the union is asking for a 25 per cent increase for transit supervisors, which would bring their annual salary to $115,477 after three years from the current $92,400. The company said it is offering workers a 13.5 per cent wage hike to $104,886 after three years.
O’Neill said it is a matter of inequity. “A group of our members do the same work as other transit workers with TransLink and our members are paid significantly less for doing the same job.”
Coast Mountain’s proposal also includes a 13.5 per cent increase for shift service supervisors and transit communications centre supervisors, versus the 20 per cent increase the union is seeking.
O’Neill said the additional cost to the company for its wage proposal is less than 0.05 per cent of Coast Mountain’s 2024 budget for wages, salaries and benefits: “It’s essentially a rounding error and yet they still refuse to deal with the wage inequity that exists.”
Transit riders reacted with alarm and dismay at news of a possible strike on Monday.
“I don’t know how I’d get to work if the buses aren’t running,” said Debbie Flores, while waiting for a bus on Main and 16th Avenue in east Vancouver.
She works as a nanny and commutes every day on buses and SkyTrain from her home in Surrey to Vancouver.
She might be able to walk to the nearest SkyTrain station, but it’ll take 45 minutes each way. “It’ll make life even harder for me.”
