Labour unrest pitting union workers in Coquitlam, B.C. against Ledcor is still grinding on after two years but federal intervention may bring resolution to the dispute in the fall.
Approximately 238 technicians at Ledcor (LTS Solutions Ltd.) were granted automatic certification from the Canada Labour Board as members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 213 in August 2017 and 71 technicians at Telecon Inc. were certified in February 2018.
“We indicated we were moving to collective bargaining, and we gave the scope of who was in and who was out of the collective bargaining unit for IBEW 213. We had a disagreement (with Ledcor) on who was in or out of the bargaining unit,” explained IBEW 213 assistant business manager Robin Nedila.
According to the IBEW, LTS disputed the size of the bargaining unit and said it consisted of only two groups of workers. IBEW then filed an application to review the certification as well as an unfair labour practices complaint with the labour board.
In November 2018 the application for review was heard and in January 2019 the board awarded IBEW 213 two groups of employees LTS had disputed were part of the union certification process. In that time the bargaining unit had declined to 161 members.
It’s been an impasse for months and months and the only thing that’s changed over time is we’ve lost business opportunities,
— David Hoff
Ledcor
“We made a little progress on some parts of the agreement but made no headway on anything monetary or anything of significance our members were looking for. Fast forward to 2019 and more than two years later there’s no collective bargaining agreement, no urgency to come to an agreement and also the bargaining unit was being reduced,” Nedila claimed.
Strike notice was issued on Sept. 25, 2019 and on Sept. 30, 2019 workers walked off the job.
Ledcor spokesperson David Hoff said the company’s relationship with IBEW 213 began when the union certified technicians working for the company had indicated they wanted to begin the bargaining process.
“Bargaining was interrupted by court action to change the scope of what was covered under certification, which was unsuccessful,” Hoff said. “That cost many months of certification. As word got out that IBEW was about to go into a strike position, our business eroded.”
In a Dec. 13, 2019 letter sent to federal Minister of Labour Filomena Tassi, IBEW 213 said, “unfortunately since LTS and Telecon workers were certified, their working conditions have gotten even worse. It is clear that both companies are only interested in measures to ensure a collective agreement may never happen.”
When asked in a follow-up interview about the worsening conditions referred to in the letter to the minister, Nedila said a sense of fear developed amongst the workers regarding labour action.
“In general, there was a real fear for being a union supporter at the beginning driven by one story in particular. In 2017, couple of new folks in bargaining unit went on break and went into the union hall, and Ledcor asked why they had gone into the hall,” Nedila said.
Hoff cited the ongoing strike and more recently the COVID-19 pandemic as reasons for the decline in work.
“Work is drying up and we’re laying people off and they’re still on strike. It’s been an impasse for months and months and the only thing that’s changed over time is we’ve lost business opportunities,” Hoff said.
“Telecom (as an industry) was fairly steady going into COVID,” he added. “We would prefer to have an agreement and more technicians working for us.”
The December 2019 letter appealed to the Canada Labour Board to settle terms and conditions of the first collective agreements as specified in section 80 (1)-(4) of the Canada Labour Code which allows the board to “inquire into the dispute and, if the board considers it advisable, to settle the terms and conditions of the first collective agreement between the parties.”
Canada Labour Board hearings are scheduled for October of this year, IBEW Local 213 business representative Dustin Brecht said.
“We’re at the mercy of the board at this point and hopefully everything works out,” Brecht said.
“Ledcor is not a federally regulated organization, it’s working under provincial rules, so certification has been under provincial rules. IBEW has the opinion it should be federal and that’s up to the federal government to determine,” Hoff said.
“Ledcor remains committed to reaching an agreement that recognizes the realities of our business environment and enables us to remain flexible and competitive in our marketplace,” he added in a follow-up email to the Journal of Commerce.
In June the BC Building Trades posted support for the striking IBEW 213 members and on July 3 Community Savings Credit Union CEO Mike Schilling expressed support for the workers on strike both on social media and in person on the picket line.
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