After a lockout, a strike and months of bargaining, Westbank First Nation and the B.C. Government and Service Employees’ Union have reached a consensus on their collective bargaining agreement for Pine Acres Home.
“It was a very difficult round of bargaining, both sides worked very hard at the end to get a deal,” said Holly Reid, communications officer for the BCGEU.
“I think there is just a sense of relief that (workers) can get back to doing the work that they love.”
Pine Acres Home is a 63-bed adult intermediate care facility. Seventy-seven workers from the facility were given lockout notice June 22.
WFN was seeking concessions from those workers including $4 per hour wage cuts, reductions to vacation and sick time, cuts to benefits and the elimination of pensions for new hires.
Louie said that concessions were needed because Pine Acres was losing money
“We’ve been operating the facility since 1983 and funding the operational costs. The last fiscal year, it was close to $1 million that we put into (Pine Acres) of WFN’s own money,” said Louie.
“It comes to a point where it’s still a business. As a business, we can’t continue to fund an operation that’s costing us money every year—there had to be some cutbacks.”
The new agreement hasn’t cut the wages of any workers; however, vacation time, sick time and benefits have been “brought more in line with industry standards,” said Louie.
The WFN chief said that the new agreement puts WFN in a break-even position.
Louie added that the band is committed to putting over $1 million into capital improvements to bring the Pine Acres building up to standards.
Pine Acres’ future could have been a lot worse if an agreement wasn’t reached.
According to Louie, an ultimatum was given to the BCGEU.
“The final offer was basically, either accept the proposal that we have, or we will have no other choice but to terminate and shut down Pine Acres. We had a date of Aug. 1 that had to be met. That date was very firm—there was no bluff whatsoever in that proposal.
“Once that was understood, we had a little bit of give and take, but we were able to then reach an agreement. The union members voted to accept the final offer.”
Louie said he didn’t think that the relationship between WFN and the BCGEU has been damaged beyond repair.
“We respect the BCGEU. . .we have no animosity whatsoever. We value what the workers have done for the residents there.”
wpaterson@kelownacapnews.com
