Rob Shaw: B.C. labour talks escalate as trade threats, record deficit test NDP
The province is broke, Americans have started a trade war, and now B.C.’s public sector unions are hinting at a whole lot of labour strife on the horizon.
Nobody said running a provincial government was easy.
That must be the thought going through the minds of some New Democrats, as they wrestle not only with the unpredictable day-to-day global turmoil sparked by U.S. President Donald Trump, but the comments of the new BC General Employees’ Union president Paul Finch, who kicked off public sector bargaining this week with ominous warnings that there’s “a high probability of a dispute this round of bargaining.”
BCGEU members are still reeling from cost-of-living increases caused by inflation, he said, opening talks with provincial negotiators in Victoria by reading them a Reddit post by a union member who’d lost hope because of how hard it was to make a decent living.
“I talk to members every week that are absolutely struggling to get by, that are working second jobs … especially those in the lower-paid classifications across the civil service,” said Finch.
“It’s not a secret there’s an affordability crisis in British Columbia. It impacts the younger generations more acutely for a variety of reasons, and our members are struggling to get by. They are........
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