Bulletin
Coast Mountain Bus – Member Update
May 7, 2020
To: All MoveUP members at Coast Mountain Bus
Thank you to you all, for your patience and understanding especially over the last few weeks with the uncertainty providing additional stress.
We wanted to provide you with an update now that the bumping process for CMBC is now complete.
In our conversations with your employer, we expressed all the concerns and frustrations surrounding the process. While your employer did apologize and express sympathy over their errors and the lack of time they provided you to make your decisions, they indicated that they needed to complete the bumping swiftly so that no member would lose out on pay due to delays in the process.
During this last round, your Bargaining Committee did have proposals to update the layoff and bumping language. However, your employer dug in on their position and would not agree to our amendments. With the experience we have gained from this current pandemic, we will prioritize updating the bumping language in the next round of negotiations.
We have confirmed with your employer that your seniority will continue to accrue just as it would if you were still working as long as you remain on the recall list as Article 6.06 in your collective agreement states.
Unfortunately, members who take on casual on-call shifts will not gain extra seniority, to remain fair to those members unable to take casual hours.
Your employer has also ensured us that they will relax the language regarding the declining of casual shifts. This means that no regular member will jeopardize their emergency benefit entitlement or be subject to investigation.
Also, we have confirmed your 2019 retroactive pay will be processed by the May 17 pay period cut-off-date and will be paid on May 22. This will not affect your ability to receive your Employment Insurance or Canada Emergency Response Benefit, (CERB) entitlements as the wages are considered previously earned. Your 2020 increase will also be reflected on your May 8 pay cheque.
Last week the employer shared their exempt labour adjustment plan, and now we have seen four new TransLink postings for exempt hires. Your union views this as very disrespectful and not how an enterprise such as TransLink, claiming to be in financial despair should be conducting business. Our belief is, if there is a true hiring freeze currently within the organization, new positions should not be filled until they are able to bring back the existing unionized workforce which they have said are “the heart and soul of our combined organizations”.
We find this even more concerning as our members are currently spread throughout the lower mainland and many on lay-offs. Now is a time for us to be vigilant in ensuring our work is not performed by non-bargaining staff. If you have any concerns or you see examples of non-bargaining unit staff performing bargaining unit work, please let us know right away so we are able to immediately address the issues with the employer.
Our advocacy and discussions with senior government officials are still on-going. We are hopeful that the provincial and federal governments will come with emergency funding for our transit system soon, especially after Premier Horgan’s announcements on the careful reopening of our province yesterday.
We are working hard to provide you with all the latest and most relevant updates we have. If you have not yet done so already, we invite you to join our Fund Transit Now private group page on Facebook. Our hope is the page will provide members with support and an avenue for all of you to be able to be involved in our campaign for emergency transit funding relief to keep the system running and the workers working.
In solidarity,
Parm Sandhar, Union Representative
Christy Slusarenko, Vice-President of Combined Units