Victoria Shipyards Probationary Pay

It has been brought to your union’s attention that your employer has been paying newly hired employees a probationary rate of 90% of the salary listed in the collective agreement.

Upon further review between your union and your employer, it appears that this practice is in fact, correct.

The previous collective agreement in place from 2016 to 2021 appears to have an administrative error when the agreement was being amended by the employer after that round of bargaining. In the 2013 to 2016 agreement, the salary scale of LOU 7, which is the portion of the collective agreement specific to MoveUP members (formerly COPE 378) states:

*probationary rate – 90% of wage rate

It appears that when the salary grid for MoveUP members was incorporated into the main salary grid in the 2016 to 2021 collective agreement, that sentence was inadvertently missing.

The parties have reviewed the bargaining notes and proposals of the affected year and there is no indication that either party intended to have that language removed.

Your union has discussed this with your employer and we have agreed that the intention of the language remains and that we will discuss adding it back into the agreement during the next round of bargaining.

In solidarity,

Yudon Garie
Union Representative