Bulletin
***REVISED*** CMBC – New Collective Agreement 2019-2022 Spread Over Premium Article 11.04
June 3, 2020
To: All MoveUP members at Coast Mountain Bus
***REVISED*** Last paragraph first sentence in bold.
Your bargaining committee sincerely appreciates all the hard work the entire membership has been doing during this unprecedented time, with the COVID-19 pandemic. The membership quickly responded and pivoted to meet the Employer’s needs and was very flexible to ensure that day-to-day work continued despite the limitations with the pandemic. Your bargaining committee wants to collectively thank you for your efforts.
As you folks are aware in this round of the bargaining your bargaining committee made substantial gains without taking any concessions from the employer. We effectively added several monetary provisions to the new collective agreement, one of which, included a SpreadOver premium. The bargaining committee negotiated this premium to help your co-workers in the Transit Security Department, where they may be mandated to sign up for split shifts. The bargaining committee negotiated this language into Article 11.04 on January 14, 2020.
Article 11.04 Shift Premiums
A spreadover premium shall apply to any worker whose normal days of work on a broken shift exceeds ten (10) hours duration from the start of the first piece to the end of the last piece of work. The spreadover premium shall be 25% of the employee’s straighttime rate and shall be paid for the time worked from the tenth hour of total elapsed time.
For the purpose of this Article, total elapsed time (T.E.T) shall mean the time between the start of the first piece of work and the end of the last piece of work and includes the time not worked between pieces. No work can extend beyond twelve (12) hours total elapsed time.
The bargaining committee’s entire discussion with the employer and in our own union caucus was explicitly about how this premium would apply to your co-workers in Transit Security. In addition, in ratification meetings with the membership we communicated to the membership that this premium was only to be applied to Transit Security, as this was the intent of the language negotiated at the table.
The employer, however, has an opposite stance and interpretation of the language and is taking the position that they are now allowed to roll out split shifts to the entire enterprise since a spreadover premium was negotiated into article 11.04 and that the union didn’t explicitly communicate that this provision was only to be applied to Transit Security. Your bargaining committee has taken the firm position that at no time did we agree to rolling out split shifts to the enterprise and that we will vigorously defend our members’ rights. The employer is advising your union that they intend to roll out split shifts in the Depot and potentially in Customer Information. Your union will immediately file a policy grievance on this matter and will advance this matter to full arbitration. As we firmly believe our bargaining notes and language in 11.02 (b) of the collective agreement clearly demonstrate that the employer is not permitted to introduce split shifts into the enterprise without first negotiating them. We have heard from many concerned members and please understand that we are working for you and we will not take this erosion of our rights lightly.If you have any questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact members of the your Bargaining Committee.
In Solidarity,
Your Bargaining Committee:
Brendon Faustin, Job Steward
Vivian Ho, Executive Councillor
Ruth Ritchey, Job Steward
Parm Sandhar, Union Representative