Union Changes ICBC Job Action Email Signatures

August 17, 2012

This morning (Friday, August 17, 2012) the BC Supreme Court granted the Insurance Corporation of BC’s (ICBC) request for an injunction against the Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union Local 378 (MoveUP) that requires the union’s ICBC members to remove a job action message from their work email signatures. The union had taken similar job action in 2003 without complaint.

The injunction does not restrict the union’s rights of expression and does not affect other ongoing job actions.

“The injunction is very limited and only applies to the templates contained in the email messages,” said Allan Black, a lawyer representing MoveUP, “The union has already begun instructing members to remove the signature.”

Unionized ICBC employees have been without a contract since 2010 but haven’t seen movement at the bargaining table on key issues such as workload. MoveUP members at ICBC have been wearing buttons and leafleting at locations across the province to spread their message that both ICBC workers and BC drivers, whose insurance rates are too high, are being left behind while the government takes $1.2 billion from ICBC profits into general revenue.

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Media Contact: MoveUP’s Legal Counsel Allan Black is available for media comment today (Friday, August 17) at 604-632-3380 or ablack@blackgropper.com.