Residents may face locked doors at Brennan Park, gated municipal fields and a clogged-up City Hall if contract negotiations between the District of Squamish and its unionized workers are not soon resolved. The district's 150 CUPE local 2269 workers voted overwhelmingly in favour of strike action Wednesday Nov. 12 over unmet wage increase demands, according to a CUPE regional representative Robin Jones."The whole region - Whistler, Pemberton, all of the Lower Mainland and all of Vancouver Island have settled for the same wage package, and our expectation is we will be in that ballpark as well," said Jones. But, Jones said, union negotiators have been told Squamish is having financial issues. "I don't hold Squamish as being unique in any sense so they'll have to go with the going rate," he said.So far, district chief administrative officer and employer negotiator officer Kim Anema has rejected the four-year wage increase of three per cent, three and a half per cent, four per cent and four per cent. "There's definitely a gap when it comes to wages," said Mayor Ian Sutherland.The parties are also disputing a proposed scheduling increase."The employer has tabled language to increase hours of work to go to seven-day operations without hiring more staff of course, so we're not prepared to go there," said Jones. Union workers' collective agreement expired in Dec. 2007, and district employer and CUPE have been negotiating a new contract since April 2007. In the face of a stalemate, CUPE applied for a mediator. This week, the BC Labour Relations Board appointed mediator Mark Atkinson to the task. Squamish is the only municipality from Pemberton to the Lower Mainland to Vancouver Island that has not yet settled a collective agreement, according to Jones. And according to a BC Labour Relations information officer, Squamish is the only municipality in the province requiring a mediator to settled municipal collective agreement bargaining. "It's gone on probably longer than certainly we would like," said Sutherland. "But they've had other the union has had other obligations to deal with."The strike vote means CUPE can issue a 72-hour strike notice anytime over the next 90 days. If a strike does happen, the community would suffer, said Sutherland."It would impact the rec centre - the rink, the pool, playing fields - and many of the services at City Hall, virtually all the services at the operations department. So you would have a large impact, no doubt about it. The union is an integral part, an important part of what we do at the city and all over the community. And we value the contributions that our employees make.Despite the impending possibility of a strike, spokespersons for both sides seem positive about the outcome of negotiations. "At the present time there's no move afoot at all to disrupt anything," said Jones. "We're optimistic we can get a deal with some mediation, and it's business as usual.""To us, we understand that taking a strike vote is part of the procedure," said Sutherland. "We're not overly concerned that there's going to be any [work] stoppages anytime soon. "At the end of the day we want to get a contract that is fair to the people working for the city and also fair to the taxpayers who pay that bill."
