Facility services workers switch unions

Workers from McMaster’s facility services unit have officially severed ties with their old union.

In a vote conducted by the Ontario Labour Relations Board on Sept. 23, the 270 workers who make up the unit decided to break off their five-year agreement with the sizeable Service Employees International Union two years early and instead entrusted their affairs to the Building Union of Canada.

BUC is a recent upstart in the business headed by former Toronto police union leader, Craig Brommel.

The vote was a narrow one, said Craig Macdonald, the Director of Maintenance at McMaster’s Faculty Services.

“To my understanding, 55 per cent [of union members] were for leaving while 45 per cent were in favour of staying with the existing agreement.”

Regardless of the fact that Brommel used intimidatory practices to silence critics during his stint at the head of Canada’s largest police union—infamously chronicled by CBC’s The Fifth Estate—members have voted to trust him as the head of their new union.

Those who voted for change were unhappy about a five-year collective agreement conceived in 2010 that left the majority of them with small wage increases and few benefits.

Speaking to The Hamilton Spectator, Brommel reiterated that fact saying, “The problem is that a certain group of workers there didn't do well on the last contract. There was almost no pay hike and a lot of take-aways on their benefits. I'd say 75 per cent of the members did not do well and a certain group really got screwed. McMaster seems like a good university, but this last contract was really bad.”

In the same article, the local vice-president of the SEIU, David Bridgers, lamented the recent turn of events but maintained that his union was handicapped by McMaster’s own stinginess during negotiations: “The university was very clear that there was no new money available when we negotiated and we saw that was the way of the world.”

Speaking to the mixed response from votes, Macdonald said, “There’s some people who benefitted from the last contract and others who didn’t do as well. I think that depending on the demographics involved, some saw opportunity in the new union and some saw comfort in the existing one.”

Macdonald is optimistic about the possibilities that the future holds, despite knowing that the agreement will have to satisfy a viagra no prescription wide array of interests.

“The employees haven’t change; we have a great staff. I don’t think the fact that they have different leadership will change our relationship with the workers,” he said.

The parties meet for the first time on Nov. 14 to begin negotiations regarding the new collective agreement that will be drawn up.