Metro Vancouver workers closer to 'full-scale strike' with no contract progress

Metro Vancouver's unionized outside workers are threatening a full-scale strike after no progress toward an agreement during weeks of rotating pickets. 

Jesse Medeiros, the president of the Greater Vancouver Regional District Employees’ Union, says in a statement that the members are "fed up" with no progress or talks planned.

Pickets have been set up on Thursday at work yards in Surrey and Delta as part of the union's weeks-long job action. 

The union says Metro Vancouver has attached preconditions to a return to bargaining, and workers will be forced to conduct a full-scale strike despite efforts to "minimize inconvenience to the public."

However, the regional district has said that no preconditions are being attached to continuing talks, and it has offered five bargaining dates as well as the appointment of a mediator that the union has rejected.

The union's last agreement expired about 17 months ago.

Rotating pickets have so far hit Metro Vancouver's head office in Burnaby, multiple wastewater and water treatment facilities, and popular recreational sites such as the Grouse Grind and Queen Elizabeth Park.

Picture Courtesy: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck