PV Vancouver Bureau
With the US tariff war looming over the British Columbia economy, the province’s NDP government is already pulling back from its limited campaign promises in last fall’s election campaign. Less then a month before the 2025-26 BC budget will be presented to the legislature on March 4, the NDP has announced a hiring freeze and cancellation of its $1000 per family “grocery rebate” pledge. But there are no plans to roll back huge tax breaks for the rich and the corporate sector granted by Gordon Campbell’s Liberal government almost 25 years ago.
Public sector workers, and others employed by companies on government contracts, are facing the consequences of the “changed reality.” Collective agreements are coming up fast for tens of thousands of public employees.
The BC General Employees Union (BCGEU) has 90,000 members in almost every sector of the province. The union says that in 2022 it was able to win “significant increases that almost matched inflation over the period of the agreement. But years of falling behind prior to that and an outdated classification system that pays workers less than they would earn doing the same job in other jurisdictions have left a significant gap between our compensation and the wages needed to maintain strong public services for our province.”
LifeLabs strike pits workers against US giant
First up are 1200 workers at LifeLabs, the biggest private provider of medical tests for BC residents. Represented by BCGEU, the workers went on strike February 15, after months of what the union calls the company’s refusal to offer wages and benefits in line with the cost of living, or to address poor working conditions resulting from chronic understaffing.
“LifeLabs workers receive 4-16 percent below what others in their industry get paid and they are struggling to make ends meet,” says BCGEU president Paul Finch. The union points out that LifeLabs is now owned by Quest Diagnostics, a billion-dollar US health giant, pitting the workers against a US for-profit model of healthcare.
The union is bargaining for wage increases that bring the workers closer to their counterparts in the public sector doing the same work. They also want to solve short-staffing and workload issues, and gain improved health and safety benefits.
“Workers want the employer to come back to the table with an offer that is less focused on their corporate profit margins, and more respectful both of workers, and the thousands of us across BC that depend on LifeLabs’ services,” says Finch.
Union calls to bring CLBC back into direct government
In a different dispute, BCGEU is calling on the NDP to bring Community Living BC (CLBC) back into direct government, after a recent coroner’s inquest and conflict of interest concerns weakened confidence in the agency’s current system of governance.
For years, BCGEU and its 800 members who work at CLBC, as well as clients and advocates for people with disabilities, have been ringing the alarm about the need for systemic changes to prioritize better services. The union warns that “the 20-year experiment of providing these services outside of direct government has been shown to be a failure. CLBC clearly doesn’t have the governance controls and management structures in place to accomplish their mandate.”
CLBC’s bloated bureaucracy diverts direct-care funding into executive compensation, far outpacing wage increases for front-line staff. Since 2019, CLBC executives have seen increases ranging from 39.9 percent to 75.4 percent, while pay increases for front-line workers have averaged only 19 percent.
NDP needs to prioritize people over profits
“The NDP government was re-elected last fall on the basis of promises to improve the lives of working people,” says Communist Party of BC provincial organizer Robert Crooks. “Instead of protecting the rich and powerful, Premier Eby and his cabinet need to make sure workers don’t pay for an economic crisis they didn’t create. Employees in the health and social services sector need pay increases to match the cost of living, and improved benefits for themselves and their families. We need adequate staffing to provide high-quality public services for all people living in BC, not hiring freezes. This has to be the priority, not simply pulling US booze out of BC Liquor stores.”
[Photo: BCGEU]
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