Time will tell if components of a recent contract for workers in Kitimat will set a precedent for hotel workers in Metro Vancouver.
The Kitimat workers at Cedar Valley Lodge on July 22 voted unanimously to ratify a new one-year collective agreement that secured wage gains up to 40 per cent, according to union Unite Here Local 40.
The vote averted a strike.
Workers at three Vancouver hotels - the Hyatt Regency, the Westin Bayshore and Pinnacle Harbourfront - are in the same union as counterparts at the Cedar Valley Lodge, and are in negotiations with management for a new contract.
Workers at those Vancouver hotels earlier this month voted 65 per cent to authorize strike action.
Other workers represented by Unite Here Local 40 are at Richmond's Sheraton Vancouver Airport and Radisson Blu Vancouver Airport hotels. Those workers have been on strike since June in what is a bitter conflict that has involved the employers suing the union for workers making excessive noise, and the union achieving cease-and-desist orders from the B.C. Labour Board because the employers were deemed to have broken B.C.'s Labour Code.
Cedar Valley Lodge workers are entitled to immediate wage increases of $5 per hour, with maintenance staff at the property receiving an immediate 10% pay increase, according to the union.
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