Privatization looms over union

Bruce Walkinshaw - Penticton Western News Published: June 17, 2010 6:00 PM

The union that represents City of Penticton workers fears that Penticton council’s reluctance to extend seniority to employees laid off when the community centre closed for renovations in March is an indication that council is considering privatizing the facility when it reopens next year. CUPE local 608 president Patti Finch said the union is going to conduct a campaign to pressure council not to privatize the community centre. “(Council) are still not saying they are going to privatize it, but they are not saying that they are not going to do it either,” said Finch. “We are not silly. We know that if they weren’t going to privatize it they’d be more concerned about the employees that are laid off and they don’t seem to be.” So far, said Finch, of the 36 workers who were laid off — 20 of whom had seniority rights — 18 have been given temporary seasonal positions.“Their seniority will extend past the opening of the new community centre pool. So, that helps a little bit but they will all be laid off again by the end of August,”Under their contract, city workers’ seniority is active for 12 months, which means the worker has a right to get their job back up to one year after the worker has been laid off, she explained.“The indication is that they will not extend our seniority,” she said.Finch said that by not extending the seniority rights of all the workers, not to mention guaranteeing those without seniority their jobs back when the pool reopens, the city is loosing valuable employees to other facilities. “We are losing lifeguards because they are not going to wait around for a year not knowing if they have a job to go back to,” said Finch. “It wouldn’t be that hard for them to extend the seniority because all that it would have meant is that if the pool is kept public, (the workers) will have jobs to go back to. And it would stop us from losing valuable staff. There is a shortage of qualified lifeguards in this province and now they are going to have two pools to guard so that is a big concern for us.

“We are not getting anything from the mayor or council or city hall as to what is going on so we are just going to go ahead and do what we have to do to keep this issue in the news and make sure the public knows what is going on.” Finch said that the local union chapter has already started its campaign by setting up a table at the farmers’ market. “A lot of people at the last farmers’ market gave us their names and phone numbers because they want to be involved or at least know what is going on,” she said. Next month, Finch said that the union will ramp up its efforts with a town hall meeting on July 7 at the Seniors Drop In Centre. “We will have some speakers coming and it will be open to the public,” said Finch, adding that the local chapter will get some help from the provincial arm of the union. “They have what they call a privatization committee at CUPE BC so they will be handling some of that for us,” she said. “It is a campaign we will be doing with CUPE BC who will send in speakers. There will also be radio ads and newspaper ads. “We just really want to keep the community centre public because it is part of the community. It is a place that caters to people with all kinds of needs and all kinds of income which unfortunately when things are privatized doesn’t usually happen.”