After working without a contract since the beginning of February and weeks spent in mediation, FortisBC officially locked out its employees of IBEW Union 213 on Wednesday morning.
Residential and commercial services should not be affected and field crews will be able to respond in the case of an outage or emergency.
“We respect the right for our employees to take legal job action, and since May the union has proceeded with job action. But recently it began to escalate. And we felt it had the potential to affect the safe and reliable delivery of electricity to our customers,” explains Joyce Wagenaar, director of communications at FortisBC.
“So this morning, in response to the job action, we activated something that is referred to as an essential services order.”

That order outlines services and staffing levels that were negotiated with the union, with the assistance of the labour relations board. It allows FortisBC to continue providing electricity in a safe and reliable manner, but with fewer employees and resources at its disposal.
“We began negotiations with the union in January. In March they filed a strike notice. At that point, the process is FortisBC applies to the labour relations board to have certain work functions designated as an essential service and that is done through the negotiation with the union,” says Wagenaar.
“(We) received the essential services order in late April, and since May 16 we have experienced job action, which has recently escalated.”
While Wagenaar chose not to use the word “lockout”, union spokesperson Rod Russell had no problem throwing around that terminology.
“The company informed me just before 9 a.m. that they were going to be engaging in a full scale lockout,” says Russell, who admits the union has been involved in “limited” job action for the past six weeks.
“Things like not using computers, not doing some of their duties, not doing paperwork -- various things, and on an escalating basis to put pressure on the company to come to an agreement.
“From our standpoint, we’ve been trying to make sure that safety isn’t something that is adversely affected.”
The two sides have exchanged multiple offers to no avail with Russell saying FortisBC’s most recent counter offer “wasn’t something we felt we could ratify,” although he says the lines of communication are still open.
Approximately 240 employees (all with FortisBC Electric) will be affected by the lockout that stretches from Princeton to Creston and up through the Okanagan Valley to Winfield.
“It’s all very unfortunate. It would have been way better to just get to a deal, but here we are and eventually we’ll get to a deal and hopefully it’s sooner rather than later,” says Russell.
“We think we’re looking for something reasonable and fair and I’m sure the company thinks the same thing. We think we’re doing what’s right for us, and they think they’re doing what’s right for them.
“I don’t anticipate either of us getting a whole lot of sympathy.”
Russell says the main points they’re looking at in a new contract are a three per cent general wage increase for three years, and a net gain of one day off with pay for Family Day.
FortisBC says there is no set date to return to the bargaining table.
-- With files from Jennifer Zielinski