08 August 2003

A grateful B.C. mailing house
agrees to restore, better lost wages

British Columbia | TNG/CWA Local 30403

It's payback time for workers who saved their mailing house employer from going under by agreeing to major wage rollbacks a decade ago.

Western MailTech Ltd. of Delta, B.C., has signed a new three-year contract with the Local that gives members their first substantial gains in 10 years. Guild members have now recovered from the rollbacks and advanced.

Ray Rudersdorfer, president of the Local, and Karl Roberts, chapel chair (shop steward), negotiated the new deal that was accepted unanimously by the membership, which ranges from 30 to 65 full- and part-time employees, depending on the season.

Western MailTech is a closed shop, having been organized 15 years ago. It has always been a family-run organization and, when a different family took over in the early 1990s, the company would have gone under if the employees hadn't agreed to a 10-per-cent across-the-board wage cut, explains Rudersdorfer. "We decided that it would be wiser for us to go slow. That was at the insistence of the employees."

The fully computerized operation, which does mailings for large institutions such as Canada Post, banks and political parties, requires skilled people to operate its sophisticated equipment. They include office staff, machine operators, machine setup operators, programmers and laser printer operators. Hourly pay rates at the plant range from $9.30 to $20, depending on category.

Under the new contract, their hourly wages will increase by 25 cents, 30 cents and 35 cents on Aug. 1 of this and the next two years. Casual employees will get another $1.00 an hour after six months of work experience.

The new deal also brings improvements in sick leave as well as a strengthening of strike/picket line language.

Rudersdorfer explains that the company already acknowledges legal picket lines. It has gone a step further, however, and allows individual employees to decide what to do if one of MailTech's customers is involved in a labour dispute. The MailTech employee cannot be fired for refusing to cross a legal picket line.