Locals 118 and 891 have won the right to represent workers at Vancouver’s Eventstar Services Inc.. Last year, the International assisted Locals 118 and 891 to create a poly-party council to enable both locals to jointly organize stage and tradeshow employers. On April 12, 2011, the poly-party council filed its first application for certification of employees of Eventstar, a company providing labour services in stage and tradeshow.
A mail vote was conducted, with 48 ballot envelopes received. These ballots were sealed when the employer challenged that just 10 of the 80 employees on the voters’ list were Core and Regular On-Call Employees, and that only this group should be eligible to vote. The BC Labour Relations Board issued its decision on January 6, 2012, supporting the union’s position, and concluded that including employees who had worked for Eventstar within the 90-day period prior to the Union’s application for certification was logical and reasonable, and that there was sufficient support for the union to proceed.
The BC Labour Board counted the ballots on January 9, 2012, with 28 voting in favour of union representation and 7 voting against. Locals 118 and 891 will be jointly filing a notice to bargain, and will soon begin negotiation of a first collective agreement.