Hundreds of people showed up at a rally yesterday to support CUPE Local 4386 workers at the Corner Brook Civic Centre. It took place during the noon hour at Civic Square City Hall. The 24 employees were locked out by the city on Tuesday after ongoing negotiations for a new contract failed. The main issue in the dispute is wages and while members were in a legal strike position since last week, they held off to continue talks on Monday. After rejecting the city’s same proposal on Tuesday, they were locked out with no notice from the city, and found out through a city news release.
At the podium yesterday, CUPE NL President Sherry Hillier said all these workers want is a living wage which in Corner Brook is $24.40 an hour but the city’s proposal would mean their wage in 2029 would only be $20 an hour.
About 300 nurses gathered at the Civic Centre for their biennial convention from October 19th-23rd but that’s now taking place at Marble Mountain. A number of those delegates attended the rally where their Union President Yvette Coffey said the city of Corner Brook had planned to put these workers out and the writing was on the wall last week when they removed the ice. She says they budgeted over $800K to hold their convention here and had to pivot to another location.
Craig Gardner has been an employee at the Civic Centre and is the President of CUPE 4386. Their latest proposal to the city dropped down to about $47K over four years and Gardner says the city has spent at least that to remove the ice from rinks and lost revenue from cancellations which is in the tens of thousands of dollars, more than enough to cover what they’re looking for. Gardner says the city’s latest offer was the same one they put on the table for the last four months.
Danielle DeBoer spoke on behalf of the Silver Blades Figure Skating Club and the Fitness Centre at the Corner Brook Civic Centre. She says it saddens her heart and it was hard to tell her daughter there’s no skating, as she wanted to know why and she didn’t understand. Deboer says she’s been bringing her family there for 15 years and raised them practically at the rink
Bayfm volunteer Sarah Parsons attended the noon hour event, which also included reps from CUPW, NAPE, UNIFOR and more.
