Here are the issues facing BC workers this election
Public Transit: Workers’ voices
Inclusion of workers’ voices is essential in decision-making processes and governance structures that protect public transit and public interest. Reforming current governance models would ensure elements of sound governance structures like, democratic accountability, safeguarding transit reliability, and centering frontline expertise in public transportation are part of governance structures and practices.
Unifor calls on provincial authorities to overhaul transit governance models across B.C.:
- Mandate Frontline Worker Representation on Transit Boards: Amend the South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority Act and the British Columbia Transit Act to legally require designated, voting board seats for frontline transit worker representatives designated by union locals representing transit staff.
- Establish Formal Consultative Protocols: Require structured consultation with transit unions and frontline operational staff to inform decisions regarding procurement, contracting, service restructuring, or fleet acquisition.
- Enforce Accountability Mechanisms for Contracting Decisions: Subject all private third-party delivery models to transparent, public performance audits.
- Strengthen Municipal Democratic Oversight: Expand municipal representation on provincial transit boards to ensure local councils hold decisive voting authority over service delivery, capital investment, and contractor evaluations in their jurisdictions.
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Public Transit: Employment
To protect frontline workers, resolve recruitment crises, and ensure high standards of public safety across British Columbia’s transit network, decision-makers should adopt a worker-centered policy framework:
- Ban Contracting Out of Transit Operations: Implement an immediate legislative and policy moratorium on outsourcing public transit driving, maintenance, and support services to private third-party contractors.
- Mandate Strong Fair-Wage and Labour Standards: Ensure that any interim public procurement or operational agreement enforces strict fair-wage policies, full-time employment guarantees, robust health and safety protections, and respect for collective bargaining rights.
- Invest in Workforce Development and Retention: Partner with transit unions, training institutions, and provincial agencies to fund comprehensive apprenticeship, recruitment, and retention programs that establish public transit as a stable, career-path industry across British Columbia.
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Public Transit: Procurement
To optimize public expenditure, protect worker standards, and advance domestic economic and climate objectives, B.C. decision-makers should overhaul transit procurement strategies through a public-first, “Buy Canadian” lens by:
- Prioritizing In-House Public Delivery Models: Formulate a strategic preference for direct public ownership and operation of transit systems, mirroring successful public models utilized by regional districts rather than defaulting to long-term private operating contracts.
- Implement a Strict “Buy Canadian” Mandate: Align provincial transit grants and regional procurements with the federal. “Buy Canadian Procurement Policy Framework”.
- Require all transit agencies (including TransLink and BC Transit) to mandate strict domestic content, local assembly, and Canadian-sourced raw materials like, Canadian steel and aluminum).
- Support Domestic Manufacturers: Direct procurement dollars toward established, domestic unionized manufacturers, ensuring public funds strengthen high-skilled domestic manufacturing jobs.
- Reform RFP and Evaluation Criteria: Embed stringent public-interest tests into all transit procurement frameworks, heavily weighting domestic supply chain integration, workforce stability, local economic multipliers, safety standards, and environmental accountability over the lowest initial financial bid. This prevents a downward spiral and erosion of standards and services in public transportation.
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Public Transit: Contracting In
- The provincial government must establish an accountable, publicly run transit system.
- We ask that the provincial government bring HandyDART service directly into public government operations.
- Conduct a Comprehensive Public Review: Mandate a complete, transparent review of all private transit delivery models across BC Transit and TransLink prior to any further contract extensions or renewals.
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Forestry
- The federal, provincial, and municipal governments must come together to develop a national industrial strategy that identifies the distinctive strengths and gaps of Canada’s forest sector, establishes medium and long-term development priorities as well as urgent short-term transition supports, and mobilizes all legislative and regulatory levers to achieve them. This strategy should include an inclusive steering body and provide space for the voice of workers;
- The federal government should create an industrial transformation fund to send a strong signal and restore confidence. For decades, parts of the forestry sector have suffered from chronic underinvestment, leaving some facilities in a deteriorated state and complicating the path toward renewal. However, public funding must be conditional on modernization and forward-looking investments. It cannot be used to sustain business as usual;
- The federal and provincial governments must take a more proactive and forward-looking approach to just transition for workers and make transition funds available immediately for workers who need urgent support. Move from a reactive (post-closure) model to a preventive approach that enables workers and communities to prepare in advance for structural changes in the sector. Workers require stabilized workplaces, and their priority is to adapt unionized workplaces in ways that preserve existing working conditions. In cases of more significant disruption, they require robust immediate support to keep people at work and comprehensive transition assistance.
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