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More than 70 workers at the Heidelberg Materials, cement factory in Delta, B.C., have been locked out by their employer after a breakdown in contract negotiations.
Workers at the site, represented by the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers (IBB) union, have been without a contract since May 2024. The company locked out the workers at 8:00 a.m. on January 13 after refusing to back down from a new contract provision that would allow jobs previously done by unionized workers to non-union hires.
The North Star spoke with the IBB's Kevin Forsyth, business manager and Secretary Treasurer representing the district to which the Heidelberg Materials workers' local belongs. “It wasn't our demands that got us locked out. It was the fact that we weren't willing to give in to contracting out our work,” he said.
The morning of the lockout, the union sat down at the B.C. Labour Relations Board with a mediator to once again try and discuss the next steps. Forsyth recalled, “They had just passed us a rewritten collective agreement with all the changes as if they got every proposal they wanted and they didn't negotiate and they said, 'If you agree to this, you can come back.' And then we walked out,”
Forsyth added, “We're not taking any concessions. At this point, we are not into any concessions. It's a very old, mature, longstanding collective agreement.”
The union's proposals include a competitive wage increase and improvement in benefits. Regarding benefits, Forsyth states, “We were just looking to make a small improvement because it hasn't gone up. The benefits in long-term disability has not gone up in years. Dental has not gone up in, you know, over a decade.”
The union believes the lockout may last a long time, but a “major maintenance shutdown coming up” may impede it. “I don't know if they're willing to push through that because they can't effectively run their shutdown. But they did this because they had our guys on layoff, and they're full. They've got lots of cement right now.”
The company has been squeezing more and more out of their workers since their last contract and throughout the years. “They have taken a workforce that was a much bigger workforce, and through attrition it's gotten smaller, and they rely heavily on us working overtime," said Forsyth. "Now they want to take away our rights to some of that overtime and our seniority rights because they want more people, but they don't want them to be in the union.”
Heidelberg Materials was founded in 1874, in the city of Heidelberg, Germany and now boasts profits of nearly €2.1 billion (CA$3.1 billion) according to their 2023 financial report. In the past, the company has contracted for at least three landmark projects within Canada: the Golden Ears Bridge connecting Langley and Pitt Meadows, the Vancouver Convention Centre in downtown Vancouver, and the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton.
Forsyth remarked, “They're a big, huge multinational that can definitely afford to not do this. And this is all about control and ease of operation.”