VIDEO – Members of the union representing City of Powell River workers held a demonstration on Saturday, January 12 as part of their campaign to reopen the concession at Powell River Recreation Complex.
CUPE (Canadian Union of Public Employees) Local 798 held the demonstration at the intersection of Joyce Avenue and Complex Way. They held signs that read, “The concession is yours, reopen it,” “Save our services,” “Reopen your concession,” and “Honk for support.”
Graham Mahy, CUPE Local 798 treasurer, said the union was holding the demonstration to bring attention to the closure of the complex concession. Council decided to close the concession after the hockey season ended in 2012 as part of budget reductions designed to achieve a minimal tax increase.
The union executive presented a petition to council and has had meetings with Mayor Dave Formosa, Councillor Russell Brewer and CAO (chief administrative officer) Mac Fraser to bring forward options, Mahy said. “We seem to be getting stalled and not getting a whole lot of response from them,” he said. “So we’re out here today to bring it back to the public eye, gain support for it and put pressure on council to reopen it.”
Some of the options the union has brought forward include different staffing schedules, Mahy said, including staffing options, different menu choices, raising prices and also just reopening for Powell River Kings games.
An average wage for a CUPE member who works at the concession is about $16 an hour, Mahy said. The worker who is in charge of the concession during a big event is paid between $19 and $20 an hour, he added.
“The concession is really important to this community,” he said. “It provides a service to everybody who uses the recreation complex, the user groups as well as the patrons.”
The union wasn’t only demonstrating to save their jobs, Mahy added. “We’re also here to support minor hockey, because it affects them when they have tournaments and out-of-town teams come over,” he said. “It also affects our Junior A hockey team, the Powell River Kings. People aren’t going to the games because they can’t even get a cup of coffee there.”
Danielle Craigen, president of the local, said the union wanted to “bring pressure on mayor and council to bring a decision to reopen the concession for the community, to bring us back to where we were to provide the service.”
She agreed with Mahy that minor hockey was affected by the closure. “It’s hard enough to get teams over here because of ferries,” she said. “Usually they’re picking people up and now they’re finding it inconvenient because they have to walk somewhere in the rain to get a coffee. They can’t get it here.”
Formosa said that since the meeting with CUPE about the concession, he has been waiting for a staff report to cost out the options. “When we were doing our budget last year, we were looking to not have huge increases to taxes,” he said. “It took a number of concessions in different areas to come to that conclusion. We did have a tax increase, but we thought it was quite minimal compared to what staff was looking for. We felt we would use our best efforts so that money could go toward asset management. We didn’t feel that having taxpayers paying to keep the concession open was the best way to go.”
According to Bill Reid, director of parks, recreation and culture, the concession cost taxpayers $16,389 in 2011. In addition to base pay, part-time workers receive an additional 26 per cent in paid-out benefits.
Council would like to see the concession reopened, Formosa said, but funding it through taxes “just wasn’t on. I’m hopeful that the union came up with some good stuff and maybe management can come up with some things and they can find some ground that makes this more palatable to the taxpayer.”
Reid said he is working on the report and expects it will soon be completed.
