It took the removal of just one word to change the scope of one part of the City of Burnaby's new contract with the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 23.
"It was a fairly tiny change," Bob Moncur, Burnaby's city manager, said. "We have a specific clause in the contract that prevented or spoke to the issue of sexual harassment, and the union side had asked that we include some language about what they call workplace harassment."
The issue can be complex, Moncur said, as it can be difficult to determine what constitutes workplace harassment or bullying.
"So what we decided all in all was the easiest way to do it was just to remove the word sexual, so where it previously said 'sexual harassment in the workplace shall not be tolerated', it now says 'harassment in the workplace shall not be tolerated,'" he said.
Complaints made under the new contract will follow the "normal course of grievance handling," he added.
"It allows a union member who feels they're harassed to say, 'according to the contract, harassment will not be tolerated. I think I'm being harassed, therefore, I have a grievance,'" Moncur said.
Other unions in B.C., including the B.C. Government and Service Employees' Union, have added workplace harassment or bullying language to their contracts recently in an attempt to curb on-the-job bullying.
Overall, the negotiations between the City of Burnaby and the union went smoothly, according to Moncur.
"It was carried throughout with a very positive tone. I don't think there was any sort of nastiness or any animosity from one side to another," he said. "The union has its job to do, to present things on behalf of its members, and management has its job to do, primarily looking for opportunities to reduce costs and save money and that kind of thing."
This was the first contract the city negotiated on its own since withdrawing from the Greater Vancouver Regional District's labour relations bureau.
Burnaby gave two year's notice in 2008 that it would withdraw from the bureau at the end of 2010.
During this round of negotiations, the city made its own presentations to the union, and analyzed all the information itself, including the cost to the city for any changes.
"That was all kind of done in-house this time where before that was always done by the GVRD," Moncur said.
Leaving the bureau has resulted in a cost savings for residents, he added, as the charge for the service was included in the annual Greater Vancouver Regional District tax levy on property taxes.
"It was not on the tax bill for past two years," Moncur said. "Nominally, the citizens of Burnaby saved money more than the city itself."
The recently appointed acting director of human resources, Pat Tennant, headed the city's work on the contract.
"She did just an outstanding job for us," Moncur said of Tennant, who was most recently assistant ERP project manager for the city. "She'd been in the position before, had gone away to the computer project for a while, and was able to come back and hit the ground running because she'd been there before."
The city reached a four-year collective agreement with the union, with a 6.75 per cent increase, he said.
The increase is broken down over the four years - 1.25 per cent for the first year, 1.75 per cent each for the second and third years, and two per cent for the fourth year, Moncur added. The agreement is retroactive to Jan. 1, 2012 and ends Jan. 31, 2015.
The contract did not include any whistleblower protection language, he confirmed in a followup email.
"Even last time, it was brought from another jurisdiction by the union and after some discussion we decided there was no example in Burnaby of a 'whistle blower' being treated incorrectly and we don't usually amend the contract on the basis of 'what-ifs,'" he wrote.
The issue came up during the last round of CUPE B.C. contract negotiations in 2007, with some Lower Mainland locals demanding whistleblower protection language be included.
Local 23 put the language on the table but later removed it, according to local president Rick Kotar, because it was determined it wasn't necessary in Burnaby.
Kotar refused to release details on the terms of the recent agreement or speak to the Burnaby NOW, saying it is because of past coverage in the paper. The Burnaby NOW had published an editorial in 2007 suggesting the Burnaby union local did not push for whistleblower protection - unlike the union in Vancouver - because of its cozy relationship with a city hall led by the NDP-allied Burnaby Citizens Association.
The municipal union represents 2,500 municipal and library workers from areas including public works, arenas and aquatics, RCMP and fire support services, and administrative services, according to the release. The previous agreement, reached in 2007, gave members a 17.5 per cent salary increase over five years.
