A majority of union members walked off the job August 17, after management at the New Westminster Call Centre suspended eight workers for refusing to do work for which they were not trained and that belongs in a higher job classification. The workers gathered in the cafeteria to discuss the situation. Over that day and the next, several hundred workers around the province also began study sessions to try to find a way to convince management that their methods would not work. The workers agreed to return to work when the company offered to sit down with the union for discussions.

But it soon became clear that management had no intention of changing their approach. Following an August 22 attempt to force the support team to do the contested work, a full-scale work stoppage by thousands of workers spread across British Columbia . An estimated 80 percent of all TWU members in the province took part in one way or another.

The Canadian Labour Relations Board (CLRB) was called in to negotiate the dispute. After a meeting, the CLRB ruled that while the TWU members must return to work, management was obliged to refrain from reassigning the disputed work during a "cooling off period" of at least 15-days. The ruling stated that the issue was to be resolved through union-management meetings and an independent arbitrator was assigned to monitor the entire process.

Although the fight is not over on this issue, this struggle has demonstrated the solidarity that exists within the ranks of the union, and the power of the union when the members make a decision to stand and fight for their rights.

Bonita Murdock member of the Telecommunications Workers Union at the New Westminster Call Centre.