LABOUR DAY 2017

The Joint Council turns 46 – Happy Labour Day to All

The Victoria Joint Council of Newspaper Unions started on Sunday, June 27, 1971, when representatives of five print unions met at the former Union Centre on Quadra Street.

It was an idea whose time had come.

The unions’ memberships subsequently endorsed the formation of a Joint Council. There were five separately-certified bargaining units then, four today. Before the Joint Council, collective bargaining was done by individual unions and co-ordination between unions was casual. With the Joint Council, a co-ordinated and organized process of collective bargaining under one umbrella came into existence and continues to this day, but with the individual unions maintaining their identities.

Forty-five years ago, the five unions were the Victoria Newspaper Guild, Local 223; the Victoria Typographical Union, Local 201; the International Stereotypers and Electrotypers Union, Local 88; the Victoria Printing Pressmen and Assistants Union, Local 79; and the Victoria Mailers Union, Local 121. The employer was Victoria Press Ltd., a subsidiary of FP Publications of Winnipeg, and it published two newspapers, The Daily Colonist, which came out in the morning, and the Victoria Daily Times, an afternoon newspaper. There were separate editorial departments with separate managements.

Times change, of course. Since 1971, the unions have evolved into four bargaining units – the Victoria-Vancouver Island Newspaper Guild, CWA Local 30223; CWA Local 30403 (mailers); Media Union of BC, Unifor Local 2000 (printers and pressmen). The publisher today is Glacier Media Group of Vancouver.

Unions have represented workers at the Victoria Times

Colonist and its predecessor newspapers for a long time. One of them began as a local printers union in 1863, five years after the start of The Daily Colonist and 21 years before the Victoria Daily Times began publication, and on April 18, 1884, it became the Victoria Typographical Union, Local 201 of the International Typographical Union.

Throughout this time, there have been some enormous and significant changes including major technological revolutions relating to the printing process including computerized typesetting, amalgamation of The Daily Colonist and Victoria Daily Times in 1980, and sometimes-difficult negotiations that led to strikes in 1973–74 (during which the unions published their own newspaper three times a week for six months,

The Victoria Express) and 2002. The last four rounds of negotiations were conducted without a single strike vote and without the need for a mediator.

The efforts and contributions of past and present union leaders and members, everywhere, is recalled and celebrated, especially on Labour Day – every Labour Day.