Brandon Hydro Strike

By: Maria Garcia Manzano

This past week if you drove down Victoria East, perhaps you saw several individuals waving signs outside the Manitoba Hydro Service Center and generating station. They are part of an ongoing Manitoba-wide strike started by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 2034 after rejecting Manitoba Hydro's latest contract offer. The IBEW Local 2034 has been working without a contract since 2018 and they represent 2,300 workers, including employees in generation transmission and distribution.

Last Tuesday, the strike began after the union started planning rotating strikes with customer service staff in Winnipeg staging the first walkout. Soon, similar scenes began to follow across the province. The Brandon strike started Wednesday, and the majority of strikers have staged their strike on Victoria East. In contrast, only a handful of strikers have protested outside of the Manitoba Hydro's offices on 10th Street. To minimize the disruption for their customers, Brandon's strikers only picketed from Wednesday and concluded on Friday. Mike Espenell, IBEW Local 2034 business manager, explained to Brandon Sun that this strike is the culmination of 28 months of negotiations with Manitoba Hydro. The corporation offered the IBEW members zero percent wage increases for 2019 and 2020. Furthermore, they were only offering them a 0.75 cent wage boost for 2021.

One of the main reasons IBEW members chose to reject this offer was because, in their opinion, the offered rates are below the cost of living, making it an unacceptable proposal. Espenell further explained that they only seek not to fall behind. And that other underlying elements that contributed to this strike were the increasing number of layoffs that have, as a result, impacted their response time. Espenell also said that the union is more than willing to begin renegotiating but believes the best way forward would be through arbitration.