Category — Economy

In the latest issue of Business in Vancouver, my take on a missed Olympic legacy: an improved labour relations climate.

The Cape Pine, anchored in False Creek.

The venerable Cape Pine,a 60-year-old veteran of BC’s fishing industry, dropped anchor in False Creek Thursday directly across from the city’s Live City Yaletown site at David Lam Park.

The Pine, a reminder of the resource and manufacturing industry’s that used to drive BC’s economy, seems out of place in today’s condo-ringed Creek. Built in the United States during the Second World War as a submarine chaser, the vessel was part of the Canadian Fishing Co.’s salmon and herring packing fleet, back in the days when we had a fishing industry.

Today, however, the Pine packs well-heeled tourists, six at a time.

NDP MLA Adrian Dix and Jim Sinclair, BC Federation of Labour president, with locked-out members of UNITE-HERE Local 40, at YVR.

The 2010 Winter Olympic Games have driven home the importance of tourism to the local economy, and you can’t have a strong industry without a capable, motivated workforce.

But that  lesson seems to be been lost on some employers, who have told their workers they will be disposed of after the Games.

YVR food service workers employed by HMS Host — many of them with more than 10 years’ service — are threatened with job loss at the end of the Games as HMS Host tears out a Milestones outlet to make way for a White Spot.

There will be jobs at the White Spot, but HMS Host wants to go non-union. After weeks of talks, 300 workers walked out for 24 hours yesterday, shutting 16 retail outlets.

Wages, although low, are not the issue. The key union concern is employment security.

[Read more →]

B-Line bus riders jammed shoulder-to-shoulder during this morning’s rush hour must have been scratching their heads at the news that downtown businesses are launching a mass protest against Translink’s increases in parking stall taxes today — including “anti-tax advocates manning the entrance to pay parkades throughout Metro Vancouver.”

Translink charging more to drive to work? How dare they?

The downtown business coalition is taking aim at a tripling of the sales tax to 21 percent for paid parking in lots like those downtown and at YVR. (In “drive out the tax” math, that makes the tax increase 200 percent.)

The business groups, including the Downtown Business Improvement Association, the Building Owners’ and Managers’ Association and the Board of Trade, claim parking costs could rise as much as $540 a year ($45 a month) because of “the highest parking taxes in North America.”

Of course, businesses won’t pay the taxes themselves, they’ll pass them on to the drivers. And year after year, Vancouver has some of the cheapest downtown parking in Canada. Calgary, Montreal, Toronto and Edmonton are all more expensive and as for New York and London . . . don’t ask.

It’s all part of the funding package approved by the Translink Council of Mayors in September, after months of debate and consultation, to avert massive cuts to transit services. The $130 million in revenue — in fare increases, property tax increases, gas tax increases and parking sales tax — is what it takes Translink to stand still in the absence of new funding sources from Victoria to pay for a much-needed $4.5 billion, 10-year program of transit investment that won unanimous support from the mayors. [Read more →]