ICBC taking union to court over workers’ email signatures
Posted July 23, 2012 4:27 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – The labour dispute between ICBC and its unionized workers just got nastier.
ICBC is now taking the union to court over workers’ email signatures.
As part of its job action, the union asked workers to change the signatures at the bottom of their emails to say, “We work. You drive. We both deserve better.”
They used to say, “Building trust. Driving confidence.”
“We take exception to that,” says ICBC spokesman Mark Jan Vrem. “We feel very strongly that this is an inappropriate use of ICBC’s trademark, its property and business systems and we’ve taken court action in an attempt to stop it.”
COPE Local 378 Secretary Treasurer Lori Mayhew says the legal action won’t stop workers from sending out emails with the new tag line.
“We did the same thing back in 2003 with our job action and there was no complaint or action from ICBC over it,” Mayhew says. “As far as we’re concerned, this was a legitimate job action, we gave them 48-hours notice as was required under the essential services hearing and I’m actually quite surprised by this action.”
The union served 24-hour strike notice last month.
Employees stopped working overtime earlier this month as part of their job action.
