Six weeks into labour action that has seen 22,000 public service workers taking part in a full or partial strike from the jobs that keep provincial services functioning, people across the province are feeling the impact of service delays and disruptions.
This toll is being felt across sectors — from social services and the justice system, to university campuses and liquor stores.
With no end in sight for the current labour action, B.C. General Employees’ Union (BCGEU) president Paul Finch says this disruption is inevitable, with the majority of the union’s 34,000 members on strike.
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Kyla Lee, a lawyer based in Vancouver who deals with driving offences and prohibitions, says she’s seeing hearings adjourned indefinitely due to adjudicators being on strike.
It’s left people with driving prohibitions waiting on hearings, decisions or even to hear the case against them — all while being unable to drive for an unknown amount of time.
Lee worries about the impact this is having on individuals’ right to a timely, fair hearing — and the backlog it may cause, even after the strike ends.”It’s going to make it very difficult for adjudicators, when they’re back to work, to render decisions in a timely fashion, because they’re going to have a ton of hearings to catch up on, and that’s going to overload them,” she said.
Kyla Lee on How the BCGEU strike has had an impact on British Columbians on CBC Full Story Here.