According to an email sent to members, only BC Wildfire Service employees should be allowed overtime.
This comes after a week of industrial action which saw picket lines set up at four liquor distribution centers across the province.
The BCGEU represents more than 33,000 public sector workers in BC Almost 95 per cent of union members who work directly for the provincial government voted to strike in June.
Because so many public employees are designated as essential, not everyone can take off work.
In its email to members, the union says the overtime ban was introduced to get the government to recognize the chronic understaffing, high turnover and excessive workloads workers face.
“The impact of excessive overtime on workers includes high turnover, burnout, and physical and psychological health risks — it is unacceptable and unsustainable,” the email said. “Excessive overtime also puts the services you provide and the families and communities you support at risk.”
BCGEU president Stephanie Smith said vacancies have been left due to layoffs and hiring freezes and the government is relying on voluntary overtime from employees to get the job done.
“Hopefully it will show really, really clearly how much work needs to be done and how few people are doing it,” he said.
Smith said the union initially targeted the liquor industry because it hurts the province in the wallet but avoids disruption to critical services such as health care. He estimated that about 1,000 members picketed each distribution center.
Smith said the union’s top priority is protecting wages.
It is asking the government for a cost-of-living adjustment in the new collective agreement, meaning future pay rises will be linked to inflation.
He said such salary adjustments have already come into effect for provincial MLAs, for example, whose pay rises in line with the percentage increase in the consumer price index.
“We’re not asking for anything different at this time,” Smith said.
The union has not heard from the government since it went on strike last week, Smith said on Monday.
He told The Canadian Press that the union also wants better mental health support for workers, some of whom have been abused on the job by the public as COVID-19 precautions, such as face masks, have been increased.
“We know we’re going to see the effects of this level of stress and this level of stress over a long period of time,” he said.
Employees working in offices of the Ministry of Children and the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction were among those who experienced the highest levels of backlash, Smith said.
The union says the strike and overtime ban will continue “until further notice”.
