Top negotiator Paul Sourisseau alleges CUPE pressured municipalities to exclude him from contract talks so it could win higher wage settlements.
A veteran labour negotiator who was hired by Metro Vancouver to help cities during contract talks alleges he was frozen out of most talks in 2022-23 by a union and eventually fired because of how well he was doing his job.
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Paul Sourisseau is suing the Metro Vancouver Regional District for wrongful dismissal, alleging that 10 municipalities settled contracts with employees that were “overly generous” because he was frozen out.
In his lawsuit in B.C. Supreme Court, he alleges the Canadian Union of Public Employees used “divide and conquer” tactics to pressure the municipalities to exclude him from the talks so it could get better deals.
Sourisseau was dismissed because of “multiple comments and feedback from clients about the plaintiff’s approach at collective bargaining and his communications with employer bargaining teams,” Metro said in a response filed in court.
It denies all his allegations and says it did not breach his contract.
Sourisseau, 65, was hired as a negotiator for the district’s regional employee services department in 2019 and fired in 2023.
He said a change in negotiating policy in 2013 allowed each municipality to bargain on its own, without regional involvement.
“This allowed the large trade unions who have collective agreements with all local governments to ‘divide and conquer’ and to pit different local governments against each other to achieve greater gains at the bargaining table,” he said in his lawsuit.
He alleged that as a senior negotiator, he was assigned to most CUPE tables and became a “particular target” for the union and he ended up excluded from negotiations.
“As a result, many local governments made major concessions to the trade unions, beyond what they had planned or budgeted for,” he alleged. “Ultimately, this was the primary reason” that he was fired.
He said Metro’s reasons for dismissing him, including saying it wanted an individual with a different approach, were “untruthful, misleading and/or insensitive” and breached his contract.
Metro “insensitively terminated the plaintiff on the basis of false allegations of performance issues, when the real issue was that he was simply too good at his job, and governments had caved to pressure from the unions to exclude him,” the lawsuit contends.
He said he was initially involved with negotiations on four collective agreements for Burnaby but he was eventually excluded.
“The result was CUPE achieving significant gains,” including wage increases of three to 4.5 per cent in each year of 2022 to 2024, and an additional “inflationary payment” of 3.5 per cent and other benefits.
Other local governments were concerned that settlement would set a precedent for them, the claim said.
Sourisseau said he was involved in bargaining for the Township of Langley and he “was allowed to do his job as lead negotiator,” resulting in an agreement in that municipality with similar wage hikes to Burnaby’s but without the 3.5 per cent inflationary payment.
Other municipalities — North Vancouver district and the city, New Westminster, Delta, Vancouver, Port Moody, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Richmond — all “acquiesced to union pressure to remove” him and each government had to bargain on its own with CUPE national and regional negotiators, he said.
“The results were collective agreements with high wage increases or inflationary payouts which exceeded local government’s initial financial mandates,” he said.
The dismissal and breach of his employment contract “caused the plaintiff to suffer loss and damage. The plaintiff’s dignity and reputation have been damaged and he suffered and continues to suffer mental distress as a result,” he said.
His damages include the compensation he would have earned at the job, for which he was paid $171,000, it said.
CUPE didn’t return a request for comment. Requests were left with each of the municipalities.
Spokeswomen for Vancouver and Coquitlam said they wouldn’t comment on court matters but said contract negotiations for 2022-23 were settled within fiscally prudent guidelines.
The Business Council of B.C. in its collective bargaining bulletin in August 2023 said the all-industry average wage in B.C. had climbed steadily over the past few years before that ,and annual average wage growth in B.C. was then running at six per cent year-over-year.
And the Normandin-Beaudry website said in 2022 that average salary increases in 2022 in Canada were 3.8 per cent.