Hello members,
I would like to recap the great start we have had in terms of executing our 2019 plans. The board met in person recently for the second time since being elected, to discuss and define plans for 2019. Several of the committees have had immediate activation including:
Member Education and Services – Chloe Smith – Lead
- Payroll Study – Lory Fairfield, The Labour Group. The Guild has retained Lory Fairfield to create, collect and analyze a completely confidential comparative study of pay rates within the BC Craft Brewing Industry. Job duties and descriptions will be identified in the initial scope of this study. Lory has beta tested data supplied from 6 brewers who volunteered to provide this confidential information. It is now important in order to have a cross section of data based on size and geography that more of our members now participate in this guild funded study. If you are interested in participating please contact moc.reebtfarccb@nek. Ken may also contact you directly to ask your brewery to participate based on our needs for geographic and production volumes to ensure we gather enough diversity of data.
- WorkSafeBC Confined Space inspections – As you know we have been working directly with WorkSafeBC to deliver on our priority to keep all our members safe while improving and advancing safety awareness for all our members. Our conversations with Worksafe BC are ongoing. They consider work in breweries to be high risk, as such they are currently and will continue to visit breweries to ensure that we are implementing and maintaining work safe programs. They have also let us know that non-compliance will be met with citations. They also have raised the point that each brewery should have its own unique hazard assessment program in place. It is not their opinion that copy and pasting another breweries program will lead to a safe working environment for your employees. The current inspection focus from WorkSafeBC is confined space safety and procedures. Chloe is currently researching confined space inspection providers in order to asses how best to deliver this and other safety information to our membership. health-safety-craft-breweries-distilleries-bk164-pdf-en
⇨ Did you know the Manufacturing Safety Alliance of BC provides a safety consultation and the first visit is free! Your WorkSafe premiums cover the cost of an initial consultation. We are committed to updating this information as it is gathered. If you have any questions or have a safety supplier you have worked that would benefit all our members please forward the contact information to: moc.reebtfarccb@eolhc.
Government Relations – Matt Lockhart – Lead
As bi-election is now completed in Nanaimo resulting in an NDP victory pundit, we believe the minority government will now serve its full mandate. Therefore we engaged our lobbying efforts full press with our partner; Global Public Affairs. Our strategy is to work on increasing our relationships and conveying consistent talking points with various ministers, deputy ministers and ministerial assistants across multiple departments in government.