"We just want a fair contract," said Tessie Zarate. "We do a lot of heavy work and $12 an hour is not enough pay." Zarate, a single mother of four from the Philippines, is one of over 200 long term care facility workers in B.C., locked out by their highly profitable multinational employer, the Compass Group, in late September.

Since then, the workers not required to stay on duty by an essential service designation from the Labour Relations Board are walking picket lines outside their workplaces on chill, rainy October sidewalks.

On two recent visits to one of those picket lines, the Tyee met women workers who hailed from the Philippines, India and Vietnam, reflecting the largely female and visible minority character of Compass's low wage workforce in its contracted food services for health care facilities.

Two of the locked out groups are on Vancouver Island, and the remaining five are in the Lower Mainland. Locally, the Vancouver District Labour Council has been organizing picket line visits by supportive community members to bolster the women in their fight, visits that have included a round of picket songs from the Solidarity Notes Labour Choir.

"When workers are in need," labour council president Joey Hartman said, "we want to be there for them."

'We deserve more than a five cent raise'

The Compass Group, often described as the world's largest contract food services company, locked out over 200 workers at seven B.C. long term care homes on Sept. 29. The workers, mainly visible minority women, most of whom are paid just over $12 an hour by the multinational company, have been working without a contract since December 2010, when the collective agreement negotiated for them by Steelworkers local 2009 ran out. The frustrated workers conducted small strike actions at the long-term care facilities over several days in September. The employer responded by locking out its Steelworker employees.

"Lockout" is a potentially misleading term in this case, as over 85 per cent of the workers have been designated as essential service providers by the BC Labour Relations Board and are still on the job during the lockout, Steelworkers staff representative Brian Harder told the Tyee in a recent phone interview. The remaining workers are on the picket line, hoping that their sidewalk witness and solidarity pickets organized in Vancouver by the local labour council will help them persuade the employer to table a better contract offer.

Picketer Canh Huynh has worked for Compass at various locations for over 13 years. Compass, which employs Huynh and her co-workers to provide services to the Arbutus Care Centre, does not operate the care home itself. At Arbutus Care, as around the world, Compass provides contracted food services to the facility's owners, in this case the Revera company. Huynh has been a cook at Arbutus for four years, and thus makes a slightly better salary than many of her co-workers. Nevertheless, as a union shop steward proudly wearing a button that declares "I support my bargaining committee," Huynh said she is determined to get a settlement that will provide better wages for all her co-workers.

"Lots of us have to come in early and work through our breaks to get our work done," picketer Zarate chimed in, "and get no extra pay for that. We are all working very hard and we deserve more than a raise of five cents an hour. That's just an insult."

Zarate said that she, like many Compass workers, had been kept on casual status during her time with the company, meaning she was ineligible for the benefits paid to full time regular employees.

The Steelworkers' Harder told the Tyee yesterday that when talks first opened up with Compass, the company proposed a new contract with no raise at all, but later moves from the firm suggested it would give workers a raise of a nickel an hour, the offer that Zarate saw as an insult. Harder said that the company has not conducted any formal negotiations since locking out its workers. Told that Compass had claimed in an email to the Tyee that it had met with the Steelworkers 10 times over this dispute, Harder emphasized that none of those meetings had occurred over the past month's lock out.

"The key issue here is fair wages for these workers," Harder said. "No one is looking to become a millionaire doing this work, but Compass is paying less than other contractors in the sector. The company negotiators ought to come back to the table with a mandate to make a fair deal."

"It is utterly disgusting that this global giant is targeting its most vulnerable workers," retired teacher and Solidarity Notes Choir member Bill Bargeman told the Tyee. "The choir responded to a request from the labour council to make a singing visit, and we were happy to do so. We are glad to be part of a larger support for these workers, as these brave, spirited women face off against a big company in a classic David and Goliath story."

Compass grants no interview

The Tyee made repeated but unsuccessful efforts to secure an interview with local and national Compass representatives to discuss the lockouts. The company's national headquarters sent an email response signed "Sincerely, Corporate Communications," that read in part:

"We have been negotiating with the United Steelworkers Union representing employees at the all locations since December 2010. We have met on more than 10 separate occasions. We respect the right of our employees to be represented by a union. Unfortunately, we were not successful in negotiating a mutually agreeable contract with the union and they decided to exercise their legal right to strike. We do not know how long the labour disruption will continue, however, we look forward to a speedy resolution."

In a follow-up email exchange, the same anonymous corporate communicator declined to respond to questions about outstanding issues as yet unresolved in the negotiations or to questions about why, given the company's healthy profits last year, it seems to be stonewalling its B.C. employees on wage increases.

"In response to the additional information you ask about, we do not bargain in the public domain," the media spokesperson wrote.

Yesterday afternoon, Compass Canada's vice president of human relations, Brenda Brown, left a voicemail for the Tyee responding to earlier questions about the lockout. She reiterated that the company was unwilling to negotiate in public. Finally, in response to a Tyee question about how a company making a billion dollars a year in profit justifies paying $12 an hour to its workers in B.C., she replied:

"Each of our contracts with any of the accounts are individual commercial contracts with that particular facility, each with its own individual [profit and loss] statement. The global profits don't come into play when you talk about that particular client."

Compass, a global giant

While Compass's negotiating tactics with its workers may be closely held corporate secrets, some information on the company itself is available. Compass was listed in 2010 as one of the Fortune 500 top global companies, ranked as number 424 in that elite listing. It is listed as number nine in an online article about the globe's largest employers last year, ranking just behind the Agricultural Bank of China and just ahead of IBM.

In 2010, the company brought in nearly $21 billion in revenue, a bit lower than 2009 but still generating profit of over a billion English pounds (in late October 2011, exchange rates would come to over a billion and a half in Canadian dollars). Around the world, Compass's 428,000 employees served over four billion meals last year. The Canadian division of Compass, which in 2010 employed over 23,000 "associates," generated $1.4 billion in revenue.

According to its website, the global Compass Group has a policy on its relationships with its employees, which it describes as:

"As a service company, our people are key to the success of our business. We respect and value the individuality and diversity that every employee brings to the business and seek to create a positive, open, working environment wherever we operate."

[See more Tyee labour and industry reporting here.]