Striking guards from BC’s largest security company may not have jobs to return to after being locked out from work last week.

Commissionaires BC locked out thirty-eight union guards after workers arrived to work in jeans instead of uniforms as part of an on-job strike action.

The guards had been contracted out to Canada Border Service Agency (CBSA) centres in Vancouver. In response to the lock out, CBSA has suspended its contract with Commissionaires for three months, and has replaced the unionized workers with staff from Genesis Security.

A Commissionaires BC spokesperson said the contract with the border service agency may not be renewed when it expires in March because of the strike action.

Rob Hellenius, president of the striking union local, said the union's strike was about workplace safety for guards, and said both the company and the border service had refused to accept responsibility for the health and safety of employees.

Union guards contracted to CBSA were responsible for transferring immigration detainees.

"25% of the detainees we dealt with would have a history of severe violence," said Hellenius. Despite the risk, Hellenius said Commissionaires is the only BC agency that does this kind of work unarmed.

"There was no equipment offered for our group," said Hellenius. "We'd operate solely with handcuffs and leg shackles. No protective vests or anything of that nature."

Company spokesperson Allen Batchelar rebuked the union's safety claims. Batchelar said CBSA does a risk assessment of each detainee, and only low-risk detainees are assigned to commissionaire guards.

"It's nothing that I wouldn't have my own son do," said Batchelar. "And my son has worked at the site."

Batchelar said he considers the union's safety issue claims "to be defamatory and not supported by fact," and said a failure to negotiate new salaries was the real source of conflict. The union had been in collective bargaining negotiations with Commissionaires until talks broke down in September.

The contract between Commissionaires BC and CBSA will expire at the end of March. Batchelar said that no new contract bid will be submitted to the border agency because of the breakdown in relations with the union.

Commissionaires BC is a non-profit private security agency, and the majority of its guards are former military and police personnel. Of the 1600 people employed by the company, only 42 are unionized.

In May of this year, the company fired 15 guards at the Williams Lake RCMP detachment after salary negotiations could not be resolved.

Calls made by The Tyee to the Canada Border Service Agency were not returned.

Sean Casey reports for The Hook.