February 2017

A new Business Representative and Local Union Officers, as listed here, will be elected to represent the newly-Chartered Lathers, Drywall Finishers, and Allied Trades, Local 163.

This new local, which combines Locals 163 & 2009, has also been renamed to better describe the trades working within it.

Why are the Locals Merging?

In March 2015, pursuant to Sections 46(g) and 180(a) of the General Constitution, the General President, with the approval of the General Executive Board, merged Local 2009 into Local 163. This action was taken to respond to the decreasing memberships, which no longer supported maintaining an Executive Board and full-time Business Representative for each Local.

To provide some perspective, as of today the combined memberships of Local 2009 and Local 163 is 295. By contrast, Painter’s Local 138 and Glaziers Local 1527 have memberships equaling 1330 and 470 respectively.

In April 2016, the District Council 38 Bylaws were updated to reflect the merger, and subsequently ratified by the membership.

At a Special called meeting held on February 9, 2017, the updated Bylaws of “IUPAT Lathers, Drywall Finishers and Allied Trades, Local 163″ were passed by the membership. (Note the name change to reflect the Drywall Finishers as constituent members of Local 163).

Nomination Meeting

A nomination meeting will be held at 5:30 pm on Thursday, March 9th at the Finishing Trades Institute (FTI) in Surrey.

Candidates for the positions must meet the eligibility requirements, as  outlined in Sections 151-156 and 209-212 of the General Constitution, which can be viewed here.

Click here for more information about the nomination meeting and the upcoming Vote.

DC38 and former Premier, Glen Clark, are teaming up to offer a $2,500 annual scholarship to students who are enrolled, or are thinking about enrolling, in the Labour Studies program at SFU.

The scholarship has been established in the name of Glen’s father, James Clark, a long time officer of Painter’s Local 138.

The scholarship will be awarded to a member – or one of their direct family members – of DC38 or a union affiliated with the BC Federation of Labour.

We would love to see one of our members, or their son or daughter, receive this, but please pass this along to your friends or family in other unions so we have a good range of interest.

If interested, please visit our scholarships page

SFU James Clark Scholarship Letter

On February 16, representatives from DC 38, the FTI and the HMA conducted a “Lunch-and-Learn” with members of the Liberal caucus in Victoria.This was the first occasion where any of the entities connected to District Council 38 had conducted this type of information session with the governing Liberals and by all accounts our presentation was well received.

We wanted to add a bit of a “Wow Factor” to our presentation, so we took along some of the high end equipment actually used in our training at our facility. Many of the MLA’s commented on the fact that this was a little different than any other such presentation they had attended previously. We heard several comments about how impressed the MLA’s were by by complexity and the quality of the equipment we train on. Many were also surprised to hear that since 2005, we have committed almost $5 million dollars in both equipment and facility upgrades provided by the FTI and the HMA.

Greg Kyllo, MLA for (Sushwap) and the Parliamentary Secretary for BC Jobs Plan, thanked us on behalf of the government for helping to enlighten he and his fellow MLA’s about the work we do. Mr. Kyllo also reiterated his governments commitment to apprenticeship and skills training and went on to recognize the important role our combined organizations play in providing that training.

We also took this opportunity to invite the government to the grand opening of our new expansion of our Industrial Painting facility. We will be holding an event on March 30th this year where we will unveil what is probably the finest spray and blast facility in Canada and the Pacific North West.

We hope to conduct future sessions such as this in order to make our politicians more aware about the value we provide to our communities, members, contractors and the clients of construction.