Janitors who clean Vancouver International Airport (YVR) reached a tentative agreement with their employer and early today said that they would return to work.
This comes as a relief to passengers during one of the busiest travel times of the year at the airport.
The cleaners went on strike on Dec. 20 with a main demand being wages: hiking their starting wage to $25 per hour from $23.26 per hour.
That strike first involved the workers setting up pickets at the airport's authorized demonstration area at Chester Johnson Park. Yesterday, they threatened to escalate those pickets starting today, to include multiple picket lines set up at various undisclosed parts of the airport. They were encouraging other unionized workers at the airport honour the picket lines and not go to work.
The 233 cleaners are members of SEIU Local 2 and are Alpine Building Maintenance employees.
Alpine's managerial team filled in for the workers when they were on strike, and emptied garbage cans, cleaned washrooms and swept and mopped hallways among other tasks, according to the Vancouver Airport Authority, which oversees YVR.
Terms of the tentative agreement were not released. The janitors still need to vote on the pact and the union is recommending that they vote to approve the deal.
Alpine said the workers could be back on the job as early as 3 p.m. today.
The janitors had said that they had been without a contract since the end of September.
