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Kootenay Savings announces one-day lockout

Branches in Trail, Castlegar, Fruitvale, Salmo, South Slocan, Kaslo and Kimberley will be closed Friday
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Talks have broken off between the Steelworkers and Kootenay Savings Credit Union.

Trail BC ‐ Kootenay Savings announced today its plan to lock‐out employees at unionized locations for one day on Friday October 28. As a result, branches in Trail, Castlegar, Fruitvale, Salmo, South Slocan, Kaslo and Kimberley will be closed on this day only. Services at branches in Nakusp, New Denver, Invermere and Radium Hot Springs are unaffected and will remain open. The lockout is for one day only. All employees are expected to return to their next scheduled shift on October 29 or 31, and services will return to normal.

Kootenay Savings and the USW Locals 9705 and 1‐405 have been in negotiations for close to a year, have made many attempts to negotiate a renewed collective agreement, with and without the assistance of a mediator.

Unfortunately the last mediation attempt resulted in an impasse as efforts failed to achieve an agreement, when the union asked the mediator to book out after the first of three scheduled mediation days. Talks continued last week, and the union rejected the company’s last offer which was put forward on Monday October 24. Both parties are in a legal position to strike or lockout as of Friday, October 21. On Tuesday October 25th, the Union commenced strike action.

We feel our only recourse at this point is to initiate a one‐day lockout to persuade the Union to return to negotiate a fair collective agreement, and to help us address our critical issues while minimizing the impact to our employees and members.

To ensure as little disruption as possible to our members during this one‐day lock‐out, we recommend they visit their branch in advance to conduct in‐person banking needs they may have. Our electronic services, online, phone and mobile banking, along with our ATMs, remain available and fully operational. Please visit kscu.com for more information. We thank our members for their patience and continued loyalty.