From casual to secretary-treasurer: Mike Nelson’s story

I never really planned to spend my career at BC Ferries.

I grew up in Nelson and moved to the coast when I was 18. We had visited Vancouver Island when I was younger, and I always liked riding the ferry. The whole process of going to the terminal and getting on the ship was exciting to me. I wasn’t used to the ocean. It looked different, smelled different. I thought it would be a fun place to work.

I applied to work at the terminal, but BC Ferries told me they were only hiring in catering and I didn’t have any catering experience.

So I went out and got some. Within a couple of days, I got hired as a prep chef at a new restaurant. I knew nothing about cooking and had no business getting that job, but I worked there for a little while, reapplied to BC Ferries and got hired in catering in February 1989.

My plan was to work at the ferries until I figured out what I wanted to do. Nearly 38 years later, here we are.

I eventually made it to the terminal, which was where I had wanted to be all along. I loved working with the public, even though they can sometimes be challenging.

I learned pretty early that most people can deal with bad news if you tell them what’s going on. When you’re loading a full ferry, people get anxious. They don’t know if they’re getting on. They don’t know why traffic has stopped. I learned that if you walked up to the first few cars and explained what was happening, people calmed down.

That became a bit of a philosophy for me.  Information matters. Communication matters. Transparency matters.

I became a shop steward when I was very young and still a casual. In those days, casuals were treated very differently. Your seniority was based on days worked. If you were sick, injured, on maternity leave or on vacation, you weren’t building seniority, so you didn’t take time off.

I fought to change that system. Eventually we moved to date-of-hire seniority. The funny part is the change took effect the same day I went regular, so I never benefited from it. But that wasn’t the point. It made things better for the people who came up after me.

Being a shop steward taught me more about life, and about myself, than almost anything else I’ve done. I loved the challenge of it. When I represented a member, I was always thinking: How do I win this argument? How do I make this situation better for this person?

One case stayed with me. There was a woman I worked with who had been off for almost six months with serious health problems. She could not afford to lose any income at all and needed to complete six days at work before she could qualify again for short-term illness benefits

She was a ticket agent and had problems with her knees. She could do the job, but she couldn’t physically carry the weight of the cash from the cash-up room all the way out to the ticket booth. She tried driving her own car out there and was told she couldn’t.

She called me and asked what to do. All I could think was: I’ve got to get her through these six days. The terminal had a little electric vehicle that management used. We called it the bubble car. I met with the manager and asked if she could use it. He said he couldn’t commit to that long term. So I asked him to commit to a trial period. He asked how long. I said, “Just a shift.” A shift was eight days.

For years afterward, every time I saw her, I got a big hug and a smile. It seems like such a small thing when you put it down on paper, but it wasn’t small to her.

Over the years I also ran businesses outside BC Ferries, worked in finance and supply chain, and eventually became secretary-treasurer of the union. Treasurer was never something I particularly wanted to be. But I discovered I liked the challenge of it too.

The biggest thing I tell our local secretary-treasurers is that transparency is the best tool you have. If somebody says something wasn’t done properly, you should be able to pull out the paperwork and show exactly what happened. Rumours stop quickly when people can see the facts.

My job is also to make sure our treasurers feel supported. If they’re successful, their locals are successful, It all comes back to the same thing I learned loading ferries years ago. Give people information. Communicate with them. Be transparent.

I’m hugely invested in this union. I love it. I want the next generation to keep building its strength and holding people accountable. The union is different than it was when I was younger, but having a strong voice and sticking together still matters.

Mike Nelson, Secretary-Treasurer, BCFMWU