Nearly 240 British Columbia telecom workers won the final step in a nearly six-year battle for their right to organize.

After an unprecedented ruling last November from the Canadian Industrial Relations Board that the construction giant Ledcor had negotiated in such bad faith that it broke the law, all that was left was for the CIRB to do something it hadn't in more than four decades: impose a contract.

In June, it did. The sweeping ruling was a total victory for Vancouver Local 213.

In section after section of the ruling, the CIRB chose the workers' position without fail. It was a clean sweep: union security, wages, health and welfare, pension and retirement benefits, and a closed shop, the first in Ledcor's history.

"I'm still kind of in shock at how much they ruled for us," Local 213 Assistant Business Manager Robin Nedila said. "Not in arbitration, never in front of a labor board, no hearing I have been a part of has been so completely one-sided. Usually, employers will start being somewhat reasonable … once lawyers get involved. Not Ledcor."

A total of 238 Ledcor telecom workers had voted to join Local 213 in August 2017. They faced opposition from Ledcor from the start.

"This is a story about perseverance," said First District Lead Organizer Dustin Brecht.

In 2017, Brecht was a member of the volunteer organizing committee at Ledcor Technical Services. LTS had won a contract from British Columbia's legacy telephone company, Telus.

That 2017 authorization vote met with stonewalling from Ledcor. After what Nedila called "the worst first contract proposal in Canadian history," the unit authorized a strike.

After months with no progress, Nedila and Brecht noticed an obscure part of the Canadian Labour Code, Section 80, that allows unions to bring a claim of bad-faith negotiating to the labor minister.

The last time a Section 80 claim was made was in the 1980s. No one could remember when a Section 80 claim won.

The picket lasted two years. The appeals process lasted almost four. The original group of technicians dwindled to less than 70.

But the gambit worked. The November CIRB ruling eviscerated Ledcor.

"The employer's approach to bargaining, particularly since the advent of the strike, makes a mockery of the collective bargaining process," the board wrote. "Canadian law is clear. The duty to bargain in good faith and make every reasonable effort is a continuous duty from when notice to bargain is given until the final resolution of an agreement."

After the ruling, both parties made proposals on what the imposed contract should be. In the June contract, the Board ruled completely in the IBEW's favor.

The fight isn't completely over. Ledcor has not given up its commitment to deny workers their rights and flout Canadian labor law. Executives from the company have threatened to abandon British Columbia entirely.

"Sure, Ledcor can pack up and leave, or try to get around the ruling by subcontracting the work," he said. "I'm no lawyer, but it's not that easy.

"First, it's not like a single Walmart location they can shut down. They have a massive telecom construction business they've built and agreements with other unions in the province. Besides, as bad as this has been, we want work for our members, and Ledcor can be successful and profitable under the terms of this CBA."

Brecht and Nedila said the full impact of the CIRB decisions won't be known for years. But they show that Section 80 is a viable and powerful tool for unions.

"Every labor lawyer is grinning ear to ear now," Brecht said.

Brecht and Nedila take pride in knowing they were the ones who studied the law and encouraged the union's lawyers to use Section 80.

"If we can take on an anti-union employer that thought it was smarter than everyone else and could avoid unions or a contract by hiring the most expensive experts on the labor law … well, a couple of construction workers had a surprise for them," Nedila said.

In addition, the plight of the Ledcor workers has spurred renewed interest in changing national labor law. The government has already committed to passing anti-scab legislation, and there is renewed momentum in favor of a one-year limit on first-contract negotiations.

That would radically redraw the power dynamic between labor and management in Canada.

But so does this one decision, Brecht said.

"From the beginning (then Local 213 Business Manager, now First District International Representative) Adam Van Steinburg was clear about the stakes," Brecht said. "This company built a business model on abusing workers, and that would not stand in British Columbia and should not stand anywhere in Canada.

"The company expected us to give up," he said. "They didn't understand who they were (messing) with."