VANCOUVER — In late October, members of the B.C. Teamsters Union rejected a plan to reduce the going hourly rate for gravel haulers, and now they’ll vote whether or not to continue working.

More than 200 gravel haulers gathered in Surrey, B.C. on Nov. 12 to ask the Teamsters Union to come up with some options to deal with unacceptably low trucking rates. The focus of their anger is the decision by Peter Kiewit and Sons, the lead contractor on the Port Mann Bridge expansion project, to reduce the gravel haulage rate from previously established levels.

The hourly rate for a tandem gravel truck in the B.C. government’s Blue Book is $93.45 an hour, but the union says Kiewit is only paying $65 an hour.

In the two-hour meeting, truckers called for swift action to deal with the issue, many calling for an immediate shutdown of the industry, which is exactly what they will put to a vote on the evening of Nov. 24.