Construction workers were back at work Wednesday at the new Oak Bay High School and at Quadra Elementary School after striking teachers were banned from picketing.
Construction shut down for a full day on Tuesday when picketing teachers — in a battle with the province over a new contract — showed up at the sites in the morning.
Supervisors for Farmer Construction and Kinetic Construction, both locally owned companies, stopped work and sent workers home.
Farmer won a court injunction to allow work to resume on the $52.5-million Oak Bay school.
An order from the B.C. Labour Relations Board led to work resuming at Quadra school, which is undergoing a $9-million seismic upgrade.
Kinetic’s own union workers, members of Local 1 with the Canadian Iron, Steel and Industrial Worker’ Union, lost a day’s pay due to the shutdown, said Katy Fairley, company business development lead, on Wednesday. Some sub-trades would also have been on the site, she said.
In all, about 50 people were anticipated on the site Tuesday, Fairley said.
“Thankfully, it [the shutdown] is only one day,” she said.
Quadra is slated to reopen in time for classes in September. The construction schedule is a complex scheme, requiring milestones to be reached by certain dates.
Summer is the prime time for school construction work because students are gone.
Kinetic, for example, is also carrying out a seismic upgrade on George Jay Elementary School on Cook Street and will start improvements on Esquimalt High School soon.
