Krissy Murphy, a member of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 500, is a muscular and enthusiastic woman of 30, with bright red-henna hair and an infectious laugh. She’s been working on the docks now for eight years. Shifting containers, she says with a grin, is “like playing a giant Tetris game.”Krissy Murphy, ILWU Local 500
“I always knew I wanted a union job,” Murphy said in an interview at a coffee shop down the street from the dispatch hall where she’s sent out to new tasks most mornings.
Her father was a unionized railway worker, her mother a postal worker and CUPW member, and she remembers early childhood lessons in labour solidarity — like not being allowed to cross a picket line outside the movie house in Prince George.
Her parents taught her how important it was to stand with other workers, and she observed the ways her parents’ lives were better because of their unions. They were both able to retire this year at 55, something she said would not have been possible without their union contracts.
