British Columbia Federation of Labour

Featuring two stages and two performance tents, a festival village and camping facilities which drew more than 21,000 campers as well as an RV park, the Pemberton Festival lineup included more than 120 performers in all. Hydro-electric energy was the main power source for the festival's energy and local Pemberton Valley farm products, which the area is well known for, were served throughout the 360 acre festival site. A farmer's market -- where local farmers sold their goods directly to concert-goers -- was also featured at the site. It is estimated that the festival generated more than $20 million for the local economy.

My arrival was on the 25th of July at approximately 2pm. I found that the reported traffic wasn't as bad that day and I was easily at the venue before the first music of the day @ 3:30pm. I was impressed by the crew and staff who were mostly volunteer workers and local residents. As with any first year festival it is hard to believe that a few lessons wouldn't need to be learned but I have already found a quote from Rolling Stone which exclaimed that "the first annual Pemberton Festival will gladly take the title of next Glastonbury."

Our campaign was taken with great support by 98% of the people I spoke to excluding only a few debates with employers who felt that they had issues with the Minimum wage going to the $10.00 level. Even a few of them after looking at undercutting and poverty aspects did decide to sign which is a step in the right direction. Our greatest accomplishment was stickers as the festival goers had very little as far as hand outs and promotions we took advantage of people loving the stickers. By the end of the 3 days it was really hard to not find someone who didn't have a sticker.

Along the way we got support and assistance from the vendors who would at times announce to people in the area around them to come over and take time to educate and support the campaign and this did in most cases generate a huge flow of signatures. Another great factor was the size of the festival which did reach its capacity of 40,000 people. Lines were fast but they were also long and this was a great way to impact a huge number of people and not take away anything from there experience (except long line waits).

A lot of people thought that we had already moved up from the 8$ per hour minimum wage and even more were not aware that we had a 6$ training wage so this was a good word of mouth education. In almost every situation I found I heard people continuing their conversation and stories about wages long after the clip board had made its way forward.

The highlight as far as music was a sunset shared with 40,000 people and Tom Petty as the entire festival stopped to focus on the 2 hours of music Tom played.

Overall this event was a huge success both as a musical festival and also as our campaign for petitions. We signed in the area of 2000 lines of petition and thousands more conversations and stickers were shared with many people from many places. Outside of the local BC area I shared stories with people from England, Australia, USA and a lot of people from the Canadian East coast.

Submitted by Jeff Parker, COPE 378, member of B.C. Fed Young Workers' Committee