Gavin McGarrigle
Gavin McGarrigle was first elected as Unifor’s Western Regional Director in 2019, and was re-elected to this role as part of Unifor’s leadership team in 2022.
While working full-time as a student attending university in Victoria, Gavin helped organize his own workplace into the union more than 25 years ago and he hasn’t stopped since, working as a union organizer, local president, national representative and area director.
Over the past few decades, Gavin successfully led union members in many industries through collective bargaining, labour board and arbitration hearings, and organizing campaigns.
In 2014, Gavin’s leadership helping container trucker drivers through a Vancouver port work stoppage resulted in the historic withdrawal of back to work legislation and a negotiated resolution involving two levels of government.
Gavin’s continued activity to help clean up the BC drayage industry led to the creation of a safe rates system and new container trucking oversight offices which have heavily fined rogue trucking companies and returned millions in lost wages to truckers.
Gavin helped launch a global Safe Rates campaign in South Korea in 2023 with the International Transport Federation (ITF), a global federation of more than 690 trade unions across 152 countries.
Gavin McGarrigle has also helped lead many effective Unifor political action campaigns, helping to achieve successive progressive worker-friendly governments in several provinces while opposing anti-worker parties and policies in others.
These campaigns and McGarrigle’s strong belief in organizing helped with the push to return single-step card check certification in British Columbia and in Manitoba and he has been active in the campaign to help Amazon workers organize leading to Unifor’s first certification applications filed at Amazon in British Columbia in 2024.
Gavin has been on the front lines of many picket lines and he took a strong stand to help during the historic lockout at the Co-Op Refinery in Saskatchewan in 2019–2020. McGarrigle has helped lead Unifor’s efforts to secure anti-scab legislation federally and worked to ensure that Manitoba also recently introduced provincial anti-scab legislation.
Gavin has contributed to various government panels on behalf of the union including the Translink Mobility Pricing Commission, the BC Tourism Taskforce, the Climate Solutions and Clean Growth Advisory Council and the BC Forestry Worker Supports and Community Resiliency Council.
He has advocated for workers before elected premiers, cabinet members, and officials at all levels and has appeared with government at various announcements provincially and federally on economic justice, sustainability, climate change and workers’ rights.
Gavin has also served as a pension trustee, as a director with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives BC Office (CCPA-BC), as labour co-chair of the Better Transit and Transportation Coalition, and as a board member of the official campaign promoting a Yes vote for BC proportional representation.
Gavin graduated with distinction from the University of Victoria and holds an undergraduate degree in sociology and professional writing.
Born in Derry, Northern Ireland, McGarrigle lives in British Columbia and resides in Metro Vancouver with his wife and two children.
To request an interview with Gavin McGarrigle, contact Ian Boyko. Media outlets can download McGarrigle's high-res photo here.
