Strike vote set
Support staff for School District 47 will vote Monday, May 27, on whether to join other union locals around the province in job action to push for a wage increase.
Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 476 support staff, including school custodians, trades and maintenance workers, teachers’ assistants, clerical, accounting and information technology staff, have not had a raise since 2009.
Their issue, said Daphne Ross, Local 476 president, is not with the local board of education, but with Victoria. “We are taking a strike vote on Monday because we are being refused a wage increase.” Ross is participating in the provincial bargaining table.
The union is looking for an increase of four per cent over two years. “It’s what all the other public sector unions have received,” she said. “We think that’s fair.”
The Liberal government’s cooperative gains mandate, which directs wage increases, states that public sector increases are permissible if savings can be found in budgets elsewhere. However, the BC Public School Employers’ Association (BCPSEA), which is the provincial bargaining group for boards of education, has informed Victoria that school districts have been unable to find savings in their budgets which would allow for raises.
Members of BCPSEA and CUPE BC K-12 Presidents’ Council have been in talks since November 2012 to resolve the issues, but after their April 25 meeting CUPE reported that they were at “an impasse.” More than 14 CUPE locals in the 57 CUPE school districts have already taken strike votes with strong support for job action.
Presidents’ council members met this week in Vancouver to discuss next steps for labour action in the province.
Ross knows a strike would put the school district in “a tough spot,” she said, but CUPE is looking for a way for the provincial government to address the “chronic under-funding in the education system.”
She is confident that local members will support taking job action, though at this point Ross does not know when job action would begin or what it would entail. “We will know more after Monday,” she said, “but the intent is to start on a small scale.”
