Editor's note: This story has been corrected to reflect that Powell River and Region Transition House Society is a member of the Health Sciences Association, whereas Powell River Community Services Association is not.
Some social service agencies in BC are feeling a cash crunch as they wait for bridge funding from the provincial government to pay for staff wage increases.
Since last fall pressure had been mounting for the government to reach an agreement with the more than 10,000 unionized community and family social service workers in BC.
Earlier this year, Community Social Services Bargaining Association (CSSBA) and Community Social Services Employers’ Association (CSSEA) negotiated a new collective agreement which was taken to the unions for ratification in late April.
The contract included wage increases of 1.5 per cent this year, retroactive to April 1, and 1.5 per cent for January 1, 2014. It was negotiated under the cooperative gains mandate, the province’s policy of funding wage increases by finding cost savings in other parts of organizations. However, some of the cost savings will not be realized immediately and the groups were counting on the province to provide bridge funding to pay for the April 1 increases.
Powell River Association for Community Living (PRACL) executive director Lilla Tipton and Robyn Auclair, president of Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 4601, participated in the negotiations. The province-wide collective agreement not only covers PRACL employees but also those who work at Powell River’s non-profit Cherry Doors, Seaview Guest Homes and Powell River and Region Transition House Society.
Tipton said she and her peers were confident in the negotiation process and had been assured that they had met the government’s cooperative gains mandate.
“In addition, non-union service providers were informed by senior ministry representatives that they would be given equivalent funding increases for their employees,” Tipton wrote in a statement.
According to the BC Government and Service Employees’ Union (BCGEU), some of those wage increases for family service workers have yet to be paid because the ministry of children and family development hasn’t provided the bridge funding.
“The refusal to fund the three per cent wage increase over the term of the collective agreement just goes to prove that they truly don’t care about community social services,” said Auclair. “Our members went without an increase for 12 years. We bargained in good faith and we deserve this government’s respect.”
But the ministry of social development, in contrast, has funded the increase for the agencies for which it is responsible.
“At first we thought that it was just the ministry of children and family development, but it appears there are a few more as well,” said Patsy Harmston, BCGEU chairperson. “There’s a lot of confusion of who’s paying it and who’s not.”
Harmston said that the unions are sympathetic to the agencies’ plight, saying that both sides of the negotiation signed off on the agreement believing that Victoria had given the go-ahead.
“They’re in an awful predicament,” she said.
On July 17, Tipton attended a meeting of 190 social service providers in Richmond to discuss the fact that the government has changed its mind about bridge-funding the negotiated wage increases and is telling providers that they must find the money for the increases in their existing budgets.
“Government has said that agencies can not reduce direct services as a way to find savings,” said Tipton. “Without an increase in funding to cover the negotiated wage increase, there will ultimately be an impact on the levels of service and the quality of delivery.”
Tipton said that social service agencies have been feeling increasingly squeezed with operating costs rising, but without funding to match.
“Social services agencies already operate as efficiently and effectively as possible,” she said, adding that “over the past 20 years there have been numerous budget cuts to social services funding and there’s no more to cut.”
Minister of children and family development Stephanie Cadieux has said she and the ministry are in the process of working with affected agencies to reach a solution.
“We’re already four months into the fiscal year when they are announcing they will not fund this, when they promised to do so,” said Tipton. “This is unconscionable.”
Both Tipton and Harmston said they were worried about the negative precedent this sets for the next round of bargaining.
