Support staff who maintain School District 47 facilities and assist teachers voted overwhelmingly in favour of job action. However, union organizers say they won’t be walking off the job anytime soon.
Eighty-six per cent voted in favour of job action after working without a contract since June 2012. The 167 staff members are represented by Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 476.
At issue for membership is wage increases. Support staff were passed over by the province for raises in 2010 and last year CUPE college and university support staff were able to negotiate increases.
“For [Victoria] to come to the table without a raise is unreasonable,” said Daphne Ross, Local 476 president. “We just want what’s fair.”
The province’s cooperative gains mandate dictates raises for public sector employees and states that for raises to be given, budget savings must be found in other areas.
School districts around the province, including Powell River, have sent letters to the ministry of education stating that while they support raises for their support staff, districts are unable to find the money in their budgets.
The union is asking for a four per cent raise over two years.
“It’s not unreasonable,” Ross added. “We really don’t want to put our members in the position of having to walk a picket line.”
Ross said every single person had the opportunity to vote.
The local went so far as to send a representative with a locked ballot box to Texada Island to collect members’ votes there, she said. “We tried to reach everyone we possibly could.”
Although the membership voted in favour it does not mean that the Local will take immediate job action.
Ross said no job action is planned in June, but in July it will start a work-to-rule process where staff will both arrive and leave on time, and then during the first two weeks of August a ban on overtime will be in place.
“We’ll decide further on what we’re going to do in September,” she said.
Ross said that each of the 57 CUPE locals in BC school districts operates autonomously and are “not told by the top what to do.”
