Unions representing kindergarten to Grade 12 school support staff and the B.C. Public School Employers’ Association (BCPSEA) have reached a tentative agreement on a new five-year contract.
The deal includes about a 5.5 per cent raise over the length of the agreement.
The previous two-year agreement for support workers – retroactive to 2012 – was set to expire at the end of the month. The new deal will run from July 1 to June 30, 2019.
School District 58 chairman Gordon Comeau said the provincial government is expected to fund support workers’ wage increases as opposed to the districts themselves.
Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) K-12 sector co-ordinator Rob Hewitt also told the Herald the wage and benefit increases will come from the province.
The previous deal’s raise and benefits were funded by school districts.
“We insisted that not happen this time,” Hewitt said.
Provincially funded wage increases are on par with the government’s current mandate, a press release from CUPE states.
The press release also outlines some of the highlights of the deal, including improvements to health benefit plans through standardization, increased hours for education assistants and an employee support grant for employees who do not cross teacher picket lines.
Pay lost to support staff for honouring teacher picket lines, dating back to the start of their rotating strikes to the end of their job action, will be reimbursed. A job evaluation plan to address recruitment and retention issues is also included in the deal.
The framework of the agreement was reached at the provincial level. Now local, non-monetary issues will need to be hammered out at the district level and the deal ratified by the employer and its employees.
“They negotiate provincially on salaries and benefits, now we have to negotiate with CUPE on all the other factors that are in the collective agreement,” Comeau said.
Comeau told the Herald he anticipates the local bargaining to be a relatively quick process as it has been in the past.
He said school districts have until about November to have a new deal in place.
Comeau said he hopes a quick resolution can be found with B.C. teachers. He said that both the five-year deal with a 5.5 per cent raise given to support staff and the government’s offer to teachers of a six-year deal and a 7.5 per cent raise is line with other public sector unions.
CUPE represents over 27,000 education support workers in B.C. and is the largest of the unions that bargained for this agreement.
School support staff includes employees such as secretaries, education assistants, First Nations support workers, bus drivers, and trades and maintenance workers.
