A tentative deal that will see school support workers receive a 3.5 per cent raise has been reached between the Canadian Union of Public Employees (the union representing education support staff) and the B.C. Public Schools Employers Association.
The two groups announced they’ve reached an agreement under the 2012 Co-operative Gains Mandate last week, which will affect 33,000 unionized school support staff, 27,000 of whom are represented by CUPE.
The provincial framework for the deal was reached on Wednesday for the employees who have been without a contract for a year.
The two-year agreement spans from July, 1 2012 to June 30, 2014 and provides a one per cent increase retroactive to July 1, 2013; a two per cent increase on Feb. 1, 2014 and the 0.5 per cent on May 1, 2014.
The new agreement is retroactive and will expire just over nine months from now.
Local CUPE president Wade Thompson said the deal still needs to be ratified by the union members, and he hopes to set up a date to ratify the deal within the week.
Thompson said the union has a good relationship with School District 58 and doesn’t believe ratifying the deal will be a problem.
“We’re cautiously optimistic and the reality of the situation is we’re here for the kids, we work with the kids, we’re about the kids,” Thompson said, noting the general consensus is not to have a strike.
Each school district board will need to meet with their local CUPE chapter and formulate an agreement dealing with all of their local issues to create a final agreement which each side will need to ratify.
The school district will need to find the funding to incorporate the new raise and have its school trustees approve the plan before sending it to the Ministry of Education for approval.
The deadline to ratify the agreement is Dec. 20.
School District 58 superintendent Bob Peacock said every district needs to come up with a savings plan to show where in their budgets the money for the raise will come from.
“That’s the process that we’re now in, to take a look at our budget and see where we can get ongoing savings,” Peacock said, noting the savings will need to be ongoing to incorporate the raise for each year.
Peacock said he has some ideas on how the school district will accommodate the raise in their budget, but preferred not to mention those ideas until they are discussed with the trustees.
“I would say at the most, in two weeks, we’d like to be moving forward with it,” Peacock said.
He said he’s happy the organizations have a deal in place.
“Any time you can get labour peace without disrupting the school system is outstanding,” Peacock said.
The agreement was reached without any concessions on the part of CUPE members.
The Co-operative Gains Mandate states employers (in this case school districts) need to find savings within their budgets or within the collective agreements to fund modest compensation increases for workers if warranted.
The provincial government is not going to be funding wage increases within the public sector, according to a Ministry of Education spokesperson.
