After working nearly 18 months without a contract, public school support staff have a tentative two-year deal in place with the B.C. Public School Employers Association.
The agreement sticks to the province's net-zero wage freeze mandate for all public employees, but will result in additional $7.5 million in annual funding for educational assistants and it contains no union concessions.
The new contract still has to be ratified by the nearly 30,000 support staff, a group of educational assistants, custodians, tradespeople, bus drivers, maintenance and clerical staff mostly affiliated with Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) locals.
"There will be people who won't be happy about it, but for me, being on the provincial bargaining committee, we can't complain," said Lorraine Prouse, president of CUPE Local 3742, which represents more than 700 support staff in School District 57.
"There were no concessions -- they had concessions on the table and they were removed, which is a real positive. It was hard work, and we went there to get the best for our members and we did well."
The new funding for educational assistants will provide paid wages for an additional 45 minutes of work per week for each eligible staff member and that will take effect in September 2012. The money will come out of a $165 million special needs student Class Organizational Fund, announced in October by Education Minister George Abbott.
There will also be $550,000 in new funding for the Support Staff Education and Adjustment Committee (SSEAC) for skills enhancement to study such issues as wage regionalism.
The contract, announced Friday, also provides $200,000 to build a framework for provincial bargaining, which has been a goal of CUPE since 1999 in its contract negotiations with the province. Provincial negotiations between BCPSEA and union presidents council members from seven regions involved about 20 meetings. Bargaining cost the CUPE union about $15,000 per day.
"Now the process is in place so they won't take so long to go to the provincial table," said Prouse.
A wage re-opener clause in the contract will allow the support staff unions to renegotiate with the province if the government-imposed wage freeze ends before the contract expires on June 30, 2012.
Brian Cotter, the CUPE local 4911 president who represents 46 maintenance staff in District 57, said there's not much in the new contract for his group to celebrate.
"It doesn't do anything for us," said Cotter. "We didn't give up any concessions, but for us as a maintenance group there's really nothing in it for us. That $550,000 SSEAC funding is there, which we have taken advantage of over the years for training for our guys.
"It is a start and I think we knew it was going to be pretty hard to beat a provincial net-zero mandate without drastic action, and with the still teachers doing their [negotiations], our small union didn't have a lot of clout."
The union locals have until Feb. 29, 2010 to ratify the contract, which expires on June 30, 2012.
