Campbell River school support workers have a new labour deal in place.
It’s one of 25 K-12 support staff agreements ratified by local unions, school districts and the BC Public School Employers’ Association board of directors.
The local deal involves SD72 and CUPE Local 723, made up of 35 employees.
Each of the 25 agreements has a three-year term from July 1, 2019, to June 30, 2022, with general wage increases of two percent per year, plus additional local funds negotiated into the packages.
The province says “examples of negotiated improvements to service delivery” include:
- a professional development fund for employees;
- targeted premium increases for trades, bilingual and first aid staff;
- enhanced education and training opportunities;
- extended additional work hours for education assistants;
- monthly collaboration time for educational assistants;
- an extension of regular working hours for administrative assistants;
- targeted wage increases for HVAC trade employees to address recruitment and retention challenges; and
- increased hours for bus drivers on the rotational list to drive for curricular and extracurricular trips.
With these deals, roughly 73 percent of K12 support staff employees, or 53 out of 69 agreements, have now been settled under the province’s public-sector bargaining mandate.
The ratifications complete the process begun by the September 2018 Provincial Framework Agreement, which paved the way for collective agreements to be negotiated between K-12 local support staff unions and the 60 public school districts throughout B.C.
Currently, there are just over 229,000 public-sector employees covered by tentative or ratified agreements reached under the mandate.
