Over the past ten years, inflation has increased prices by 30 percent, and some workers haven’t seen a wage increase in nearly as long.
But they have also had to deal with increasingly stressful and unsafe working conditions in the classroom, as class sizes skyrocket and levels of violence increase.
Rates of workplace injury and burn-out have never been higher.
Custodial workers have faced increasingly stressful and unsafe working conditions as they are expected to manage more with less, ensuring that our schools remain safe and clean despite underfunding and growing demands.
Our members are on the front lines of these changes, and they deserve better.
Workers with CUPE Local 474 and 3550 are calling on their employer to pledge to three key commitments during this round of negotiations:
- Bargaining with workers free of the provincially mandated wage mandate of 2.75 percent. We’ve seen what this has done to other collective bargaining negotiations with our colleagues throughout the province. These wage guidelines are nowhere near what our members need or deserve and are a sure way to drive negotiations to an impasse.
- Job Evaluation, or the reclassification of wage structures that ensure equal pay for equal work of equal value, should be front of mind for our employer during this round of negotiations. We are fully committed to closing wage gaps within our collective agreements and ending wage discrimination at the bargaining table. Our employer must commit to this as well.
- We are also calling on our employer to drastically reduce the amount of work it chooses to contract out to non-unionized employees and other staff groups.. This freelance approach to work our members can do better, more efficiently, with better results for students, directly impacts the quality of service that parents and students expect from their public education system. Job erosion and contracting out are not the answer.
We have seen a degradation of service at our public schools due to years of underfunding, but that trend doesn’t have to continue.
We need more money injected directly into classrooms and facilities, supporting frontline workers who support our students during this round of collective bargaining.
We are writing to encourage you to stand up for our kids and public education across our communities and support school support staff and custodial staff during this round of negotiations.
Signed,
Barry Benoit, President CUPE Local 474
Mandy Lamoreaux, President CUPE Local 3550