Education assistants, clerical staff and other inside support workers have rejected a tentative agreement with the Greater Victoria school district.
Members of Canadian Union of Public Employees’ Local 947 voted 69 per cent against ratifying a new contract at a meeting Wednesday.
It’s the first CUPE local in the province to turn down an agreement.
CUPE B.C.’s bargaining team signed a tentative provincial deal in September and union locals were given until Dec. 20 to resolve any remaining issues with their districts.
The provincial framework called for a staggered 3.5 per cent increase over two years.
Local 947 president Brad Hall said his members were troubled by benefit changes.
Under the proposed deal, school support staff receive a drug card that allows them to purchase medications rather than having to pay cash and get reimbursed later. In exchange, the employees agree to participate in a program that makes greater use of generic drugs and other cost-effective treatments.
Hall said one consequence of that trade-off is that workers would lose coverage for some medications. His members, however, were never able to determine which drugs would be affected.
“The members, quite frankly, said, ‘They’re asking us to vote on something and we don’t know what we’re giving up,’ ” he said. “That’s really the position they all took. … Ninety per cent of the discussion was all around the benefit plan.”
In the end, Local 947 rejected the deal by a vote of 137-61 with 198 of the union’s approximately 800 members casting ballots.
“There was a lot of secrecy … and I think it just scared our members off,” Hall said.
Officials with CUPE’s provincial office were reviewing Local 947’s decision Thursday, staff representative John Horsfield said.
“For the time being, we’re not sure what it means,” he said. “We’re looking at that on a provincial basis to see what the next steps are from here.”
Horsfield said 27 of 57 CUPE locals have ratified the deal across B.C. A further 23 have reached tentative agreements, but have yet to vote on them. The other seven — including Local 947 — are still in negotiations.
CUPE Local 382, which represents 230 painters, custodians and other outside support staff in the Greater Victoria district, ratified its agreement last month.
CUPE represents about 27,000 support staff in 53 school districts across B.C.
