The University of Victoria is the latest public sector employer to ratify a five-year agreement with staff under the province’s new economic stability mandate.
“Many [employees] would have liked to see higher wage increases, but the feeling was this is the best we were going to get,” said Melissa Moroz, a labour relations officer with the Professional Employees Association. The organization represents 865 academic and administrative staff at the university. It does not include faculty and sessional instructors, who have their own unions.
“The majority of other public sector workers have already signed deals and we saw what happened during the teachers’ strike, so there wasn’t a big interest in push back,” Moroz said.
Employees voted 84 per cent in favour of the agreement, which includes a five per cent wage increase over five years and runs to June 30, 2019. Previous agreements were for two-year terms.
Moroz said the longer agreement gives the union more time to build capacity and “focus on educating our members.”
The province said there is potential for additional increases if B.C. economic growth exceeds certain forecasts during the last four years of the agreement.
Denise Helm, manager of media relations and public affairs at UVic, said the university is pleased with the agreement.
“It’s viewed as a fair and reasonable agreement for both the university and the PEA,” she said, adding the longer contract provides more stability in the relationship between UVic and the union and helps in budgeting.
The economic stability mandate applies to public sector workers with collective agreements that expired on or after Dec. 31, 2013. About two-thirds of the 316,000 unionized public service workforce are covered by tentative or ratified agreements.
