School support staff unions hold oneday strike, demand higher wages
The Townships Regional Union of Support Staff (TRUSS) took part in a province-wide, oneday strike Tuesday morning, joining nearly 33,000 Centrale des Syndicats du Québec (CSQ) union members and leaving school boards with the choice of either moving classes online, or cancelling school altogether.
TRUSS members mobilized in Magog, filling the corner of Sherbrooke Street and Saint-jean-bosco Street. Lynda, a transportation office agent, was chanting and cheering on honking cars when she spoke to The Record. She is tired of feeling unseen and voiceless.
“The government] made offers, but [the collective agreement] expired April 1, 2020 and they still haven’t come to an agreement. Our union is trying to get better things, but they keep telling us there’s no money and they’re not budging,” said Lynda.
According to the office agent, there have been over 40 meetings between the CSQ and the Quebec government, but neither side is willing to
compromise. The situation should have been handled months ago, she continued, and now it’s at a standstill.
The workload continues to pile on every year, Lynda added. Everyone can acknowledge that this is not a normal year, she explained, but the pandemic has shown that support staff workers are overworked, underpaid and underappreciated.
“There’s all of this extra stuff you’re told to do, like on our buses they say now you need hand sanitizer, you need to make sure it’s full, you need to supply the buses, you also need gloves, masks, you also need a plastic sheet around you,” Lynda said. “Who is going to do all this?”
It goes even deeper for many TRUSS members. Lynda’s position is more stable, compared to special education assistants, for example. While their jobs are an integral part of the school system, special education workers often face an uncertain future.
Christina, a special education technician in the adult sector, who stood next to Lynda during the demonstration, said she is effectively jobless during the summer. She needs to re-apply every year, not knowing how many hours she will get or where she will be placed.
“Every fall, we have to go through what is called a ‘cattle call’ and then we have to get there, and we don’t know what job we’re going to get; you’re laid off every year,” Christina said.
What makes it more difficult is that it all works based on seniority, she added. If someone is low on the list, they might get minimal hours or go without work for weeks at a time. And there aren’t enough hours to go around as it is, Christina added.
“I mean it could be like a 20 hour per week job, so sometimes you have to do two jobs,” she said, adding that workers normally jump from school to school in order to accumulate hours.
Many support staff workers are forced to piece various jobs together to create a viable living situation, according to TRUSS Vice-president Tamara Porter. There are about 450 TRUSS members, and a majority of them are living without a full-time job.
“A lot of people are doing little tiny shifts, like five hours, to make bigger loads and then you don’t even get benefits, so people in my school and other schools, too, they don’t even get insurance, they don’t get paid sick days,” Porter said.
When the Eastern Townships School Board (ETSB) announced it would move classes online today, she felt vindicated, as it proved that schools cannot function without its support staff. It shows that what we do is important, Porter said, they can’t open because we’re here.
The intention was never to stop students from attending class. The TRUSS purposefully avoided creating a picket line and blocking teachers from entering schools. But the ETSB opted for virtual learning because they said the strike affected the safety and security of students.
“We do [the job] because we love it,” she said. “We do it because we love the kids, and every year we come back, but it’s hard, and if [the students] had more services, it would make us all happy; they need us to be there,” she said.
And if the government is unable to recognize school support staff workers, there could be a bigger problem in a few years. Without adequate pay, benefits, and schedule stability, the threat of a worker shortage could become a reality in the near future.
“We can’t find people to do those jobs,” said Porter. “Not everyone wants to come to a school and work one hour a day and then leave; you can’t feed your family, I don’t know, it’s kind of hard to pay your groceries on one hour a day.”