Two sides in school strike dug in
As the Victoria Day long weekend approaches, both the Nova Scotia government and striking CUPE school support workers appear to be dug in for the long haul.
“We believe in the collective bargaining process, tough but honest negotiations,” Premier Tim Houston said at Ecole des Beau-marais in Porters Lake, where he and Education Minister Becky Druhan had completed a Thursday announcement of a new francophone school to be built on the Eastern Shore to replace the aging Beau-marais building.
“In this particular situation, when we say we believe in collective bargaining, we expected that to be a two-way street,” Houston said.
“The CUPE leadership basically came to the table with three things that they wanted to negotiate on, wage parity was one of them, that no matter where you live in this province, if you do the same job, you should get paid the same.
“We negotiated those things at the table, we reached agreement with the CUPE leadership. Seven of eight locals agreed with that, 64 per cent of members agreed with that, and now we have a situation here in this area where one local wants to undo the work that’s been done on wage parity.”
Some 1,860 CUPE members of the Halifax-area local that work as educational program assistants, assistive technology support workers, child and youth care practitioners, Mi’kmaq and Indigenous student support staff, African Nova Scotian support staff, Schools Plus community outreach workers, library specialists and early childhood educators walked off the job May 10.
The province had reached a tentative agreement four weeks ago with the bargaining teams for all eight CUPE
bargaining units representing 5,400 public school support workers across the province.
The other seven units accepted the deal but CUPE Local 5047 members who work in 136 Halifax Regional Centre for Education (HRCE) elementary, junior high and high schools in the Halifax area voted against the deal, saying they require higher wages than the 6.5 per cent hike offered over the length of a three-year contract.
Chris Melanson, president of the local, said the premier’s take on the strike is off base.
“We’ve been saying we’re willing to have conversations and we want to talk, we want to be able to work something out here,” Melanson said.
The union leadership was buoyed by hundreds of members and supporters attending a downtown Halifax rally Thursday morning and more than 20 members who picketed outside the site of the premier’s announcement.
“Our members are pretty solid in where they are,” Melanson said.
“We want to have discussions with government about the regional issues, talk about the cost of living here and the increased cost for services in the HRM.
“To me, it seems pretty black and white . . . . Let’s put the two sides together and work something out. We’re not looking to get rich. This is not our members performing a vigilante act, this is not our members trying to break away from a crowd. This is our members saying, ‘Premier, it’s kind of ridiculous to not offer enough for the people who are not seeing enough to raise them up when he knows full well the cost of living is much higher in HRM.’”
Melanson said the majority of the local’s membership are women.
“There is no need to oppress women, no need to further push back those people who we have finally made everyone see that they deserve to be treated equally.”
WAGE PARITY
Druhan made it clear that the next step to solve the impasse must be made by the union.
“At this stage, CUPE really needs to do the work to figure out what their members are looking for and need,” the minister said.
“CUPE bargained for parity. That was delivered in the agreement. It’s really up to CUPE to work with their members to figure out what solution they’re looking for, and then I know that HRCE will be ready and willing to listen once that happens.”
HRCE has been posting jobs on the Maxsys system, a staffing agency, for educational assistants to help students with special needs by providing support in areas of personal care and independent class programming.
Lindsey Bunin, communications officer with HRCE, said in an email that HRCE’S goal continues to be to find solutions to allow the greatest number of students to attend school while CUPE exercises its right to job action.
“Among a number of other strategies, we have contacted third-party agencies to help support recruitment of temporary workers,” Bunin said.
“Temporary workers and casual staff may be employed to help support schools with tasks typically assigned to educational program assistants.”
TOLD TO STAY HOME
Bunin had said earlier that about 2,500 of the 58,000 HRCE students are supported by educational program assistants and the level of support varies significantly. She said many students who have supports are able to attend school but “in other cases, where a student requires dedicated support for personal care, management of medical care, complex behaviour and/or their level of cognitive development significantly impacts their ability to safely navigate their school environment, it may not be possible for the student to attend school safely.”
Families of students in the latter category were notified that the students should stay home.
Heather Langley of Clayton Park in Halifax, whose 11-year-old daughter Lucy has a rare syndrome, which includes profound physical and intellectual challenges and a severe form of epilepsy, is one of the parents who was told their child couldn’t attend school.
Langley said Thursday that replacement EPAS just can’t step in and take over from one who has been working with a child for a long period of time.
“With the EPAS, our children have built relationships with them,” Langley said.
“In Lucy’s case, she’s had the same EPA for six years and Lucy is non-verbal so it takes awhile to really understand what Lucy is trying to communicate because sometimes she does that with gestures or the way she looks at something.”
Langley said Lucy likes things a certain way; she doesn’t like doors left open or if somebody doesn’t hang her coat up right away.
“She notices the tiniest details and typically only people who have been around her for a significant amount of time would understand those things. I can’t get in her brain to know what that feels like but I imagine it is almost painful for her when she sees something out of place because she gets quite agitated.”
Langley said she would rather see “the government go back to the table and give the EPAS a living wage and maintain that consistency of care as opposed to having people who never met my child in the school working with her.”
Langley said she has accepted an offer to have Lucy return to school in the afternoons, after lunch, next week.
“While we fully support the EPAS on strike, we don’t want to deny Lucy her education,” Langley said, while harbouring concerns that staff next week can’t feed or change Lucy and she is unsure if they have been trained in emergency seizure care.
“The solution to the problem is for everybody to be back in class, our staff and our students,” Druhan said. “Everything between now and then is best efforts but not ideal.”
Bunin said no talks have been scheduled between the two sides.
“They are trying to shift their responsibilities onto us,” Melanson said of government’s stance.
“The way they can fulfil their obligations is to come back to the table and reach a deal so our qualified members can continue to provide those services.”