By Lauren Phillips | The Coast
Over 5,000 education workers in Nova Scotia have signed a new two-year deal with the province, after nearly a year of bargaining.
In a member update Sunday night, the council of eight local union presidents told members they were “proud of what we have achieved” and that getting this deal “showed us what we can do when we work together. “Unity in council and solidarity across all eight locals is what got us this deal,” wrote members. “We did this together.”
In Nova Scotia, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) represents education workers–bus drivers, librarian assistants, early childhood educators, teaching assistants and more–across seven regional centres for education and the Conseil scolaire acadien provincial.
For these workers, bargaining for a new contract began last spring. Then, in October, members voted 94% in favour of job action and applied for conciliation. In January, they achieved a provincial, or “common,” table to negotiate shared worker issues across all locals, like wages and school safety.
After this happened, CUPE reached a tentative agreement on Feb. 28. The minister of education and early childhood development, Brendan Maguire, wrote at the time he was “so happy both sides came together to reach a fair agreement that supports our education support workers in the extremely important work they do.”
He wrote, “my sincere thanks go to everyone around the bargaining table who put in long hours to arrive at a deal anchored in our shared commitment to strengthening Nova Scotia’s education system.”
As of Sunday, CUPE has ratified this deal, meaning members have all voted to accept it. Next, each local will finalize and sign its new contract.
Common to all are key wins the union has been pushing for across the province, like wage increases to help the lowest-to-highest earners and meaningful responses to school safety.
The new deals include:
- Flat rate wage increases plus percentage increases to all CUPE workers’ hourly wages from the last contract’s expiration on March 31, 2024, until the new contract’s end date, March 31, 2026. These wage adjustments will do the most to affect change from low-to-high CUPE earners and will ensure the remaining CUPE workers earning less than $20/hour will have their wages raised above that bar.
- A commitment to include CUPE school support workers in future school safety discussions (they were excluded from key conversations between teachers, administrators, regional centres for education and the province in the past).
- Workplace violence training will be provided for all school support staff, not just those in roles deemed “at risk,” within a year of the deal’s signing.
- Access to violent-incident reports and their follow-up processes (with personal information redacted for privacy) for CUPE and its members to track responses and trends.
- Improvements to overtime, leave benefits and pensions.
In a press release Monday, CUPE and the Nova Scotia School Board Council of Unions (NSSBCU—the council of eight CUPE local presidents in this sector—said they were able to reach this deal and avert potential provincewide job action through coordination, solidarity and unity.
“Our approach to bargaining was ‘all of us or none of us,’” said local 5050 president and chair of the NSSBCU, Nelson Scott, in the release. “We were in this together.”
In a follow-up interview, Scott tells The Coast about some union wins at the local tables.
CUPE Local 5050 has been pushing for better pension provisions. Local 5050 represents approximately 1,300 education workers with the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional Centre for Education. Before this deal, says Scott, workers with CUPE Local 5050 had one of the lowest employer contributions to pensions in the sector in Canada.
“Now we have a defined benefit pension, which is a major win,” he says. “Local 5050 was the only CUPE local in this sector in Nova Scotia without a defined-benefit pension plan. Security in retirement was a big priority for members.”
CUPE Local 4682, representing education workers with the South Shore Regional Centre for Education, achieved specific language for bus drivers to ensure they’re paid for all their time working and not just starting at their first pick-up—another local table win.
Mary Jessome is the acting education coordinator with CUPE. She tells The Coast by phone that the common table wins addressing workplace violence are “huge, huge, huge” for school support staff because they deal with the majority of the tens of thousands of yearly violent incidents in Nova Scotia’s public schools. “Some members have felt this still isn’t enough, so that should tell you how important it is.”
Scott echoes this. “I think members are really happy with what we achieved, but there’s still much to cover addressing workplace violence and keeping people safe at work.”
