By Lauren Phillips | The Coast
New year, new deal? Not yet for roughly 5,000 school support staff in Nova Scotia. These are bus drivers, educational program assistants, library support specialists, early childhood educators, custodians and Indigenous or African Nova Scotian student support workers.
They’re represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and they’re “frustrated with the province” as bargaining for a new contract continues to be “dragged out.” So says a press release last Wednesday from CUPE and the Nova Scotia School Board Council of Unions, NSSBCU, made up of the presidents of the province’s eight school union locals.
CUPE says it’s “almost a year into negotiations and the progress has been repeatedly stalled by the Houston administration” as “all bargaining meetings were cancelled in November due to the snap election,” then “briefly resumed before the holiday break—and now talks are stalled by a mandate from the province which has prevented employers from discussing wage proposals.
“Everyone is hearing the same thing from employers at the table: they say they have a mandate for wages and can’t deviate from it,” said Nelson Scott, NSSBCU chair and CUPE 5050 president in the release. “There is no discussion, there is no negotiation. All we want is to be able to fairly negotiate our collective agreement.”
NSSBCU members have been at every local table during bargaining, which began in the summer. The biggest issue, as CUPE has told its members, is that “the employer is unwilling to meet us at a provincial table,” as the union has requested, “so that our common proposals can be negotiated in a way that is organized, coordinated, and united.”
This provincial, or common, table would mean all eight unions would come together with the province to discuss shared contract proposals, like wages, leave benefits, health and safety policies and risk factors contributing to school violence. Without this common table, union locals are left to negotiate with their own regional centres of education and the Conseil scolaire acadein provincial, who aren’t in the power to negotiate these shared issues beyond the province’s mandate, says the union.
That’s why CUPE is not happy with how bargaining has gone.
The union’s September bargaining update said that despite the province’s “efforts to divide us, we are still coordinating,” and cautioned that “if we give in and start to bargain provincial proposals separately, the employer will take full advantage of the separate tables and attempt to bargain inequality into our contracts.
“We know that the [Department of Education and Early Childhood Development] is fine with major disparities between locals as we’ve spent the past year harmonizing wages across the province to address just that. This is a tactic to cultivate resentment and discontent amongst workers.”
In October, CUPE and the NSSBCU held a province-wide strike vote that returned a 94% vote in favour of possible job action because they weren’t seeing action at the bargaining table.
In order for a union to go on strike, certain conditions must be met. These include that:
- The collective agreement has expired.
- The union has held a vote in favour of a strike mandate.
- Bargaining has occurred and the parties involved have failed to reach a collective agreement.
- A conciliator has been appointed, held meetings but an agreement has not been reached.
- A set amount of time has passed after the conciliator has filed a report with the province, usually one to two weeks.
Bargaining moved to conciliation with the province at the end of last year, with a meeting held Dec 3. Conciliation is a necessary part of bargaining before a strike can happen. It’s a process where a conciliation officer, a neutral third-party, is appointed by the Minister of Labour, Skills and Immigration (or a delegate) to try to make a deal happen, because this hasn’t been possible at the regular bargaining table. Conciliation is requested by either side for this reason. In this case, it was requested by all eight CUPE locals.
With conciliation dates set for the rest of January and February, and those being subject to rescheduling, it’s difficult to predict exactly when a strike could occur. However, it’s unlikely to happen before March.
“I’ll tell you, members are feeling very discouraged, unheard and undervalued,” president of CUPE Local 5047, Shelley McNeil, tells The Coast. Local 5047 represents 1,600 education workers in the Halifax Regional Centre for Education.
If a strike does happen, it wouldn’t be the first time in recent memory the union has taken job action over stalled bargaining. In May 2023, Local 5047 went on strike for five weeks before reaching an agreement with the province—an agreement which expired Mar 31, 2024, spurring the current round of negotiations.
“Going down this road again makes people feel that we were right the last time: our employer does not care about us and does not want to do anything to make us happy or make our workplace better. Here we are again; nothing has changed.”
McNeil says her local’s first conciliation meeting, on Dec 13, was “unsuccessful,” but another meeting is scheduled for January 21. “We’re going in with the goal that we can come to some kind of understanding and get a viable and worthwhile contract to take back to our members.”
This comes back to negotiating shared, or common table, issues that affect all eight locals at one table.
One of the biggest issues the union wants to address at this shared table is wages. CUPE says the province has proposed a percentage-based hourly wage increase, which is 3% for the first year and 2% for the second and third years of a new agreement.
Countering that, CUPE has proposed a flat-rate increase for all employees of $3 the first year, then $1 the second and third years, because “the bottom line is not the same when you’re starting with the lowest hourly wage,” said the union in a September bargaining update. In other words, CUPE said, “members with the lowest wage get smaller increases, folks with higher wages get bigger increases, and everyone’s increases will fall short of the growing cost of groceries, housing and other living expenses.”
The release includes a breakdown of how each proposal would affect the highest and lowest paid CUPE members—as well as the effect both options would have on an MLA’s salary, based on an annual income of $89,234.90.
“If people aren’t meeting us halfway, then the process stops.”
McNeil, who is part of the bargaining team for 5047, says it’s not as if CUPE is expecting to get everything it wants, “but if people aren’t meeting us halfway, then the process stops.”
McNeil says, as it stands now, “as soon as any common proposals are brought up, we’re automatically told ‘we’re not in a position to discuss that,’ so it’s not even much of a conversation.” Essentially, the union isn’t being offered room to negotiate key terms beyond the province’s mandate because their local employers aren’t in a position to do so.
Therefore, McNeil says “the most important thing now is to have people at the table who can make decisions. The province has to be willing to sit down and meet with us. If our employer can’t make the decision, then send people who can.
“Our members are so stressed out, especially over wages and wondering, ‘how am I going to get through a strike?’” If the union were to strike after conciliation meetings close, which could be as early as March, workers would receive less than their full wages while out.
McNeil says no one wants that. “We want to bargain. Nobody wants to see a strike, especially members in this field who can barely live on what they’re making, not to mention what impact it will have on our students and families.”
What do they want? “A common table where we can all bargain fairly and responsibly,” says McNeil.
Last Wednesday, the union said it “urges” newly appointed minister for education and early childhood development, Brendan Maguire, “to empower employers” so they can “actually negotiate with school support staff.” Or, if not, the union asks the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development to meet their request and sit down with the NSSBCU “at a central table to negotiate wages and other common proposals,” which the release says “the province has so far been unwilling” to do, “despite this being the process in previous rounds of negotiations.”
In the release, CUPE Nova Scotia president Nan McFadgen said not only has the EECD “decided not to meet CUPE members at a central table to negotiate the proposals common to all eight locals, including wages, but they also have employers handcuffed at local tables.”
Said McFadgen, “basically, we have thousands of members on the verge of job action and the government will not even fairly negotiate key terms.”
The Coast has asked the province why a common table hasn’t been created for this round of negotiations and whether employers can discuss wages. The Department of Labour Relations emailed a statement which read, “we respect the collective bargaining process, and value the work education support staff do every day to support children in our schools.
“We’re listening to concerns being raised through the education entities as the employers and we’re committed to supporting the entities in reaching renewed collected agreements with the assistance of a conciliator, which is a normal part of the negotiating process.
The statement read that the “government is committed to the collective bargaining process as demonstrated through the actions and support at the bargaining table which has resulted in over 300 settlements since 2021.”
