CUPE 4627 Picket Line at Vancouver Community College

by Stephen Petrina on October 30, 2012

Support staff at Vancouver Community College (VCC) set up picket lines before dawn this morning. CUPE 4627 represents library technicians, clerical workers, administrative, technical, warehouse, program assistants and cafeteria workers at VCC. The Union explains:

  • The key feature of the Cooperative Gains Mandate is that it provides public sector employers with the ability to negotiate modest wage increases using savings found within existing budgets.

We believed the college had done their submission to the government and all this would just be a formality.

After speaking with our friends at CUPE National, we discovered that the real date for the Ministry to withdraw the mandate is rumoured to not be the end of November but very early in November. We don’t believe the College has mislead us, but we believe we have been mislead. There isn’t a lot of time to stop the inequity that is being delivered. We will most likely not be the only support staff union at a College who is prepared to fight this. There are a few others and they are just a week or two behind us in regards to bargaining. We have a short window to get their attention and have them right this wrong.