NORTH Shore government workers, including liquor store clerks, child protection workers and justice ministry staff, walked the picket line Wednesday to draw attention to frozen wages and stalled contract talks.
They were part of 25,000 unionized employees who staged a one-day strike across the province. The work stoppage affected more than 700 government and ICBC offices and B.C. Liquor Stores across the province. Essential services in the courts, prisons, child protection and forest fire service were not affected.
Shaunee Dunn was on strike for the first time in the 14 years she's spent working as a clerk at the liquor store at 132 Esplanade Avenue.
"I think there's a perception that we make lots of money sometimes, but we don't really," said Dunn.
Dunn and co-worker Sean Desjardins said they go paycheque-to-paycheque on their modest pay, which has not gone up for the past three and a half years. The one-day strike is "not going to hurt them financially that much, not as much as if we'd done it in the summer or Christmas, but we hope it brings them back to the bargaining table," said Desjardins, who has worked at the store for nine years.
The B.C. Government Employees Union is asking for a 3.5 per cent wage increase this year and a cost-of-living increase next year. The union has rejected the provincial government's offer of a two per cent increase the first year and a 1.5 per cent increase the second year, an offer the government has now taken off the table. Bargaining talks remain stalled.
"We took two zeros, in 2010 and 2011, that really looked at a wage cut of around five per cent when you look at the cost of living," said BCGEU president Darryl Walker in an Aug. 29 press conference.
In 2009, the B.C. government imposed a netzero mandate on unions that represent government workers, meaning that wages would not be raised for two years. The government is now negotiating "modest wage increases made possible by productivity increases within existing budgets," according to the Ministry of Finance website.
