Strike Diaries: Why I Voted NO to the City's Offer

You're bummed. You thought your garbage and mounds of recycling might be collected by the end of the week. I know, I thought something might come out of Brian Foley's recommendations too - until I read them. I miss my library, and I'm getting tired of driving my garbage to friends houses who have private garbage collection and most of all, I miss my paycheque. As the city strike nears record proportions at 80 days, we're all beyond frustrated. CUPE 15 voted yes and are getting back to work today, so community centres are reopening, but CUPE 391 (my union) and 1004 voted no and are still on the lines.

Why? I'll tell you. Because contrary to what you've been told this isn't about 17.5% or 5 year terms. We're okay with that. We're happy with that. But this offer pits full time workers, who make up less than half of our workforce, against part time and auxiliary workers who always get shafted come negotiation time.

I'm one of the continually shafted ones. As an auxiliary worker, I'm not eligible for the signing bonus (I haven't worked enough hours this year), and I don't qualify for their measly interpretation of pay equity because I'm one of the lowest positions in the hierarchy. Oh, and did you know that when I work a holiday (the Carnegie branch is open every day regardless of holidays) I don't get time and a half?

Pay Equity
Pay equity is one of our major issues. All provinces across Canada except for two have pay equity legislation, we don't here in BC. Library staff are majority women and we get paid on average 28% less than men in positions doing similar work.

Not only do these recommendations have no language around pay equity in them, they are only offering a one step pay increase (around 90 cents) to the top half of our union: librarians and library technicians. Actually less than half of our union is in the top spheres, most of us are library assistants like me, and most of us work part-time. We didn't go on our first strike in 77 years for 90 cents for less than half our staff.

Other issues include:
Contracting out - they only have to give us six months warning and they can contract us out.
Sundays - they want to open Central on holiday Sundays (with no holiday pay) which is good for patrons, I guess.
Pages - we have some of the lowest entry-level wages in the city and they want to introduce an even lower-level position who'll get paid even less.

I heard Brian Foley on the radio the other day saying that if we don't accept these recommendations we'll be out past Christmas. Which sounds like a thinly-veiled threat to me. I hope not. I hope the City will meet us back at the table and keep talking, 'cuz we haven't been walking the picket line for months for the small crumbs they've offered us.