Nova Scotia is home to 373 public schools, with more on the way. These are places of learning for more than 133,500 students. These students depend on school support workers: bus drivers, education assistants, library assistants, Mi’kmaq and Indigenous student support workers, custodians, early childhood educators and other roles integral to their school life every day. As they continue to show up for students and their colleagues, it can be hard to remember that they’ve been working without a contract for nearly a year, as the province seems determined to draw out negotiations to these workers’ detriment.
The Canadian Union of Public Employees represents over 5,000 school support staff across Nova Scotia. All CUPE members work under the protection of a contract, also called a collective agreement, that workers negotiate with the province every few years once their old contract expires.
These agreements determine wages, leave benefits, workload and staffing, and health and safety guidelines, among other things. The last agreement for school support staff expired on Mar 31, 2024. Thus, CUPE has been negotiating a new contract since May, but there have been issues. Several of the union’s proposals on terms that affect all members, such as wages and leave benefits, weren’t open for negotiation past the province’s mandate. Instead, the union’s proposals were being flat-out rejected.
CUPE school support workers are represented across eight local unions corresponding to the province’s seven regional centres for education and the Conseil scolaire acadien provincial. Local union presidents comprise the Nova Scotia School Board Council of Unions, and NSSBCU members have been at all eight bargaining tables.
But, when the bargaining teams at these eight tables began meeting with their employers last summer, they were having no luck discussing common union issues, like wages. Every local bargaining unit heard the same thing: the province is the only one capable of negotiating union-wide wage increases, so RCEs and the CSAP can only pass on the province’s mandate.
During CUPE’s last round of bargaining with the province, they had both: a local and a provincial bargaining table. In an update from the union in September, the NSSBCU wrote 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,” writing that the union has spent “the past year harmonizing wages across the province” to address wage disparities between locals. “This is a tactic to cultivate resentment and discontent amongst workers,” the NSSBCU wrote.
The union and their employers disagree on how wage increases should be put into this next three-year contract. The union wants a flat-rate increase each year and the province wants a percentage increase each year. CUPE and the NSSBCU did the math based on average workers’ wages, and their proposal raises the hourly wage of each worker by roughly $3 more than the province’s proposal.
Related
School workers in contract talks feel “unheard and undervalued” by province
“They want to say they are offering the same wage increases to everyone, but the bottom line is not the same when you’re starting with the lowest hourly wage,” wrote the NSSBCU on this disagreement in September. “This is another reason that having a common table is so important, as it will support us in ensuring that we win wage increases that will make a difference to all members.”
In October, six months into bargaining, school support workers voted 94% in favour of a strike mandate as they weren’t seeing meaningful engagement at the bargaining table.
The union then filed for conciliation, which is a regular part of bargaining when both sides reach an impasse. It involves a third-party, neutral conciliator holding scheduled meetings with both sides to bring about a deal, and it’s necessary before job action can occur.
Then, all bargaining stalled for the election. Conciliation began in December.
The Department of Labour Relations emailed a statement to The Coast 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 current round of negotiations is feeling all too familiar for many workers.
“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,” president of CUPE Local 5047, Shelley McNeil, told The Coast in January, as to how workers were feeling about bargaining up until that point. “Here we are again; nothing has changed.”
Local 5047 represents 1,600 school support workers in the Halifax Regional Centre for Education. In May 2023, school support staff with Local 5047 went on strike because the province’s agreement, after more than a year of bargaining, didn’t come close enough to their wage increase proposals. After a month of job action, they reached a tentative agreement with the province in June.
Now, to have bargaining drag out again over wages and other province-wide issues, like school violence, McNeil says “members are feeling very discouraged, unheard and undervalued.”
On Jan 30, CUPE shared with its members that, finally, after nine months of ignored requests, the province had agreed to meet at a provincial table.
Thus, in some ways, fulsome bargaining only began this month. On Feb 6, the province held a first conciliation meeting with CUPE members at a provincial table, and on Feb 10, the province met at a provincial table with Nelson Scott, the chair of the NSSBCU and president of CUPE Local 5050, along with national CUPE representatives and members of each RCE and CSAP.
The union has hailed getting to the provincial table as a victory “of collective power,” although bargaining is still underway. However, there’s a big difference now because the province is meeting the union as a united front. In recapping both February meetings, the union wrote that wages and workplace violence remain the top issues that need to be negotiated at the provincial level.
Related
‘We need help now’ say support workers about school violence report
The union wrote that the province has agreed to discuss these issues and that there has been “meaningful discussion.” Another provincial meeting has been scheduled for later this month.
And this is where the “Wear Black on Wednesday” campaign comes in. It started during the school staff workers’ last round of contract negotiations in 2022 “to help us feel connected and united throughout bargaining,” Scott tells The Coast by email.
It started as a gesture of solidarity during a prolonged period of bargaining drawn out for more than a year that saw workers on the verge of striking province-wide before reaching an agreement in the summer of 2023. Wearing black on Wednesdays became a tangible way for school staff to show support for their union members at the bargaining table, to remind each other of the union’s strength through numbers and to connect bargaining for improved contracts to the work they do in schools every day.
Today, as school support staff approach nearly a year since their last contract expired, and as members have been at the negotiating table since May, frustrated by the province’s attempts to stall thus far–wearing black on Wednesdays has made a full return.
“When you walk into work on a Wednesday and see your fellow union members wearing a black shirt, it’s a reminder that you’re not alone,” says Scott. “We’re in this together. You’ve got your black shirt on, and I’ve got mine, and so do thousands of other workers.”
To top it all off, the next meeting between CUPE and the province is scheduled for Feb 26, which just so happens to be a Wednesday.
Related Stories
School workers in contract talks feel “unheard and undervalued” by province
‘We need help now’ say support workers about school violence report
Education worker strike could happen as early as January
This article appears in Feb 1-28, 2025.