This blog formed a major part of our strategy for communicating to the public, and as such we’ve decided to keep it on line as a sort of historical record.  Feel free to browse.

Today, June 2008, we’ve been back to work for two months and things are slowly getting back to normal.  Victorians welcomed us back with the busiest May in history!

Local 410 has never felt that there was any essential conflict between it’s members and the goals of the organization.   Utimately we both serve the same ideal - providing exellent Library service.

A difficult dispute has been settled, pay equity promised so long ago, has been finally agreed to and will be implemented on a defined schedule.  Now it’s time to remember we are on the same team and to work together to provide the best possible Library service to the public.

After a six week lockout starting on February 18, 2008 and ending on March 31, 2008, CUPE Local 410 reached agreement with the Greater Victoria Labour Relations Association. The new collective agreement includes full funding of Pay Equity over it’s four year term, and substantial improvements in the working conditions and salaries of many of our Auxilliary staff.

We cannot thank enough all the concerned members of the public who supported us so strongly in our battle. Victoria really is a Library town!

We will keep the blog running for awhile, for a historical record of a kind, if nothing else.  Feel free to browse, but there will likely not be much in the way of posting until we find another use for it.

Meet at Centennial Square at 1:45 pm and join the walk to the legislature. There will be activities for children at Centennial Square as well.

It’s International Women’s Day, and what better way to show that women’s rights matter in 2008.

Pay equity is “equal pay for work of equal value”, and that’s what we are asking for here. That’s what the parties agreed to achieve in 1992. This process is incomplete.

Pay Equity is a two step process:
1. All jobs are scored on a single plan designed to be gender neutral, so that all jobs with the same scores are
of equal value.
2. The salary rates are adjusted so that all jobs of equal value are paid equally.

Just doing the scoring process should be enough, but in our case a third step was added between the other two, so that we could be sure of which jobs actually were of equal value. That was the 2000 joint union/management study, which determined that the results in the Library and the City were very comparable.

Now if that study had shown that our jobs had been over-valued, then our salaries would have been adjusted downwards over time to be the same as those at the city. But as it showed the opposite, namely that our jobs had been undervalued, then our salaries need to be adjusted upwards to achieve pay equity.

The GVLRA and its chair Mayor Ted Daly are now claiming that the jobs cannot be compared, but you can never have pay equity without doing such a comparison. If the plan is not good enough to determine equal value between the Library and the City, then it was also not good enough to compare City Outside workers with City Inside workers. But it was good enough for that and that has been done, so city inside workers (mostly female) are paid comparably to city outside workers (mostly male).

The GVLRA and Ted Daly cannot change the rules because they don’t like the outcome.

The essence of the disagreement has to do with the interpretation of one line in the 1992 contract between library workers and their employer. That line states that wages paid for library jobs will be based on comparisons to equivalent positions at the City of Victoria.

The union representing workers, CUPE Local 410, has done a good job of highlighting the inequity between wages paid for library staff and those paid municipal workers.

The group arguing for the employer says the union’s comparisons aren’t realistic. Making that claim on the board’s behalf is the Greater Victoria Labour Relations Association. It’s reason for being is to put some distance between municipalities and their employees when it comes to labour negotiations. Same (but different) when it comes to the library system.

Part of the GVRLA’s argument is that municipalities are not the employers of library workers. We beg to differ.

The library board consists of people from the community as well as representatives from municipalities that use the library’s services.

Without taking anything away from citizens on the board, it’s the municipalities that foot the bill. At some point their elected representatives are the ones who are directly accountable to taxpayers.

Up until now, the board has been notably quiet about its position on the disagreement with the library workers’ union.

We really haven’t heard much from the board or the GVRLA. In fact, the only person who has spoken on behalf of the board has been its chair, Christopher Graham.

We think it’s time for that to change.

It’s time for individual municipalities to speak up about what’s going on. The best way to do that is for the de facto spokesperson of each municipality – the mayor – to add some clarity to what’s going on. It’s not enough for the GVRLA to make vague threats about job security and branch viability if wages rise.

We think taxpayers deserve to know exactly how much the union’s demands will cost.

We’d like to see those numbers made public and became part of what should be a public debate. Doing so would infuse discussion with the political will that seems to be lacking from the current negotiations.

For the full editorial of February 20 and a complete record of other media coverage on the dispute since 2007, see our link to Media coverage - links.

“When a community loses its library, it loses a chunk of its soul. It’s knowing this that makes CUPE’s library workers show up at their jobs every day, in spite of the risks and frustrations.”

And that’s really what’s kept CUPE Local 410 Library workers going ever since September, going to work nearly every day, providing most of our services, withholding a few, in the hopes that we could bring our employers back to the bargaining table without punishing the people it’s really all about - Library users.

But it was in vain. Instead of negotiation the Library Board has chosen confrontation, and has taken the Public Library away from all the citizens we served in the Capital area. They ripped out a chunk of this city’s heart and soul to “save their assets”.

That sounds rather a lot like another phrase that begins with “cover their …”, doesn’t it?

Well there are other far more important assets than money, or even books, in the Library. The number one asset is their staff, and how do they protect that? By depriving us of our incomes! That’s very protective, isn’t it? Do you feel protected today?

Maybe they don’t understand what their real assets are.  Maybe they think that Library service really isn’t very important, or if it’s important at all, certainly not as important as money.

Or maybe they think that Library workers aren’t really very valuable and don’t deserve the same pay as other municipal workers. Maybe they think that we’re just a bunch of uppity women who are just working for pin money.

If they don’t think that way, they couldn’t be doing a much better job of making it look like they do.

The current plan is to talk to politicians. One of the difficulties is that many of them refuse to meet with us, but in the face of those difficulties we have developed a lobbying strategy and have actually managed to meet with several of them and learned some things we didn’t know before.

This whole dispute is like trying to nail jelly to a tree. The GVLRA refuses to change it’s last position and says there is no point meeting with us. But when we talk to the municipal politicians we hear from them that they can’t talk to us and we should talk to the GVLRA!

One thing we do know, and that is that our cause is a right one. We were promised pay equity fifteen years ago and still, after all those years, we don’t have it despite what some politicians say. If they are so sure of their position why won’t they take the dispute to a neutral third party as we suggested back at the beginning of this?

Unfortunately history shows us that a wronged group has to stand up and make a fuss before the wrongs will be addressed. Perhaps the wrongs done to us pale into insignificance when compared to those suffered by others in this land, but they are wrongs nevertheless. Therefore we must must seek to have them corrected.

So we will not give up, and we will not go away. The fight continues and will not stop until our concerns have been dealt with

By threatening individual members of our bargaining unit with discipline for taking a legal strike action, and by refusing to even address at the bargaining table the very serious concerns raised by Library workers, the Library Board is sending the message that they do not consider their employees to be equals, but servants, or recalcitrant children, to be corrected by punishment rather than taken seriously.

By refusing to talk, and even to listen, the Board, their negotiator, and the municipalities that own and operate the Library system, seem to be trying to solve a problem by ignoring it, hoping it will disappear, or just pretending it doesn’t exist. Well it does exist, and it needs to be addressed, and the place to address it is at the bargaining table.

Taking these unnecessary and vindictive actions against individual employees who are merely following the lawful direction of their Union, will only make the problems worse, not better. That can only have a negative effect on the whole Library system. And that’s sad.

Treating Library workers this way won’t make them give in. It will galvanize their resolve. They will not go away, and they will not give in. They will never kowtow to bullying or threats, and they will not be ignored.

The day has now come when CUPE Local 410 has to defend itself by bringing charges of unfair labour practices against the Library. A year ago no Library worker dreamed that that could ever happen.

The Union’s policy is clear. We are ready, willing, and able to talk about the serious problems raised by our members. We are ready, willing, and able, to negotiate solutions that will work for everybody involved. But we cannot negotiate without a negotiating partner.

It’s time to talk.

And, even more, it’s time to listen. Is anyone listening?

Library workers are not fools and know what an agreement is and when it is or is not being kept. They will not give up and they will not go away.