NDP, union warn government about CUPE school strike extending into summer break
“The leader of the New Democratic Party says it would be ill advised for the provincial government not to take immediate action to end the strike by CUPE school support workers.
“They will do so at their peril,” Claudia Chender said of the Progressive Conservative government not doing enough to ensure the strike by 1,860 Halifax-area education support staff doesn’t drag on into the summer break.
“My prediction would be that what happens then is they face massive attrition; people will leave because they have no choice,” Chender said Wednesday morning in front of dozens of striking workers at a news conference called so the NDP leader and union leaders could urge Premier Tim Houston and the government to get back to the bargaining table.
“Even now, in the fourth week of this strike, we know people are already leaving,” Chender said.
“If government decides to play some game of chicken with these workers, they’ll just go get another job. You’ll have students who are not supported to graduate, not supported to transition from pre-Primary into Primary and they won’t have the support they need when they get to Primary, and in the fall you’ll have an even bigger labour force issue than you already have.
“If the issue is money, that’s going to cost them more money. I hate to speak about it in those terms because this is fundamentally a human struggle; this is about children who are not able to attend school, who don’t have the support they need, the most vulnerable children in our system, and about workers who can’t afford to pay the bills.
“If the government wants to look at it in dollars and cents, settling this strike is also the right decision financially.”
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Chender said pay equity is a question that should be dealt with in bargaining.
“The reality is . . . we heard today from an ECE (early childhood educator) who has been in the field for almost 40 years who gets paid $29,000 a year, gross. I can’t imagine anyone in this province thinks that’s OK,” the NDP leader said.
“The government can come up with all the excuses they want about equal pay for equal work, and of course we support that, but we do know that women in this province don’t get paid equally for the work they do so I’d love for them to extend that logic.
“At the end of the day, I think it’s about these workers saying we need to get paid enough to live and we need to be able to support our families so that we can support yours, and that’s what we are asking the government to take into account.”
Melanson estimated that well over 70 per cent of the striking members are female, one of whom is Joanne Dileo, the ECE referenced by Chender who has been on the job since 1984.
“I made more when I worked in the daycares,” Dileo, who now works at Brookhouse Elementary, said of her current annual income that falls short of $29,000.
“If it wasn’t for my husband, I definitely could not live on that, and there are many, many, many single parents who are in this field and they have to work two, three jobs and it takes away from their families at home,” Dileo said.
The children who Dileo regularly works with are among the “thousands” referenced by Chender who cannot attend school during the strike because the program has been shut down. Others who can’t attend are disabled students with special needs who can’t go to school without the support of program assistants.
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