“Mass confusion” among support staff during the Burnaby school district’s snow day last week has sparked discussions between senior school officials and the district’s support staff union, according to CUPE president Paul Simpson.
Simpson fired off a strongly worded open letter last Friday, saying there had been “no direction” and “no consideration” for CUPE 379 staff on Feb. 12, when the district closed schools because of the snow.
Some members were told to stay home and that they would be paid; others who stayed home were told they needed to book off gratuity or vacation days, said the letter.
Some who made the trek into work were sent home and later told to log an absence for the rest of the day.
Some worked from home.
“Unfortunately, there are many CUPE members that do not receive vacation days or do not have a bank of gratuity days, thus they lost pay,” Simpson wrote in the letter. “This makes me wonder if the decisions that were made were to save money off the backs of the most precarious workers in the school system, CUPE workers.”
Simpson and the union had backed off considerably by Thursday, when the president posted another letter thanking members for their patience and senior school officials for their "compassion and leadership” while the two parties sort out the potential loss of pay or banked overtime during the snow day – the first in 25 years for the district.
“I understand that there is still confusion out there, and, with almost 1,400 members, we are trying to sort out not only what occurred but also how to remedy the situation,” the new letter stated.
Simpson told the NOW there is no language in the support workers’ collective agreement to outline policies and practices on the district’s rare snow days, and that contributed to the confusion.
“The problem was that, at 60 different sites, there were about 60 different messages that came out,” he said.
The message for teachers, meanwhile, was clear since it is laid out in their collective agreement, according to Simpson: “Snow days, they stay home; they get paid,” he said.
The problem isn’t unique to Burnaby, said Simpson, pointing to news stories about similar confusion in Surrey.
It’s an issue Simpson said CUPE 379 intends to address during local bargaining this spring, but he was tight-lipped about specifics.
“It has to be between the employer and the union, but there are bargaining issues that I need to bring up in this,” he said.
The union’s contract expires on June 30.
The school district sent the NOW an emailed statement in response to questions about CUPE's snow-day concerns:
“While this is an internal matter – and as such, it wouldn’t be appropriate for us to be having a back-and-forth in the media about conversations with our partners – we unequivocally value the contributions of all of our employees and partner groups.”
