BCFMA and BCGEU continue their joint work of reviewing classifications and compensation. As agreed in the last round of bargaining, the parties will jointly present the outcome of this review to government in a proposal highlighting the pay inequities for BCFMA employees compared with employees of direct government. The most involved part of this process—evaluating BCFMA classifications using the Public Service Job Evaluation Plan (PSJEP)—is now complete.

Unlike the grievance process or negotiations, the job evaluation process under PSJEP is not adversarial. Instead, jobs are evaluated using a Plan that was jointly developed and agreed by BCGEU and the BC Public Service Agency on behalf of government. With the agreement of BCGEU, BCFMA contracted a highly experienced classification specialist to meet with and interview multiple incumbents in each classification and from the various offices to understand their core duties and responsibilities and to evaluate each classification using the PSJEP.

Both BCFMA and BCGEU agree that the contractor got it right. (In fact, the contractor’s results align perfectly with the results BCGEU would have provided had one of its classification specialists conducted the evaluations.) On the matter of pay equity with persons performing comparable work under the Main Public Service Agreement, the results show that to varying degrees, all BCFMA classifications are lower in terms of hourly wages.

In January 2022, the parties will submit a joint proposal to government to present the results of the classification review and call for a bargaining mandate and funding to address the pay inequity at BCFMA. The impact of this joint proposal on wages at BCFMA, if any, will not be known until the parties meet in bargaining in 2022. In other words, the parties will give government the information that objectively establishes the pay inequity—it will then be up to government to consider this information and determine how it might influence the next bargaining mandate and potential related funding for BCFMA.

It is worth noting that while this classification and compensation review process has focused narrowly on wages, government will consider the proposal in the context of BCFMA employees’ total compensation—including things such as vacation, benefits, etc. For example, BCFMA employees receive supplementary paid vacation in certain anniversary years, while direct public service employees do not. However, direct public service employees have a higher maximum annual vacation entitlement than BCFMA employees. All of which is to say that government will look at all aspects of total compensation to identify non-wage entitlements at BCFMA that exceed, meet, or fall short of the comparable standard in the direct public service. The parties would anticipate any bargaining mandate to address wage inequities to be reflective of differences in total compensation.

We will provide a further update once the proposal has been submitted to government in the New Year. As stated above, any substantive government response to the joint proposal would not be expected until the parties meet in bargaining in 2022.

Yours truly,

For BCGEU:                                                                                For BCFMA:

Steve Kitcher, Working Group Member (VCO)                                 Joanne Hanson, CEO
Brenda McIntyre, Working Group Member (LMCO)                          Dave Boychuk, CFO
Christine Stewart, Working Group Member (LMCO)                         Colin Millar, VP, Operations
Ty Poss, Working Group Member (NICO)                                        Jelena Vukmirica, VP, Human Resources
Sherri Sebastian, Working Group Member (NICO)
Ryan Stewart, Staff Representative, Negotiations

UWU/MoveUP