At the close of nominations at the May 4, 2015 Component meeting held in Victoria, the following Component 1 Executive positions were acclaimed:

Local executive meets at 6:00pm

Local general meeting starts at 7:00pm

Local Executive, 6:00pm
General 7:00pm
BCGEU, Victoria Area Office, 2994 Douglas St., 2nd floor, Boardroom

The Office of Information and Privacy Commissioner (OPIC) has informed the BCGEU that it will consider our union’s complaint that an inadequate search was conducted for the original version of MLA Laurie Throness’ report on safety issues in B.C.’s provincial prisons.

DATE:    Thursday, May 14th 
TIME:     9:30 am – 4:30 pm 
PLACE:   Fort Langley Community Hall, 9167 Glover Road, Langley, BC

BCGEU president Stephanie Smith provides a member report from the union's Local Executive meeting in Victoria on April 20, 2015.

This is an update to let you know about the status of the benchmark reviews. The union staff representatives working on the benchmark reviews met with the Corrections Focus Group on January 30th and the Deputy Sheriffs Focus Group on February 2nd. The meetings were to discuss some of the potential classification arguments and evidence to support higher classification ratings.

For both groups, we also discussed a timeline for the hearing process. While we hope to have a hearing for all positions before a classification referee (arbitrator) at the earliest opportunity, we do have to follow the agreed upon Terms of Reference process to allow for an exchange of materials and information with the PSA. We may also need to engage with a classification referee for pre-hearing issues such as disclosure of documents.

Some of you may have heard about the Conservation Officer Service decision made by the classification referee in February 2015. Unfortunately, the union was not successful in its arguments. It was a technical decision dealing, among other things, with interpretation of the Public Service Job Evaluation Plan and the role of benchmarks. We are continuing to review and analyze it in the context of that hearing process and outcome as we want to put forward the best case for our upcoming benchmark hearings.

We are in the process of scheduling a further meeting with the Focus Groups to go over the draft rationales, and will keep you posted about the status.

In solidarity,
Dean Purdy, BCGEU vice president
Component 1 Corrections & Sheriffs Services

At the last round of Component 1 Corrections & Sheriff Services bargaining, the Component 1 bargaining committee was able to negotiate new language for Adult Custody, part-time, regular staff. The new language in section 1 (b) (2) now states: PTR employees daily hours of work will only be extended by mutual agreement between the affected employee and employer.

We will be holding Enhanced Stewards' Training for members of components 1, 5, 6, 12 & 20.