For months, BCGEU has been working to resolve an issue that directly affects your wellbeing: delayed retroactive wage increases. These are the monetary increases for 2022 and 2023, which you ratified in March with a 95-per-cent vote in favour of the deal that your bargaining committee struck after negotiating for one year. The new agreement is retroactive from April 1, 2022, through March 31, 2025.

Despite the urgent need for you to receive these well-deserved retroactive wage bumps, some employers have not paid them yet, which is causing undue stress and hardship on the front lines. You should not have to chase down money that you are legally owed when you are trying to focus on mitigating crises and managing day-to-day pressures on the job.

Put the Pressure Back Where It Belongs

Thanks to your proactive reporting, BCGEU field service representatives have been following up with individual employers where members alerted them to missing retroactive wages and payments. 

If you are missing payments — including low wage redress, the $0.25/hour increase to all wage grids, the 3.24-per-cent increase to all wage grids for 2022 and the preliminary 6.75-per-cent increase to all wage grids for 2023 — talk to your Stewards.

Your input will help our union supplement the policy grievance that we filed against the Community Social Services Employers Association (CSSEA) with a more targeted approach and diagnose the cause of the delays on a case-by-case basis. Information from the ground – from members like you – will help us localize the problems and build our case. Should the delay continue, we will proceed with scheduled arbitration.

We know this has been a frustrating process, but by working together we can get better results, faster.

Ryan Stewart (he/they)
Staff Representative
Negotiations Department

UWU/MoveUP