To: All BCGEU Members at Northern Lights College Support
Re: Bargaining Update

Friends,

We are writing to provide a further update regarding the progress of negotiations for the renewal of your 2019-2022 collective agreement.

We exchanged proposals with the Employer on Monday, February 6, 2023, finding that we had many areas in common, including our concern about services to students. We continued to meet for the remainder of the week (February 6-10) in an attempt to conclude negotiations for a tentative settlement to renew the collective agreement. Although we were unsuccessful, we had a productive week engaging in detailed and informative discussions about your priorities and how those fit with the Employer's desire to increase services to students.

We were clear with the Employer that your priorities are improved wages, improvements to our health and welfare benefits and sick time and, an improved work-life balance and, that surveys we conducted in the lead-up to bargaining consistently identified those three areas as 'must have' improvements.

As most of you may be aware, wage increases will be as established by the provincial bargaining mandate for our sector which will see an increase of $0.25 per hour in the first year plus an additional 10.74% to 12.99% depending on inflation adjustments over the term of what will be a three-year collective agreement. The wage increases will be retroactive to July 1, 2022. There are also negotiable flexibility allocation monies of 0.25% to support mutually beneficial outcomes.

Improvements to health and welfare benefits, sick days, work-life balance and improving services to students at our local remain outstanding. Despite that we believe we have found common ground and are making progress we aren't yet at a place where we can sign off on a tentative settlement. We are now canvassing for additional dates to continue bargaining and hope to recommence within the next several weeks.

We will continue to keep you informed. In the interim, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact a member of your bargaining committee.

If you know a BCGEU member who didn't receive this bulletin, please forward it to them. If you are a BCGEU member who didn't receive the bulletin directly, please update your email address with your Union by logging into the Member Portal here.

In Solidarity,

Jamie Bond, Chairperson, Bargaining Committee
Juanita Fraser, Bargaining Committee
Robyn Mallia, Bargaining Committee
Paola Rodriguez Ruah, Bargaining Committee
Zoe Towle, Spokesperson, Negotiations Staff Rep

Download PDF of notice here

UWU/MoveUP