About 1,100 CUPE-represented workers at Lambton Kent District school board have ratified a new four-year contract.
The board announced the ratification with Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 1238 after negotiations began last August, said union local president Michele LaLonge-Davey.
“Things take longer than we want them to, but we’re happy where we are,” she said of her membership, which includes some 50 different job classes, “anybody not a teacher and not a boss.”
The deal, which runs from Sept. 1, 2022, to Aug. 31, 2026, includes job security language tied to maintaining a certain number of full-time equivalent positions, wage increases negotiated by CUPE provincially amid strike action last falland other items like pregnancy parental language, some WSIB language and days off for Indigenous members to celebrate community and cultural events or ceremonies, as well as to vote in their own communities, LaLonge-Davey said.
Specific to the local were some staffing process improvements, she said. “There was a work group who did not have a staffing process inside the collective agreement. We were able to capture that and bring it in.”
With the local agreement ratified, gains bargained provincially last fall — including yearly wage increases of about 3.6 per cent for the average worker — now take effect, she said.
“People are very happy to be receiving the wage increase that they fought so hard for back in November,” she said.
The board also is pleased by the ratification, “and we look forward to continuing to work together to support student success and well-being,” chairperson Randy Campbell said in a release.