The Vancouver Courier (August 24, 2007 page 16) is the latest local paper to run the advertisment outlining the city’s position on the strike. This is the same ad which appeared in the previous weekend edition of the Vancouver Sun and the Province. Please see Hotsheet #2 for our response to specific points made in the ad.
The Chinese language daily newspaper Singtao on August 24th reported that negotiations between the City and CUPE 391 are on hold pending the resolution of the City’s recent proposal to the inside workers (CUPE 15). According to the article, Paul Whitney was very surprised to see pay equity included in CUPE 391’s counter proposal extended to the employer on August 17th. Mr Whitney goes on to say that the Bargaining Committee had earlier removed pay equity from its list of proposals and then reinserted it in the counter proposal. The Bargaining Committee stresses that, as far as CUPE 391 is concerned, negotiations with our employer are not on hold due to the current negotiations between the City and the inside workers. We continue to wait for our Employer to respond to our August 17th offer as they said they would 10 long days ago. More importantly, at NO TIME did our Bargaining Committee ever remove pay equity from our contract proposal!
On the good news front, Saturday’s Toronto Star featured Petti Fong’s article on pay equity. Entitled “Library workers refuse to be quiet in equal-pay fight“, Fong’s article outlines CUPE 391’s efforts to move forward on this key issue, and also talks about life on the library picket line. She features a number of quotes from our own Peter DeGroot and Laura Safarian as well as SFU political science professor Marjorie Griffin-Cohen. Ms. Griffen-Cohen states that because there is no pay equity legislation in British Columbia, the onus falls on the Unions to negotiate any kind of pay equity improvements for workers in British Columbia.