April Fools’ day is not the time I would choose to announce a matter of such importance as the appointment of our new bargaining committee. However, the Bargaining committee will be meeting this month to organize for the upcoming negotiations. These may not be underway until a year from now as we have municipal elections in November, the annual City budget in December, and the collective agreement’s end date is December 31st.
The Executive chose candidates based on representation of the membership. The appointed members (and those who were not chosen) are all committed to the membership and public service. Candidates should be representative of our membership’s diversity and the workforce in general. Ideally we would have someone from maintenance, closed divisions, LAIIs, Library Technicians, Librarians, grievance, classifications, etc. According to CUPE, experience is good but not necessary as education and opportunities to work with experienced individuals will be provided through our national representative, coordinated bargaining and education. We needed to choose four bargaining committee members and one vice-president bargaining representative for the committee.
The new Bargaining Committee:
Gerard Batty: LA in Acquisitions, a closed division. Gerard is on both Classifications committees and chairs the regular CUPE 391 committee. Gerard is the 2nd Vice -President and has participated on several grievances. One of the Vice Presidents is chosen as a ex-officio member for the Bargaining Committee.
Gary Jarvis: represents shelvers and is liaison to the Part-time and Auxiliary Committee. He is also one of our communications people (graduated from BCIT this year) and writes extensively for Off the Shelf. Gary is a delegate to VDLC
Aliza Nevarie: LAII in Circulation. Aliza was in the last round of bargaining for us and was on the Part-time and Scheduling Committee that came out of mediator Brian Foley’s recommendations. She is now on the Grievance Committee. Aliza also bargained for her union (Cinema) in Montreal previous to joining VPL
Brian Peaslee: a librarian on Level 6. He is a former president of the Richmond Public Library workers’ local. Brian has bargaining experience and has extensive grievance experience with VPL. This work defends our collective agreement rights along with our members’ personal rights
Laura Safarian: Assistant Manager on Level 3. She has been a member-at-large and a Vice President with our local. She is also on both of our classifications committees and has a strong interest in a JE plan. Laura participated in the last round of bargaining.
Alexandra Youngberg: Until June 1st unless re-elected to continue (see Elections – presidents are ex officio,) otherwise the next president will be on the committee. I am on the CUPE 391 side of the Technological Change committee and the Occupational Health & Safety Committee. I chaired the Grievance Committee, and co-chaired the CUPE BC Technological Change Committee. Currently I am on the Pensions Committee, Delegate to MEPAC (Municipal Employees Pensions Advisory Committee), and alternate to CUPE National Global Justice Committee. I have bargained four collective agreements and facilitate workshops in Preparing to Bargain and Collective Bargaining
The Executive hopes that the other applicants will consider helping with bargaining research and communications. They, too, were experienced and valuable in these areas. The Executive tried to choose a representative spectrum of classifications along with experience. Those who were not chosen for the committee would have been excellent committee members. We simply had too many applicants. Thank you all or participating in the process. If members are looking to join a committee, please go to CUPE 391’s Committees Page.