The stevedores and two other bargaining units of ILA (International Longshoreman’s Union) at the Port of Halifax have just ratified a new contract. There was no strike, and frankly, no cause for any alarm.  AllNovaScotia.com reports that the three ILA bargaining units, which boast a total of about 600 members, just agreed to a four year contract which includes raises of 4.5%, 5.0%, 4.% and 3.75%  for a total of 17.25%– compounded. 

Another contract is also about to be ratified.  This one is for the 1800 striking education workers in the Halifax Regional Centre for Education.  Education assistants, early childhood educators, library technicians, and more are members of CUPE 5047.  In seven regional centres for education outside Halifax, CUPE members had previously agreed to a deal which saw them receive a raise of 6.6% over three years– far less than the cost of living. And let’s not forget that education workers –on average– earn $32,000-$34,000 per year.  Perhaps the 6.6% increase will take them to $42,000 when this contract ends.

By contrast, the average wage for unionized dockworkers is just over $70,000 a year. With their increases, in four years’ time, waterfront workers will be earning nearly $84,000. 

Public vs Private Sector Workers

Let’s not pretend this is the difference between public and private sectors.  Indeed people who work in the private sector normally do not do better than those who work for the government.  Normally private sector employees do not do better. 

Let’s not pretend the waterfront workers are truly private sector employees.  The Halifax Port Authority (HPA) is a federally regulated crown corporation of the Government of Canada.

Let’s think about this:  the NS Dept of Education wants the Halifax area education workers to have parity with those in outlying areas, meaning everyone must go along with the insulting increase of 6.6% over three years.  This means essentially that the workers lose money by going to work. 

To add injury to insult, let’s think about this: the Dept of Education – rather than paying at least the cost of living to its staff – has decided to ask working people across Canada (and NS) to cover the employees’ pay.   Telling education workers to go on EI for two months over the summer, as it will increase their pay so the province doesn’t have to pay more, means that everyone who pays into EI (most working people) have to subsidize NS Dept of Education.  

EI pays only 55% of gross earnings

That doesn’t seem fair at all.   First, at 55% of their monthly pay, on EI Halifax’s education workers might earn about $1,000, for each of two months. Second is it fair to ask those in all walks of life who must pay into the EI payroll tax to foot the bill for education support staff?  I don’t think so. 

But that is what will happen, if the education workers vote yes.  

And they may well vote yes, after more than a month on strike.  Strike pay is around $300 a week, hardly enough to keep body and soul together. 

The government has ignored them. 

Parents across Halifax have taken note – especially those whose four-year-olds cannot attend pre- primary due to the ECE teachers being on strike.  Parents of 600 students with special needs have noticed.  Their children have been effectively barred from school because classroom support staff (EPAs) are on strike.  Week after week, we see articles, letters to the editor and commentaries about the selflessness and noble work done by education workers. Still they remain grossly underpaid. 

The NS government wants a race to the bottom

We don’t need a race to the bottom.  I’m not arguing the dockworkers do not deserve their pay.  Far from it – at least they are earning a living wage and more.

The same cannot be said for Nova Scotia’s education support workers.  

Equally now it is not to the time to force other working people to pay for education workers’ pay – through their EI contributions.

Noticed today:

Tim Bousquet wrote a wonderful tribute to Glen Assoun who suddenly died two days ago. Assoun is the man who was framed for the murder of his once-girlfriend Brenda Way — a murder which he did not commit. He even had an alibi. It was the Halifax Police and the RCMP who framed him in 1997, and went to the lengths of placing a knife near where Way’s body had been found– insisting it was the murder weapon. The knife was clean of fingerprints, and little more than a prop in the wrongful conviction case. Assoun, who had suffered a life of deprivation, poverty and under-employment, was jailed for more than 16 years. After the Innocence Project took on his case, Assoun was finally proclaimed innocent at a new five minute trial, in which the Crown proffered no evidence against him. He received a small amount of restitution by the NS government for his years spent in jail, and eventually an undisclosed bigger settlement. But his health had been seriously compromised; he died in a Dartmouth restaurant two days ago. I want to commend Tim and the Halifax Examiner for their relentless pursuit to clear Assoun. On the day Assoun was finally cleared, I happened to run into him and two of his lawyers outside the Tim Horton’s by the Halifax court house. I recognised him from the papers. We chatted, he shook my hand, and I saw a glimpse of what life had meted out to him. As Bousquet notes several times, “Don’t talk to me about Justice.”

“Meanwhile, all the people who had wronged Glen — the cops who framed him, the prosecutors and judge in the kangaroo court that convicted him, the cops who destroyed evidence that should have freed him, the prison guards who beat him, the prosecutor who made even his parole so onerous that it put him in the mental health ward, the former Justice minister who refused to act on his case — all and each of them continued to live in relative wealth and comfort, respected in their careers.”

Tim Bousquet, Halifax Examiner

Featured image above: CUPE Local 5047 workers on strike, May 2023. Photo credit: Hello Dartmouth.