Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Is this the first crack in the BC government's wage freeze mandate?

I was excited to read today that CUPE workers have rejected an agreement that contains a zero wage increase. I'm not tracking that closely, but maybe this is the first example of a group of workers saying no to an agreement under the wage freeze mandate.

The mandate is the bargaining framework set out by PSEC for public sector agreements in the 2010 - 2012 time period. Yet inflation is running at about 1.8% and the economy growing faster than that. BC has been a net winner from the increase in commodity prices and it should not be just corporate profits that are up. BC workers have a right to share in those economic benefits and no worker should have to take a wage freeze, which is really a wage cut when inflation is factored in, during non-recessionary periods.

See the news release here: http://www.cupe.bc.ca/news/1823

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