Staff Job Dispute Update

We are proceeding with legal action on issues we believe to be illegal - particularly the letter from David Black, President of COPE/MoveUp sent to BCNU members' personal emails. We want to assure you that there has been no privacy breach through our office. However, we believe the distribution of the emails was done illegally and we will pursue that aggressively. In addition, content of the material distributed does not reflect the reality.

For example, David Black recently sent an email to many of our activists denouncing BCNU's offer to our staff members. Regarding sick leave, he claims we are trying to introduce a two-tier system. Not the case - we introduced a laddering system which allows employees to earn the full 24 days sick leave, upon maturity of service (at 10 years). His own employees (MoveUp union staff) get only 5 days after one year.

As for the strike savings - yes, we re-directed strike savings back to support you! We have been able to provide over 20,000 hours of additional paid time for stewards and regional executives to carry out the work of the union. There are many challenges that our members are currently facing so enhancing service levels was our first action. BCNU Council will soon be developing our 2017 budget - we can assure you that service to our members is our priority and any savings realized due to the job action will be re-directed with that in mind.

Recent negotiations with COPE/MoveUp ended for two reasons; one because we are trying to reduce the excessive amount of paid time off for newly hired employees and two; because Mr. Black, President of COPE/MoveUp refuses to allow these employees to vote on our offer.