Standing up to Government's Abuse of Power
- Interview - Steve Drost -
Rally at Sackville
Hospital, February 16, 2020, against closing of Emergency Room
Steve Drost is the President of
the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) New Brunswick. He was
elected on April 24, 2021 at the union's annual Convention.
Workers' Forum: How many workers does CUPE New Brunswick represent and what type of jobs do they do?
Steve Drost: We represent 28,000 workers in over 100
different classifications. We have members in pretty well every sector
and every community in New Brunswick. We are in the hospitals, schools,
social services, communications, transportation, nursing homes,
long-term care and more. We represent a wide variety of public
service workers.
WF: What are the main concerns of CUPE New Brunswick at this time?
SD: I and many of the other leaders of CUPE in New
Brunswick see that public sector unions and public services are under
attack by the current government. This has been going on for many years
with the austerity programs that governments continuously implement. We
have serious concerns because it is not only the 28,000
members of CUPE New Brunswick that are under attack but all public
sector workers in the province. At CUPE, there are currently five
provincial locals, large groups within CUPE New Brunswick, that have
reached deadlocks in their negotiations with the province, and which
are now in a legal position to take strike votes. There are several
more
CUPE Locals getting very close to an impasse. All groups have been
trying to negotiate a fair collective agreement, some for two years,
others for up to four years. Last year on December 11 the provincial
government announced that they were going to give us all a zero
increase for the year that we worked through the pandemic. We see that
as
an insult and certainly disrespectful.
 Even
prior to the pandemic we were facing a serious recruitment and
retention crisis in our nursing homes, in the hospitals, in our
schools, including psychologists and other support services in the
schools. We are experiencing a recruitment and retention crisis with
social workers doing Child Protection and services to seniors. CUPE New
Brunswick is one of six major unions in New Brunswick. All the other
provincial unions are facing the same problems; a government that won't
negotiate fairly, a government that we feel is being abusive. We
consider this an abuse of power and control. We have had over 12 years
without fair wage increases that keep up with the cost of living. I
am talking here about 95 per cent of the public sector workers. Very
few have been able to keep up with the cost of living.
The government is basically attacking public sector unions. We see
this is as part of a much bigger plan. We know that over the years they
have been able to reduce the size, strength and power of private sector
unions and now they are coming after the public sector unions. We have
serious concerns about this because we know the negative
impacts that would have on our communities and on our local economies.
More importantly, citizens deserve good quality public services. It has
reached the point where we have decided that we need to fight back, and
not just for our jobs and wages. We need to take action to protect
public services. We want governments to invest in public
services and not try to dismantle them and sell them off to their
friends.
Government continues to privatize different bits and pieces of
public services. For example, New Brunswick once had a Crown
Corporation called the New Brunswick Investment Management Corporation
that managed the public sector workers' pensions. This has been
converted into a private agency, a non-profit group called Vestcor.
This so-called not-for-profit agency is now managing many public sector
workers' pensions. Government also wants to privatize different pieces
of the health care system and different pieces of the education system.
 They
have de-invested in public services with their austerity agendas for
more than two decades. We were facing serious recruitment and retention
issues before the pandemic. COVID-19 has really shown where we have
serious gaps in our public services and just how fragile the citizens'
social safety net really is. For example, CUPE Local 1252,
the New Brunswick Council of Hospital Unions, issued a press release
recently in which they identified hundreds of vacant positions that are
not being filled. I know the same thing is happening with the New
Brunswick Council of Nursing Home Unions (NBCNHU) which is also part of CUPE New
Brunswick. The NBCNHU have 300 to 400 vacant positions
that are not being filled. There are many more examples like that. This
is an attack on public services and their current lack of fair
collective bargaining is a blatant attack on public sector workers.
We feel it is necessary to take a strong position because, at the end
of the day, it is about social and economic justice. The economic
inequality is worse now than it has been as far back as I can remember,
and I have been a practicing frontline social worker for 33 1/2 years.
This inequality has just blown up during the pandemic.
We believe that this inequality has a lot to do with the choices
that are being made by the right-wing ideologues that are in power in
governments. They continue to say that they want to invest in the
private sector. They do not want to invest in public services and
certainly do not want to treat public service workers fairly and even
allow them
a wage to keep up with the cost of living. They are offering a zero
increase to the workers who have put their lives on the line. It was
the frontline essential workers, be it private sector or public
sector, unionized or non-unionized, that helped this province through
the pandemic. For the Premier to turn around and announce that his
government is
going to give all public sector workers a zero wage increase for 2021
is an insult. So many of these public sector workers have been
negotiating for three to four years, which is ridiculous, and the
government has been delaying and delaying, never coming to the table
prepared to really negotiate. So what the government is expecting a lot
of these groups
to do is accept three years of one per cent increases, from 2018 to
2020, and then for this year, zero. That is where we see abuse of
power. It is unacceptable.
CUPE New Brunswick represents 28,000 workers and there are almost
20,000 of them without a contract at the moment. This is the case for a
lot of other public sector workers in the province as well.
WF: What is the work of CUPE New Brunswick at this time to change the situation in favour of the people?
SD: The public are starting to realize how important
public services and public sector workers are, because workers are
putting their lives on the line to help the province get through the
pandemic. We don't take our money and hide it offshore. We spend it in
our local economies. We are the backbone of the local
economies.
We are working very closely with all our leaders at the table, and
our leaders who are on the CUPE NB Executive. We are talking with other
public sector unions and community allies. Our members are fed up and
we are listening to them and working with them to do what is right. We
are looking at what types of job actions may be
necessary. We are hopeful that with many groups in a strike position,
our growing mobilization of members and community support, the
government will sit down, stop being disingenuous and start negotiating
fairly. We are working on a campaign right now with external messaging
for the public and internal messaging for our members. This is a
continuation of our Bargaining Forward campaign that our workers
requested and have embraced.
This article was published in
June 25, 2021 - No. 61
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/WF2021/Articles/WO08612.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
|
