The 3,700 workers at every school board in the province, outside of the Halifax region, will vote whether to take strike action after conciliation talks with the province broke off Thursday.
Janitors, cafeteria workers, maintenance workers, teachers assistants, library technicians and bus drivers, members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), will begin voting next weekend.
Wages is one of the main issues, Kathy MacLeod, CUPE's school board co-ordinator, said Friday.
The Nova Scotia government seems to be trying to establish a pattern of offering just one per cent annual wage increases, she said, as seen in the deal recently reached with Nova Scotia Community College instructors and support staff.
"And we were disappointed that we weren't even offered that settlement yesterday when we went to try to reach a tentative agreement in conciliation," MacLeod said.
She said union locals at the seven boards will begin holding strike votes next weekend. Workers at the Halifax Regional School Board are not involved in the action.
All the votes should be completed by the end of November, MacLeod said.
Last month, instructors and support staff at the Nova Scotia Community College approved a tentative contract agreement reached between the college and the Nova Scotia Teachers Union.
Under the terms of the three-year-deal, NSCC employees got a wage increase of 2.9 per cent, retroactive to Sept. 1, 2008, and one per cent for each of the following two years.
The base salary grid for the workers is being raised one per cent, effectively giving them a 3.9 per cent raise in the first year.
The NSCC employees were demanding the same 2.9 per cent wage hike as public school teachers received, but the province kept saying it couldn't afford more than one per cent.
