Provincial election delays contract talks with N.S. school boards
Last Updated: Saturday, May 16, 2009 | 7:19 PM ET
CBC News
Several Nova Scotia school boards have been forced to postpone or cancel collective bargaining with their employees because their funding has not yet been determined by the provincial government.
Provincial school boards had expected to receive money for their annual budgets when the Progressive Conservative government tabled its budget in early May.
Instead, the Tories were defeated after they lost a vote on a government bill that would have allowed the MacDonald government to spend money that had been earmarked to pay down the province's debt.
As a result, both school boards and unionized employees will have to wait until after the June 9 election before they can proceed with collective bargaining.
Contract talks with approximately 600 support workers in schools located in western Nova Scotia have been cancelled. The South Shore Regional School Board was also expected to cancel contract talks with its unionized workers.
The Annapolis Valley Regional School Board is also affected by the provincial election.
“We’re in an election and we do not have the final provincial budget,” Livinia Parish Zwicker, chair of the Annapolis Regional School Board, told CBC News on Friday.
“We have a number of things in our staffing proposal that are pending budget considerations and those things, at this time, cannot be looked at,” she said.
Joan Jessome, president of the Nova Scotia Government Employees Union, said the election campaign means real collective bargaining with school boards involving monetary proposals will have to wait until the fall.
“Bargaining can proceed on issues, on language, but certainly not anything that has a monetary value to it,” Jessome said Friday.
The provincial election call has also affected approximately 1,000 unionized hospital support workers outside of Halifax who are currently involved in collective bargaining.
However, the Nova Scotia Association of Health Organizations has said contract talks that involve monetary proposals are still several months away.
