The president of the BC General Employees’ Union has accused the provincial government of putting out “completely false” information about his union’s demands.
More than 4,000 of his workers have been on strike since Sept. 2 after negotiations with Victoria broke down in July.
The strike has spread across the province, including to Nanaimo, Kamloops, Kelowna, Williams Lake, Cranbrook, Nelson, Fort St. John and Smithers.
Paul Finch told NowMedia that workers had fallen “behind inflation” over the last 10 years, which the government denies.
He said, however, that he’s “very confident in our figures,” claiming that civil servants in BC today “are making 2.7 per cent less than the average wage.”
“The misinformation [the] government is claiming [is] that we did better than inflation,” he said. “That's simply not true. That's false. But I think if you benchmark this to the average wage in the province, [it] is a much better measure.”
In a statement sent to NowMedia, the government said its calculation of compensation “provides the most accurate picture of what the average employee receives and the full cost of what has been provided.”
It added: “The BCGEU's additional compensation proposals this round are equivalent to a 7.5 per cent general wage increase, and when the GWIs [general wage increases] are included the union’s overall proposals total 15.75 per cent, or 3.25 times higher than the estimated 4.8 per cent inflation rate over the same two-year period.”
Finch, though, said the government has “conflated” the likes of “boot allowances” and “conflated them with the general wage increase.”
“That’s completely false,” he said.
The government has also said the BCGEU’s demands – the province claims it’s a “15.75 per cent total compensation proposal,” the union says it’s a four per cent and 4.25 per cent pay increase – would incur an ongoing cost of $437 million.
But Finch said “their costing is off by over a hundred million.”
In a statement issued earlier this week, he said: "The government's latest offer – just 1.5 per cent in the first year and two per cent in the second-falls far short of addressing members' needs and is essentially telling the public to expect cuts in the services we all rely on."
Speaking to NowMedia on Wednesday, Finch accused the government of “refusing to negotiate.”
He added: “We're going to continue escalating as we need to. So far [with] that escalation, we've taken great care to minimize the impact to the public. At a certain point, that will be unavoidable and you're going to start seeing that impact, and it'll be felt quite a bit.
“Our ask is for people to pressure government – get back to the table, get a fair deal and let's settle this.”
