Halifax Public Libraries reopened Thursday after workers accepted a new collective agreement, ending a nearly month-long strike.
The Nova Scotia Union of Public and Private Employees Local 14 issued a statement Sunday saying the majority of its members voted to accept the agreement.
The strike, which started Aug. 26, impacted about 340 library workers across the Halifax region. Staff were fighting to improve wages they said were far behind other libraries in Canada.
Union President Christina Covert said, although a majority accepted the new offer, a significant number of members still voted against it, and more work needs to be done to improve pay and working conditions for library staff.
Chad Murphy, vice-president of the union, shared details of the agreement during an interview on CTV Morning Live Thursday.
He said the agreement included many wins for workers, including getting lowest-paid staff onto the pay scale.
“Which is something we’ve been trying for for quite a few years,” said Murphy.
“As far as finances go, we arrived at 3.5 per cent for the first year of the contract, and then for the three subsequent years, it would be 50 cents an hour, plus three per cent.”
Murphy said staff are feeling mixed emotions as they return to work.
“Generally, the staff are really motivated to get back to work. However, being off for three weeks did present significant hardships for some people,” said Murphy. “So, the emotions are ranging from happiness, to sadness, to anxiety. Everyone’s experiencing this very differently.
“Obviously it’s difficult to go without a pay cheque for three weeks, especially in today’s society where cost of living is increasing, inflation is still pretty high and grocery prices aren’t dropping. Luckily, we only missed one pay cheque and were able to come to a resolution fairly quickly. So, we’re looking at just getting back into the swing of things here.”
Murphy said planning and scheduling were part of the reasons for the four-day delay in reopening.
“There were several necessary components in order to get us back to work. So, first the supervisors had to come back to work; they’re in charge of scheduling and they were meeting with management to figure out how this would happen,” he explained.
“Tuesday, most of the departmental and programming staff went back. So, those discussions would have involved when public programming would resume. And finally, yesterday the majority of front-line staff returned to work and that just looked like catching up returns, making sure the branch is ready to go for today – the big day.”
With files from The Canadian Press
