Child care workers at SFU’s child care centre say they’re willing to take more job action until someone, whether it be the government or the university administration, listens to their demands for better wages and benefits.

Early childhood educators at the Simon Fraser University Childcare Society staged an all-day ‘study session’ last Thursday to draw attention to things such as their low wages and lack of a pension plan, effectively shutting down the children’s centre for the day.

Starting around 7:30 a.m., about 50 workers donned rain gear and pickets while standing out in front of the entrance to the child care centre to draw attention to their cause, until about 12:15 p.m. when the workers started a rally.

“It’s time to go to the government and say, ‘You must invest in child care,’ and it’s time to go to the administration of Simon Fraser University and say, ‘You must not only advocate for affordable, accessible child care and fair wages for child care workers. You need to put some money into it to’,” said George Heyman, president of the B.C. General Employees Union, to the gathered crowd.

Heyman and other speakers mentioned things such as how many of the workers have two or more jobs to make ends meet, how few of the workers have been able to retain any life savings, and how there has been a 50 per cent turnover in staff in the last year at the child care centre due to the poor wages.

The Peak was unable to reach a representative from the Childcare Society for a comment before press time.

An e-mail from Don MacLachlan, Director of Public Affairs and Media Relations for the university, states that while the Children’s Centre is funded in part by the university, it is not a university operation. Rather, it is operated by the SFU Childcare Society, which is an independent, legally incorporated non-profit society.

The university sent security to monitor the rally outside the centre, in case a situation should arise. However, the crowd milled about in a peaceful fashion.

Chris Mullen, negotiator for the BCGEU, stated that while the workers won’t stage any more job action for the next week, if a new agreement isn’t reached by July 30 there will be more job action in the form of rotating strikes.

“On June 27 the union tabled a counterproposal on wages and benefits, the employer called us up and said there was nothing more to talk about, and they walked away from the bargaining table,” said Mullen.

“[We hope] that the employer will find some way to get us back to the bargaining table with a renewed offer and compensation, and if there isn’t, then beginning July 30 we’ll begin rotating strikes,” he added.

Mullen also said that there was much more the university could be doing to help them out, using the situation at the University of British Columbia’s child care centres as a comparison.

“The wages are better at UBC, the benefits are better at UBC, the employees have a pension plan at UBC. We don’t understand why [SFU] wouldn’t want to be more protective and they wouldn’t want to be more supportive of the child care centre than they currently are,” said Mullen.

“We know the university is quite fond of mentioning the child care centre in offers of employment to faculty and staff, putting it forward as being one of the fine features here. They probably don’t mention that there’s a thousand kids on the wait list, [and] they probably don’t mention the fact there’s been concessionary wages for the past four years,” he added.

Mullen stated that he hopes an agreement can be reached before the 30th so that the child care centre operates without disruption for the parents of the children, the workers, and the university.

“We hope that [the parents] can get behind us and support us, and that they can send out some cards and letters to government to the university to encourage them to get involved, and to bring an end to the dispute,” he said