Halifax school support staff strike enters second day

Halifax CUPE strike putting pressure on families Families who rely on school support staff are angry with both the union and the N.S. government. CTV’s Hafsa Arif reports.

Hundreds of Halifax school support staff are back on the picket lines for a second day.

Schools remain open Thursday but support staff aren’t there. Some students who use their services have been told to say home.

The strike comes after CUPE Local 5047 didn’t agree to a deal reached with other Locals around the province last week, which included a 6.5 per cent wage hike over four years.

The union says pay is a major sticking point and some workers are having a hard time making ends meet.

The more than 1,800 striking workers include child and youth care practitioners, early childhood educators, school library specialists and more.

Students attending Sackville High School showed their support for striking workers by staging a walk out on Thursday.

“My ANS support worker, I go to him when I have any problems or if I need a quiet place to work so when I came in yesterday and saw that he wasn’t in because he was outside because he isn’t being valued as a human being, that upset me,” explained grade 12 student Ryanne Fronseca.

Angela Thornhill, whose son Jack is attending class without the help of an educational assistant he normally has, says sending him to school doesn’t sit right with her.

“He would be sequestered with whatever students are there in one classroom and not able to move about his day. So he can’t go to art or he can’t go to English,” she said in a recent interview with CTV Atlantic.

Emily Turner and her husband have been taking days off of work to stay with their daughter Lyla, who has a cognitive, physical and verbal disability. However, Lyla’s three siblings are still attending school.

“She loves school and loves her EPA’s. It’s heartbreaking to get up in the morning to see her so excited to begin her routine and then her three older siblings leave for school and she is sitting here,” explained Turner.

Without access to support staff, Turner say she also does not have the equipment or tools at home for Lyla to use.

“During the school year her chair, her stander,

"There's so many things like physiotherapy, occupational therapy, APSEA sees her. There’s so many services that meet her at the school that we just don’t have here and we don’t have access to because she doesn’t have support staff.”

The Halifax Regional Centre for Education says about 600 students can’t go to school during the strike because their needs are greater than what teachers alone can provide.

Nova Scotia’s finance minister criticized the union for going on strike, and the approach it took during negotiations.

Alan MacMaster says employers delivered on CUPE’s request for wage parity and the tentative agreement would have made it so someone doing the same job in Yarmouth, Sydney or Halifax would have been paid the same.

While seven other regions ratified the agreement, MacMaster says CUPE Halifax rejected it and asked for changes to the agreement — undoing wage parity among union members across the province.

According to CUPE Local 5047, so far both sides have not yet returned to the bargaining table.

“We want to be able to have a conversation with them and hopefully work something out so that there’s a benefit to members here that work in Halifax Regional Centre but so far nothing from them,” said Chris Melanson, President of CUPE Local 5047.

With files from CTV’s Jonathan MacInnis and Hafsa Arif.

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