More than 20 members of the B.C. Government and Service Employees’ Union (BCGEU) set up a picket line Monday at the Dogwood Street headquarters of the Campbell River and District Association for Community Living.
The one day strike was another in a series of B.C.-wide rotating job actions designed to highlight the union’s contract impasse with the provincial government.
On the picket line BCGEU spokesman Oliver Rohlfs said: “We have this employer shut down to send a message to the B.C. government that vulnerable families need to come first.
“The government has been chopping money out of this sector for 10 years.”
Rohlfs said the union has been without a contract since the end of March. “The union is not even at the table negotiating. The employer hasn’t even made a monetary offer because they know it would be insulting to the sector.”
The Community Living office here oversees the provision and delivery of variety of social services and community-based programs for vulnerable citizens including services for people with special needs and their families, group homes and day programs, infant development and more.
Campbell River and District Community Living Association Executive Director Greg Hill said: “No comment.”
Since 2004, the government has cut $300 million in funding for programs that support vulnerable families, the developmentally disabled, at-risk youth and children and infants in community-based programs.