Residence advisors at UBC Okanagan have started a campaign to unionize.
According to a press release from the UBCO Collective Action for Residence Employees (CARE) — the name of the unionization campaign — the RAs have launched the unionization campaign following compensation concerns and “long unpredictable, and often unsustainable work hours.”
If successful, the RAs will join the BC Employees’ Union (BCGEU) Local 707, which represents food service workers, library employees and TAs at UBCO.
The BCGEU 707 declined to comment.
“Most of our RAs — so 56 of the 85 — they actually end up paying more in housing than they earn in their salaries. So it ends up that we kind of have to pay to work here which is not a typical working arrangement,” said Noah, who works on the CARE campaign. Noah's name has been changed to protect his job security.
The CARE statement also brought up this concern, adding that 66 per cent of RAs pay more for their meal plans than their salaries despite getting a $1,200 meal plan subsidy from the university.
Another concern, Noah said, was around different expectations between teams of RAs in different buildings. Within each residence building, there is a team of 5–10 RAs and one senior RA. Three program resource advisors work across all these teams.
“So we want to be able to kind of standardize that and make sure that it's enforced equally and that we all have similar workloads.”
Noah said the RAs reached out to BCGEU in October, but they only felt comfortable publicizing this effort now.
He added that the BC Labour Relations Board hasn’t scheduled a date for the vote yet.
The proposed bargaining unit includes all 85 RAs, senior RAs and program resource advisors from the 10 residence buildings at UBC Okanagan, according to the CARE statement. BC Labour Relations Code requires 45 per cent in the proposed bargaining unit — in this case, UBCO RAs — to sign a union membership card indicating that they’re interested in proceeding to a unionization vote.
“Organizers of the campaign encouraged all workers everywhere who aren’t yet represented by a union to reach out to a union organizer to learn about their options,” the CARE statement read.
This campaign comes almost a year after UBC Vancouver’s RAs successfully unionized.
UBC declined to comment ahead of the vote.
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