BURNABY – Further to our previous update in March, arbitrator Vince Ready has issued a letter decision confirming that the support worker 2 classification (SW2) should not be excluded from comparability monies. The June 17 letter decision is as follows:
I am in receipt of the HEABC’s May 27, 2016 response to my earlier request for clarification regarding churn statistics for the Support Worker 2 classification. I am also in receipt of a May 17, 2016 letter from BCGEU asking to send information to me prior to any ultimate determination. For reasons which will become evident, I do not require further information from the Union.
HEABC’s May 27th churn statistics too narrowly defines “like” positions” as “comparator” positions. Moving to a “like” position, as I consider the term, encompasses movement from Community to the Facilities Subsector into any position in the same general category (i.e., all clerical positions or all patient care positions), not only movement to a specific comparator position.
I do not propose to pursue further modification of the analytical paradigm in this case. Further parsing and statistical analysis, absent a solid agreed-upon data foundation, would only exacerbate the dispute.
What is evident from the current data is that the total outflow percentages for the three subject classifications are comparable. Even using the Employer’s narrowly structured churn rate percentages (of total population), the rate for SW2 is 0%, and the rate for AS3 is 0.1%; hardly a significant variance on which to fundamentally distinguish between the two classifications.
In short, the available turnover/churn statistics comparing the SW2, AS3 and CHW2 classifications are not significantly dissimilar enough as to justify the exclusion of the SW2 Classification from receipt of comparability monies. Accordingly, I award the distribution proposal of the Union; that is the proposal which includes SW2.
VINCENT L. READY
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We look forward to working with the CBA to advance the process of implementing comparability rates for all affected workers. We await further information from the CBA in the near future as to next steps.