Parents are speaking out about their daycare being unavailable for weeks due to the ongoing strike at Capilano University.
“I know financially for us and others, finding child care and being able to go to work has the been the biggest struggle,” parent Robin Norris told Global News.
MoveUp Local 378, which represents about 350 unionized inside workers at the university, started job action in May after talks with the university collapsed over the issue of having remote work added to their collective agreement. The Capilano Faculty Association joined the strike in solidarity on June 6, halting classes at the school’s campuses.
However, mediation did not result in an agreement and the university said on July 13 that it has requested a report from the mediator to confirm areas of agreement and outline outstanding issues, if any.
Due to the strike, the on-campus daycare has not been open and available for parents.
It is a $10-a-day facility, but Norris said some parents have had to hire additional child care for around $25 an hour just so they are able to go to work.
“I know many child care runs minimum 25 bucks an hour, so at times eight hours, that’s $200,” he said. “So many people have now taken on upwards of $5,500 since the start of the strike. There’s 70 families there. So that’s approaching $400,000 in terms of, you know, an overall impact to the local families on the North Shore.”
Norris added that he and his wife have also taken time off work to care for their child, but overall they have had to pay about $5,000 more in child care since the start of the strike versus if the daycare had been open.
He said they were given one day’s notice that a strike could be looming.
“It’s definitely been a struggle,” Norris said, “and been an impact on us and others in terms of quality of life and other factors as well.”
In addition, he said the summer camps at the university in which they enrolled their two older children were also cancelled so they had no care for their three children.
“I think the full scope of this impact and how long we could sustain it is unknown at this point.”
Sharon Gregson, the provincial spokesperson for the successful $10-a-day child care campaign working with the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of B.C., told Global News said this situation is not good for anyone involved.
She said this increase in cost to find other child care options illustrates just how important the $10-a-day program is.
“It confirms what we’ve been hearing since 2018 when $10-a-day child care sites were first launched. That it is life-changing for families,” she said.
“It is something that is now the standard that everybody who’s got young children wants and needs to be able to access. It is fundamental to families, being able to participate in studies or in the workforce. It is now the standard for child care affordability.”
In a statement, Christy Slusarenko, MoveUP6’s vice-president of combined units said the university administration refused their offer for binding mediation, which would have ended the strike quickly.
“Our members want to be back at work providing service for the campus community, including vital childcare services, but we need a fair deal that respects our members and the work they do,” she said.
“The university administration needs to come back to the bargaining table and get a deal done instead of trying to attack workers who are standing up for their rights.”
In a statement to Global News, Capilano University said it is working to resolve the strike and get employees back to work.
“CapU sympathizes with the hardships faced by parents of the Children’s Centre as a result of the strike,” the statement read.
“The University is using every available labour relations tool to try and resolve this dispute so that employees come back to work and services people depend on like child care, can resume.”
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