Teachers at an international boarding school in Metchosin have overwhelming voted in favour of job action, citing stagnating wages and stalled talks around their first collective agreement.
The Professional Employees Association, which represents 26 teachers at Pearson College, said 96 per cent of its members voted in favour of job action last week.
PEA labour relations officer and lead negotiator Brett Harper said the union will be in a position to issue 72-hour strike notice pending the outcome of mediation that is expected in late October.
“We are really hopeful that we can get a deal without having to take or consider job action,” he said.
Teachers at Pearson College, which has just over 200 students, took a pay cut at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic — which was later restored — and have seen several consecutive years of no wage increases, Harper said.
“Faculty really stepped up during the pandemic times with a wage cut,” he said. “Their asks are quite reasonable and they’re just trying to catch up from a couple of really challenging years.”
Pearson teachers have been in the process of negotiating their first collective agreement with the college since November 2023, after voting to join PEA earlier that year.
PEA said teaching faculty at Pearson College make less than their counterparts at B.C. public and independent schools.
For example, Harper said a Pearson teacher with a master’s degree would start at $65,000 a year compared to $71,000 for a similar position in the Sooke School District.
The maximum annual wage cap is also about $5,000 lower at Pearson, he said.
Although it varies by school district, B.C. teachers in the public school system saw annual wage increases of 3.25 per cent in 2022, up to 7.75 per cent in 2023, and up to a 3.11 per cent this year.
Harper said Pearson teachers are also looking to include severance provisions and professional development opportunities in their collective agreement.
Pearson head of college Jason McBride acknowledged that there are a few “sticking points” in the negotiations that have yet to be resolved, but said he’s hopeful there won’t be a strike.
“First agreements take a while to put together,” he said. “We’ve been trying to find a way forward, as we’ve been doing collaboratively since November.”
The school is working on contingency plans should a strike be called, he said, adding that there are no plans to send students home.
Parents were notified about the potential job action on Sunday, he said.
Asked about the college’s ability to retain staff in light of the teacher pay discrepancy, McBride declined to “negotiate in public” but said the school faces a financial reality that most other schools in B.C. don’t have.
Because of the school’s high proportion of international students, it’s ineligible for most provincial funding streams, he said, adding that 96 nationalities were represented in this year’s Pearson cohort.
“We want to make sure that our faculty are taken care of, but we also have to make sure that the financial sustainability of the college is also there,” he said.
According to its latest publicly available financial statements, Pearson College’s total revenue in 2023 was around $10.9 million. The college’s reported expenses last year were around $12.3 million.
Government grants only made up four per cent of total revenue. A quarter of the revenue came from fundraising, while another quarter came from tuition and other fees.
McBride said only 25 per cent of Pearson students pay full tuition fees, with most students receiving some form of financial aid.
The school is governed under a post-secondary school license and had to extensively lobby for an exemption from the new federal and provincial restrictions on the number of international student visas that came into force this fall, he said.
“We’ve been doing what we’ve been doing for 50 years with the exact same numbers,” he said. “A 35 per cent reduction in our students really would have decimated the school.”
He said teachers took a five per cent pay cut when the school lowered its intake by about 40 to 50 students during the pandemic.
The college, which was founded as Lester B. Pearson United World College of the Pacific in 1974, marks the 50th anniversary of the arrival of its first 100 students on Wednesday.
Alumni are holding events across the world in Montreal, London, New York and India during this school year to mark the occasion.
The non-profit college, which sits on a 75-acre campus next to Pedder Bay, was the second school to have been established as part of the United World Colleges international school network, which has now grown to 18 schools on four continents.
The network’s president is currently the queen dowager of Jordan, Noor Al Hussein.
As of 2023, Pearson College had an endowment fund worth about $46.7 million.
The college counts 15 Rhodes Scholars and close to 200 current university professors among its alumni ranks.
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