March 10-16, 2024 is Social Work Week in British Columbia. It's a time to recognize and reflect on the important work that social workers do to help build safe, healthy, and caring communities.

Social workers play a vital role across our province, and our union includes over 4,500 of dedicated professionals like you. But social work in B.C. has become increasingly fraught with challenges, including significant staffing shortages, unmanageable workloads, difficulties within the ministry and dealing with structural changes at higher levels.

Our union is aware of the current and ongoing challenges of your work, and we are taking a number of steps to address these difficulties and to help mitigate your workplace issues. Here are some examples of what our union is doing:

• We meet regularly with your employer on issues that are not grievance related through the Article 29 joint labour management committee, including workload reports and occupational health and safety (OHS) issues. 
• We are advocating for a proper recruitment and retention strategy for all positions in MCFD to address the shortage of employees. We want a well thought-out plan that doesn't involve haphazard band-aid solutions. 
• We not only bargained MOU 25 in the main agreement – which supports psychologically health workplaces – but we also bargained Appendix 10 in the component agreement:

APPENDIX 10 Mental Health Supports 

o The Employer and the Union are committed to fostering a healthy workplace and supporting the mental health of Component 6 employees. 

o There shall be established a sub-committee under Article 29 of the Main Agreement consisting of two union representatives and two employer representatives. The sub-committee shall meet at a minimum of two occasions per calendar year. 

o The sub-committee is authorized to: 

1. identify gaps in existing mental health supports, and recommend mitigations; and 

2. provide context regarding the unique nature of employee roles and responsibilities to facilitate access to appropriate supports. 

• We are working with the Representative for Children and Youth, whose office reached out to our union to conduct further investigations about workload in child protection.
• Last year, we reconvened the Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD) joint working group. These meetings address staffing levels, and recruitment and retention issues in all frontline jobs.
• BCGEU President Stephanie Smith and your component VP Judy Fox-McGuire had an initial meeting with the incoming Minister of Child and Family Development, Grace Lore. We are looking forward to a more in-depth meeting with her and the new deputy minister, David Galbreath soon. 

Your Component 6 executive would like to hear from you. If you have a workplace concern, contact your workplace steward. By connecting with your steward, you can give feedback to our union, raise concerns, or ask for more information about what to do about workload concerns. If you do not have a workplace steward, please contact your local chair whose name can be found on the BCGEU website or by contacting your local area office. 

Be sure to access the member portal where you will find helpful component 6 resources such as Joint Union Management (JUM) minutes, Article 29 minutes and more.

In solidarity,

Stephanie Smith, President, BCGEU
Judy Fox-McGuire, BCGEU Vice President, Component 6 Social Information and Health

UWU/MoveUP