After eight weeks of job action, and on the eighth day of mediation led by Vince Ready and Amanda Rogers, the BC Government Employees Union says it’s reached a tentative agreement with the province.
The BCGEU announced the tentative agreement Sunday morning, bringing an end to a strike that involved more than 25,000 public service workers.
“This tentative agreement is the result of the incredible strength and solidarity of BCGEU and PEA members across the province,” said BCGEU President Paul Finch.
The BCGEU says the tentative agreement makes progress on key issues including as “wages, affordability, and respect for frontline public service workers.”
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Under the agreement, employees will receive a general wage increase of 3% per year over four years. The union says they’ll also receive targeted pay adjustments for lowest paid public service workers to help address the affordability crisis.
Finch says the contract also includes a range of non-monetary improvements and enhanced benefits, including:
- Improved fairness around telework and a modernized contract to reflect today’s workplace realities.
- Stronger job protections, including a new process to review excluded positions and return improperly excluded ones to the bargaining unit.
- A faster grievance tribunal process to resolve disputes more efficiently.
- Improved vision care and counselling benefits to better support mental health and overall wellbeing.
- Establishing a category of fully remote workers that have unique agreement protections.
“We believe this hits all, or most, of the key priorities our members identified in this round of bargaining,” Finch said.
Head mediator Vince Ready has arbitrated and/or mediated over 5,000 labour and commercial disputes in Canadian industries – from forestry, heavy construction, grain, aviation, mining, hospitality, emergency response fields to health care and more. He is named in over 600 collective agreements across Canada.
The union says the next step is ratification, where its 34,000 members of the public service will have the opportunity to review and vote on the four-year deal.
The province says it’s also pleased to see a tentative agreement has been reached between the BC Public Service Agency and BCGEU.
“Our government respects the ratification process and the rights of union members to vote on their agreements, so I’ll leave any further comment until that process is complete,” Minister of Finance Brenda Bailey said in a statement.
While this contract negotiation has ended, another one is still going on.
The Professional Employees’ Association, who has been on strike with the BCGEU, told CHEK News it’s bargaining committee returned to talks with its employer Sunday morning to secure a contact for all 1,600 striking members.
Finch says until an agreement is reached there, BCGEU members will respect PEA picket lines.
“BCGEU members will not cross picket lines,” Finch said.
“Obviously some of our sites, where they are not co-located with PEA, would be open [Monday], but right now we’re hopeful that government understands the necessity of getting a fair deal, with PEA. “
Timeline of BCGEU job action
January 2025:
- Negotiations first started on Jan. 22, 2025.
July 2025:
- Talks broke down between the BCGEU and the BC Public Service Agency (PSA) on July 18, 2025.
August 2025:
- In August, the union held a strike vote, resulting in 92.7 per cent in favour of a strike.
September 2025:
- Union members initiated job action on Sept. 2, then escalated on Sept. 4, again on Sept. 9, with louder escalation on Sept. 22.
- The union was called back to the table and the two parties sat down to negotiate on Sept. 25.
- Monday, Sept. 29 was the first time the union and province sat down to negotiate since July. Talks on Monday broke down not long after they started, with the union saying the new provincial offer had few meaningful changes, while government officials have said they are trying to balance a fair deal with B.C.’s constrained fiscal situation.
October 2025:
-With files from CHEK’s Mackenzie Read
READ RELATED: Five things to know about British Columbia’s ongoing public service strike
