Excluded from pandemic pay

More than 250,000 health, social services and corrections employees in British Columbia are receiving “temporary pandemic pay” for working on the front lines during the COVID-19 pandemic. But a local court clerk doesn't know why her and her coworkers haven't been included.

Earlier this month, the province announced a payment to workers delivering in-person services during the pandemic, equivalent to an extra $4 per hour, for a 16-week period. The lump sum payment comes to an extra $2,240.

And while the payment is going to many in the criminal justice system, including correctional officers, social workers, finance and administrative clerks, administration staff, probation officers, office managers and assistants, court clerks have been left out.

“Without us they wouldn't be able to do bail hearings, or the emergency family matters, family applications, anything like that, because we run the courtrooms. Even though there's nobody there, we still facilitate the recording for the judge and all that. We just feel like that's a big service that's being left out of that top up,” a local court clerk said. Castanet is not identifying the clerk, as she feared speaking out could impact her employment.

“It's about recognizing the efforts that is put in, especially for workers that had to be front facing, still interacting with the public during this. The courthouse has been limited in terms of courtrooms that have been running, but we've still been behind the scene. Through this entire thing there has been staff that have had to still be interacting with the public.”

The British Columbia Government and Service Employees' Union has expressed concerns with who the government chose to include and exclude in the payments.

"Our feedback to government during the consultation was that the program should be extended to all frontline essential workers and that recognizing some groups of workers while leaving others out would create unnecessary divisions at a moment when unity and solidarity among workers is more important than ever," the BCGEU executive committee wrote in a letter to its members. 

“Basically, we were told, 'Sorry, we did what we could,'” the local clerk said of her union's efforts.

She said the restrictions put in place on the justice system in B.C. through the pandemic has been challenging for her and her coworkers over the past several months.

“Through this whole COVID thing, even the higher ups are just trying to figure out on a day-by-day basis about what's going on, and so you're trying to get information from multiple different sources but that information is always changing,” she said.

“Kelowna has been the hub for the Interior so we've been taking matters from all over the Interior region, and so it's been super busy and a lot of people have put a lot of hard work into making sure that things are still continuing to run smoothly and those are the people who aren't being recognized.”