Professionals Making A Difference
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Our mission statement:The PEA is a union of professionals dedicated to fair and equitable collective agreements and working conditions for its members.We do this through collective bargaining and advocacy, member engagement and education, and promotion of the value of professionals. We believe in integrity, in respectful relationships, and in enlightened, innovative principles of labour relations. |
The PEA is a labour union. Its constitution sets out similar objectives, and labour law gives it the same rights and obligations to represent its members in collective bargaining as apply to other labour unions in British Columbia.
PEA members are distributed among ten different chapters. The employees in each chapter have a separate employer. The PEA carries on collective bargaining with each employer for the purpose of concluding collective agreements which define the salaries, benefits and employment terms that apply to employees for the term of the agreement.
As indicated in its name, the Professional Employees Association comprises primarily of professional employees. The PEA Constitution defines a professional employee as one typically engaged in exercising a predominantly intellectual skill customarily acquired by completing a prolonged course of instruction in an institution of higher learning.
Most PEA bargaining units are exclusively professional. However, the Constitution permits the Association to represent bargaining units which include non-professionals provided that a majority of the employees are professionals.
The PEA's bargaining units are:
The PEA engages in collective bargaining for the purpose of settling collective agreements in which employees are assured that salaries, benefits and working conditions will be set at agreed, defined levels.
For each of its bargaining units the Association acquired the right to bargain collectively because a majority of the employees in the units voted to be represented by the PEA. Based on a majority vote of employees, the Labour Relations Board has authorized the PEA to bargain on behalf of the employees in the nine bargaining units. This authority is called a “certification.”
We know that a majority of people aren't too familiar with union language, so we created the Labour Dictionary to help you make sense of labour talk.
