CUPE UP 25.92% SINCE 2023

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CUPE Up 25.92% Since 2023
IAFF and Admin Costs Rising Too

The headline is CUPE. The real story is citywide payroll growth.

The City of Nanaimo is celebrating “labour peace” after reaching a new three-year deal with CUPE Local 401, covering about 760 workers and delivering a 4% general wage increase in each of 2026, 2027 and 2028. That sounds tidy in a press release. In real terms, it means another 12.49% compounded increase in wages over three years.

But this is not a fresh start. The previous CUPE contract already delivered 4% in 2023, 4% in 2024 and 3.5% in 2025, which works out to another 11.95% compounded. Put the two contracts together and CUPE wages are on track to rise about 25.92% compounded from 2023 through 2028. That is not a minor adjustment. That is a major permanent increase in the cost base of local government.

Now compare that with inflation. B.C.’s all-items CPI rose 3.9% in 2023, 2.6% in 2024 and 2.1% in 2025, which compounds to about 8.84% over the life of that first three-year CUPE deal. Then inflation cooled further, with B.C. CPI at 1.7% year over year in February 2026. So the city is now locking in another round of 4% annual wage growth in a much softer inflation environment than the one used to justify big increases a few years ago.

And CUPE is only the visible part of the payroll story.

Nanaimo’s own Exempt Salary Administration Policy says the city provides annual salary adjustments to exempt and management employees that are “consistent with the across-the-board increases approved for CUPE Local 401.” The same policy says the city tries to maintain a 10% pay difference between managers and the union staff they supervise, while also allowing periodic comparator reviews to assess whether additional adjustments are needed to keep pace with the market. In plain language, that means CUPE settlements can push up more than CUPE wages alone.

Then there is fire.

The city’s IAFF Local 905 agreement covers 2025 and 2026 and delivers wage increases of 5.0% in 2025 and 4.5% in 2026. Fire management is also treated differently under the city’s pay policy: the Assistant Chief is set at 110% of the Platoon Captain’s basic annual rate, the Deputy Chief at 115%, and the Fire Chief at 130%. So when captain pay rises, senior fire-management pay is designed to rise with it.

And the fire-cost story is not just about wage percentages. The city’s financial-plan documents show 20 new firefighters were added on August 1, 2023, and another 20 were to be added on January 1, 2025 as part of Fire Master Plan implementation. The 2024 draft plan also listed wages and benefits as a major budget driver and noted that those costs included the full-year impact of positions added in 2023, including the 20 firefighters added that August.

That broader wage pressure shows up in the city’s own SOFI numbers. Reported remuneration for the Management Employees Group rose from $11.25 million in 2023 to $11.57 million in 2024, an increase of about 2.8%. Reported remuneration for the IAFF group rose from $11.30 million to $14.17 million, up about 25.5% in one year. That IAFF jump should not be described as pure wage inflation, because staffing growth and pay progression are part of it too. But it is still part of the same taxpayer-funded cost structure.

Meanwhile, Nanaimo’s 2026 provisional budget says the city is planning a 6.3% increase in taxes on the average home, with total projected revenues of $288.1 million, of which 62.5% comes from property taxes. That is where “labour peace” becomes taxpayer reality.

Nobody is saying city workers should never get raises. That is not the point.

The point is that local government payroll is not just one contract, one union, or one press release. CUPE is the headline. Exempt pay moves with CUPE. Fire pay has its own upward track. Fire management is tied to captain rates. New staffing gets layered in. Then the whole thing rolls forward into the next budget.

City hall calls that stability.

Taxpayers may call it something else:

a ratchet.

One way up.

Never back down.

And always paid for by somebody else.