LONDON Ontario’s first strike by inside civic workers in 36 years entered its sixth week on Monday, after mediated contract talks over the weekend broke off with no deal reached.
Neither city nor Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUP) officials were speaking after Saturday’s negotiation session, arranged not by either side, but a provincial mediator. The press releases didn’t explicitly say the talks failed with no plans to meet again. But that seems a strong possibility when it was the mediator who suspended talks and the only point of agreement mentioned was that the two sides would remain in contact with the mediator.
The one-day session was the second effort to end the strike by the city’s 750 indoor workers, members of CUP Local 101. Two days before Saturday’s talks, the city council huddled behind closed doors for more than three hours to prepare for the contract negotiations. The strike is the first by CUP Local 101 since 1979.
Art Zuidema, city hall’s top manager, said to the media that strikers are protected from union retaliation under Ontario’s Labour Relations Act if they return to work. But union leaders scoffed at Zuidema’s statement, warning strikers against the perils of becoming ‘scabs’. City officials estimate about 40 people have crossed the picket line, but the union says only four full-time CUP Local 101 members have crossed. Union members missed their third straight pay cheque last week.
The average inside worker makes about $1,100 a week, but on the picket line gets $300 a week in strike pay. The biggest sticking point remains city hall’s request to expand the hours of work that inside workers can be scheduled. It’s now 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday to Friday. The city wants it expanded to 7 a.m to 8 p.m, every day, including weekends. The union has essentially agreed to expanded weekday hours, but remains opposed to weekend work. The union is also seeking a raise of 7.5% spread over four years – nearly double city hall’s four-year offer of 4.1%.
• Ontario continues to have the second-worst RN-to-population ratio in Canada. New CIHI (Canadian Institute For Health Information) report also shows RNs (Registered Nurses) being replaced by RPNs (Registered Practical Nurses). Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA) President Linda Haslam-Stroud commented: ‘In Ontario, we have just 714 RNs per 100,000 people,’ she said. ‘Just to catch up to the average RN-to-population ratio in the rest of the country requires the province to hire 16,658 more RNs. Newfoundland and Labrador has nearly 400 more RNs per 100,000 population than Ontario.”
CIHI’s ‘Regulated Nurses, 2014’ report shows that Canada has lost a total of 2,360 regulated nurses. Six provinces, including Ontario, showed a decline in the supply of nurses and that the province’s supply of RPNs grew by 52.3 per cent between 2005 and 2014, while its supply of RNs grew just 9.2. This adds evidence to ONA’s contention that the province is ‘de-skilling’ our health-care system, replacing RNs with RPNs to save money.
Finally, the report also shows that Canada is failing to educate an adequate number of regulated nurses to replace those leaving the system. ‘Ontario nurses have warned for a decade that we must ensure that Canada educates a new generation of registered nurses to meet the health-care needs of our growing population,’ said Haslam-Stroud.
‘It is more than alarming to see that our supply of registered nurses has dropped a full one per cent, and that CIHI is warning that more regulated nurses are leaving the profession than are entering it. This spells disaster for our patients, who deserve the quality patient care that RNs bring to the bedside.’
ONA is the union representing 60,000 front-line RNs, RPNs and allied health professionals and more than 14,000 nursing student affiliates providing care in Ontario hospitals, long-term care facilities, public health, the community, industry and clinics.
• Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU/NUPGE) President Warren (Smokey) Thomas, has stated that ‘Corporations running privatised services know what will happen if they break the law. They’ll get more juicy contracts to run public services. Recently the Toronto Star reported that one-third of the temporary employment agencies hired by the provincial government were found to have violated the Employment Standards Act. And that was just based on 2012 data. But in spite of that, those companies received contracts worth almost $3 million.
‘Several former senior executives with SNC Lavalin, including a former CEO, are facing fraud charges in connection with a P3 privatisation scheme in Quebec, but the company is still getting contracts for other P3 privatisation schemes. Serco is also under investigation by the Serious Fraud Squad in Britain for overcharging the government for monitoring. This charge came shortly after an audit revealed Serco was over-charging the British health care system to a tune of $128.3 million.
‘But since those scandals broke, the Ontario Liberals have given Serco a contract for testing prospective life insurance agents, while the federal Conservatives have renewed Serco’s contract to run a military base. The root of the problem is the secrecy that comes with privatisation. When public services are publicly provided, people have a right to information about how they are run. There are independent agencies with the power to obtain this information and investigate complaints.
‘That access changes when services are privatised. The public is paying the bill, but key information about how services are run is kept secret on the grounds of “commercial confidentiality.” Even the Auditor General is unable to get unrestricted access to information about how public funds are spent. That lack of transparency and accountability that comes with privatisation means problems with sleaze are inevitable.
• Health care tax dollars being diverted again to private-sector profits. The Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU/NUPGE) has launched an ad campaign in Niagara and Norfolk County in support of its members who work for CarePartners.
The ads inform the public that many of their health care tax dollars are being diverted to private-sector profits rather than public-sector medical treatment. The newspaper and radio campaign call on residents to tell the Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, Dr. Eric Hoskins, that patient care should come before profits.
‘We think residents of Niagara and Norfolk County should know the facts, and we are prepared to spend the money so that the truth is known,’ said Warren (Smokey) Thomas, OPSEU President. The public is being robbed of the medical care it deserves. Private-sector administrators are skimming profits when 100 per cent of scarce health care dollars should go towards care and treatment.”
‘The Medicare system was born in Saskatchewan and quickly embraced by all Canadians. It is one of the best health care programmes in the world. A bedrock principle is that tax dollars go towards patient care and not profits. But the Ontario government is violating this principle.’
