Sadly, there Is nothing about a labour dispute that does any good for anyone. That’s even more pronounced when the dispute involves public sector employees who deal with some of society’s most disadvantaged souls, people who, through no fault of their own, find themselves needing significant care to go about the most basic of things in their lives. Things that you and think nothing about, things that are taken for granted.
And it’s most upsetting when many of those among the disadvantaged are children.
OPSEU — Ontario Public Service Employees Union — members of Local 472 are on strike with their counterparts across the province, the sticking point being, from what I can see, government intransigence with respect to wages, staffing, seniority, and as important as anything else, quality of care.
And with a perfect fidelity to a predictable worn-out script, the Ford government is going to play hardball with the disadvantaged. These aren’t developers with boatloads of cash we’re talking about here. The government has decided to level a pummelling at our most weakest and disadvantaged. People it feels have the inability to fight back.
Way to go, Doug.
Many strikes involve disagreements over wages. As the old saw goes, employees are always asking for more. And government always wants to give less. In this case, the government relies on those tired tropes about unions being greedy, and wishes to appear strong in the face of this dispute, more than anything else to be seen as tough on unions, something their core supporters always like to see.
As to those wages, they’ve not seen an increase in excess of 1% since 2019 when the Ford government passed Bill 124, the Protecting a Sustainable Public Sector for Future Generations Act. This legislation capped public-sector wage increases to 1%. As it impacted collective bargaining rights of employees, the unions impacted took legal action against the government, securing a victory at the highest level, the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled that the act was unconstitutional and struck it down.
Unconstitutional, mind you.
So began the process by unions to regain those lost wages retroactively for their members, something many have been able to successfully do. But many doesn’t mean all.
Larger, perhaps more powerful unions, like those representing teachers and nurses, have received their compensation already, perhaps as far back as two years ago. But the smaller, perhaps less militant unions, including OPSEU, have not, the government viewing them as less of an opponent than the teachers, etc. Across the province, some 4,000 workers are affected, and to Ford and the Tories, they’re going to be easier pickings than having 160,000 teachers on a picket line. So, as any bully might, their toughness increases commensurate with the perceived weakness and vulnerability of the opponent, or victim, depending upon how you choose to view things.
OPSEU wants a 6.5% raise, a figure calculated according to lost earnings over the past seven years. The government won’t even talk to them, preferring to pay replacement workers — once known as scabs — $4/hour more than the striking workers make, while also footing the bill to put these people up in hotels and transport them around to wherever the fires burn hottest.
It’s a typical Tory move. Be tough with unions while at the same time throwing money out the window so they can score their political points with their hard-headed constituency. In the end, this will cost us far more as Ontario taxpayers than just dealing fairly with the workers. But it’s all about political optics with these guys, mostly rich dudes who love to throw around public money to settle their political scores.
Bill 124 was struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada, and was repealed by the province in 2024, which leads me to conclude that the Government of Ontario is in direct violation and contravention of a Supreme Court ruling by continuing to act as if the legislation were still in place.
Conservatives. Go figure.
To add insult to injury, the government is also paying untold taxpayer dollars to hire security guards and private investigators to “keep watch” on these social workers, lest these rebels step out of line. I spoke with some of these government agents keeping an eye on Local 472’s activities, and while they wouldn’t commit to an official statement or appear on camera, they claim to be there solely to ensure public safety and traffic flow. Nothing was said about the intimidation and surveillance factor they represent. Security is one thing, but private investigators? And again, you’re paying the freight. Also, when traffic flow issues arise, who doesn’t first think of a private investigator to deal with it?
Poppycock.
Workers tell me that the system is significantly under strain due to under-staffing. Again, it’s a time-worn union refrain, because the more members we can get in the union, the better the job security prospects. But what if the system is severely and chronically under-staffed, as in this case it most definitely is. This is a community of vulnerabilities, the clientele consisting of society’s most disadvantaged through their physical and mental disabilities. They are precisely the people we should be throwing resources at, not forcing them to their knees to satisfy political objectives. The Renfrew South Community Living community is a fragile one, tended to by invested and dedicated social professionals. But again, they’re not developers, so they can be safely ignored by the government.
Seniority is another issue. I spoke with two workers, both having served for many years, the two of them wracking up over 60 years of public service between them. The government wants to strip them of their seniority, preferring to reward their lifetime service by stripping their hard-earned rights, forcing them back to working weekends, usually the purview of newer, rookie employees. And yes, the privileged, chattering class of folks out there are going to argue that a lot of people have to work weekends, and use this as a justification for compelling senior members to do the same out of some distorted notion of “fairness.”
Have I already used the word poppycock? Then how about horse hockey?
But these are the workers. What about the clients?
Now suddenly with diminished care, altered care, or even no care at all.
Sure, the government has flooded the zone with replacement workers, but these are not necessarily trained as social workers. Some either don’t speak or have limited facility with English. Not to diminish any immigrant attempting to get ahead like any of the rest of us, but wouldn’t communication be right up there among the core needs of a social worker dealing with our most vulnerable population?
According to Local 472 president Shannon Waddell, morale remains high among the workers, despite being on job action for three weeks, but still, being on strike sucks. You have yourself and your own family to look after, but you’re also separated from your clients, people who are familiar with you, rely upon you, need you. All of the workers I spoke with talked about the abject sadness they feel with regard to those assigned to them. These are professionals totally invested in their work, which is more than noble work, and they feel terribly about the plight of their client while they’re out on strike.
If you want to look for heroes, you don’t have to travel far.
Public support has been good, says Waddell, and that’s something I witnessed while on site, vehicles honking support for these agents of social health and welfare. It’s been this way since they first hit the picket line, something I witnessed over and over in the many days and weeks before I approached them for an interview. So the support is tangible and real. It’s not universal, but it appears to be strong, except for the band of teenagers who told them to go home and take their pride flags with them.
The OPSEU flag is multi-coloured, and so I suppose these uneducated louts thought it was all about LGBTQ+ or something, a sad state of affairs that represents the abject failure of high schools and their teachers to properly and effectively teach their Civics courses.
And so typically Renfrew, sad as that is to say.
As a journalist — and I am — I strive to strike the right balance between opposing thoughts and ideas. But it just wasn’t possible in this case.
The Ford government has identified these folks — Doug likes that word — as weak and defenceless, all the better to pound them into submission. In the process, that same government, led by that same premier, is prepared to sacrifice the critical needs of society’s most vulnerable. And in the end, it will cost all of us as taxpayers much more when everything is said and done.
Have I used the word shame yet?
The following video contains brief interview clips featuring job action participants. They all provided permission to use their names, all of them willing to stand behind their statements.
Given the presence of private investigators, I’ve made the decision to leave these people un-named.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 