Regarding the current job action by public employee union OPSEU, any questions directed to one side of the issue, that being management, are met with virtually the same response.
The issue, says the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services, is strictly “a matter between the employer and the union.”
This is the brush-off line given to striking employees wanting answers, and members of the general public seeking the same. It is the official response from the ministry under which these programs are funded, and its the boilerplate response given to workers when they approached their local MPP, who for the record didn’t meet with them, but still offered a statement saying that the dispute wasn’t with the Ford government, but rather was a matter between the employer and the union.
So, let me just say that I totally agree with that statement, or would totally agree with it if it was made in good faith, which it is decidedly not.
First, let’s be honest here. Our rookie MPP, a member of that very same Ford government, has no voice of his own on this issue or many others. I would imagine there is a complete embargo on official commentary handed down by the premier to his MPPs. If there is anything to be said, it will be that standard line of it being an employer-union thing. Billy Denault is not going to be some maverick Tory on the government benches, whistling his own tune as it suits him. Ask any MPP or political staffer or appointee who steps out of line or runs afoul of the premier’s edicts. The response is swift and decisively unpleasant for the offender. So you can expect Mr. Denault to toe the party line and not “rock the boat.”
As to it being a matter between the employer and the employee, sure. But that said, the ministry’s own comment pre-supposes the presence of two parties at the bargaining table. The employees are there and have been from the outset. So where is the employer? I’m aware of no discussion currently on-going, much less negotiation. All I see is a freeze-out of one party by the other, the employer just unilaterally not showing up, a deliberate tactic of intimidation long favoured by the government side. And make no mistake, the government is a party to this, they are the de-facto employer. It is under their umbrella that these programs are funded, administered, and staffed.
So stop with the word play.
This government will do whatever it wants and will do so until somebody or something stands up to stop them.
It’s a government that has ignored a Supreme Court of Canada ruling on their odious Bill 124, an attempt by the Conservatives to limit collective bargaining rights. Chastened by that ruling, the government has had to spend — waste — billions of dollars to retro-actively pay public sector workers. But not all of them, and certainly not the people of Local 472 I spoke to the other day.
So why not them? Why do teachers and nurses and LCBO people get their 6.5% retro-active compensation, and not these folks, as Doug Ford would like to refer to them?
It’s as simple as it is cynically Machiavellian.
The government can’t afford a prolonged teachers strike. They can’t afford a prolonged nurses strike, although they’re considered an essential service, and legally can’t strike, but do carry a lot of political weight. And they sure as hell wouldn’t want a prolonged service disruption at the LCBO either, because that’s how riots in the streets get started.
But they’ll adopt a tougher stand against these workers, perhaps a shade over 4000 of them province-wide, simply because they view them to be smaller, weaker politically, and vulnerable.
Many of those people on these picket lines hold two jobs, sometimes three, and many of their members around the province have also needed to access local food banks to supplement the needs of their own families. The government looks at this through its allegedly “fiscally conservative and prudent” lens and sees an opportunity or advantage. It’s felt that all the government needs to do is really lean into these people, and owing to the precariousness of their situation and the enormous difficulty for them to fight back and defend themselves, that they (employees) will eventually cave out of sheer desperation.
Conservatives like to talk about God a lot, but not when it comes to money.
So the reason the government is adopting this stance, this tactic, is because it can. By their calculation, nobody is going to say squat about it.
This is not good-faith bargaining, which is at the heart of the entire collective bargaining process. One side simply ignoring the other and refusing to show up flies in the face of that.
This will cost us, the taxpayers, in the end, as it always does, and we’ll end up paying even more so the Ford government can play the charade of looking to be tough on unions. The government will end up giving them the 6.5% because they’ve been ordered to, and that’s all these workers are asking for. But they will also use it as an opportunity to strip employees of basic seniority rights and change already chaotic working conditions. They will use this as an opportunity to wrestle these workers to ground under the full weight of governmental pressure, and strip their agreements of hard-won concessions made in the past. And they will continue to underfund and understaff these critical programs.
While they’re pushing our brothers and sisters around, they’ll be paying extraordinary amounts of money hiring replacement workers, even paying them $4/hr more than the actual workers make. They pay for them to be put up in hotels and grant them meal allowances. They pay for their transportation. Security guards have been hired across the province to “keep an eye” on these workers as they undertake their right to picket, and they’re transportation is subsidized as well. And in the government’s lowest ethical move, hire private investigators to point cameras at picketers and go through the theatrics of “making notes” on protest participants.
In the end, this will cost us far more than the 6.5% these people are asking for and are rightly owed. All of this wasted money could have been saved had the government just done what it should have done in the very beginning.
But the Tories are the Tories, and they saw a chance to beat the stuffing out of a union, maybe even break it. A political calculation, based upon a political ideology, and one that they’re prepared to waste billions of your tax dollars to attempt.
This is not good government. It is expensive and non-essential political theatre.
Matthew 25:40 has a message and perhaps a lesson for Conservative ideologues who like to wear their Christianity on their sleeves for all of us to see:
‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
Jesus himself walked among the disadvantaged and disenfranchised. He walked among lepers. He walked among the poor and sick. He walked among women.
The government is made up of many members who profess to worship Jesus. They should attempt to maybe act like him more consistently and with enhanced fidelity.
Money is not a free pass out of your Christian beliefs. Bullying people for no reason other than you can, to gain advantage, is not consistent with those beliefs either. Nor is instilling fear and anxiety in your brothers and sisters, whether they be these front-line workers or the vulnerable clients that they support.
What is happening with these workers is a shame and its being paid for with my tax dollars.
With respect, Doug and your agents, this is most decidedly not strictly a matter between the employer and the union. This is an unprovoked and cynical attack by our government against a part of our population. A perceived defenceless part of our population
That makes it my fight, too.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 