Skip to main content

McGuinty: a second legislative attack on collective bargaining?

Dalton McGuinty has once again inserted himself into the collective bargaining process and given the union representing over 11,000 "professional" and "supervisory" civil servants until September 9th to settle their collective agreement.   

 Or else. 

 The government and the union, AMAPCEO, have been in bargaining since July 3.  Apparently, the government believes two months is enough bargaining to allow them to fend off any constitutional challenge to legislation overriding free collective bargaining rights. 

 The president of AMAPCEO has said that the union has offered a wage freeze, but that the government wants the equivalent of  2% to 3% in cuts of one sort or another. 

 As was his method with the teachers, McGuinty talks as if he was simply stopping wage increases, rather than imposing concessions and takeaways (a line often repeated by the media, in their innocence). “We don’t have any money for pay hikes...We may come to a point in time when we can’t resolve that through negotiation. I understand that,” McGuinty said: while on the campaign trail in Kitchener. 

 In another kick at this can, McGuinty raised health care contracts as well:  “We can negotiate how to get there, but the ‘there’ is not the subject of negotiation. The ‘there’ represents a freeze in public sector compensation in a way that does not compromise the quality of services we are delivering in our classrooms or in health care.” (As noted in past posts, the Liberals have adopted a very one-sided definition of a compensation freeze.)

 Talks with OPSEU, the union representing most provincial  civil servants, are reportedly planned for November (the OPSEU-OPS contract  expires December 31). 

 AMAPCEO held a large rally on the lawn of the legislature today (a picture is above), an unusual step for a union of supervisors and professionals.  The union said yesterday that they have "managed to push back most of the Employer’s most draconian demands, like their attacks on our job security provisions."  It had also indicated that it was still optimistic a deal could be reached.  

 If not, we may see the introduction of the second bill to override free collective bargaining in as many months.  With many other rounds of collective bargaining in the broader public sector ahead, more could be in store...
Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousSeptember 6, 2012 at 2:36 PM

    people just dont get it, Dolton doesnt "bargin" he strips away your voices and all rights.

    then we live like a third world country! oh wait he's doing it right now to all of rural ONT. guess your next!

    this lying,sell out of an A$$ has to go!!!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Too many public sector workers in Ontario?

Opponents of public services often try to portray the public sector as having grown disproportionately.  In fact, since 1976, the number of public sector employees has not quite kept pace with the population. In 1976, the number of public sector employees in Ontario  as reported by Statistics Canada averaged 830,800.  By 2012, the number had increased to 1,330,700 -- a 60.2% increase.  That sounds like significant growth -- true. But the population has increased  from 8,413,779 in 1976 to 13,505,900 in 2012, a 60.5% increase.   In other words, population growth has run slightly ahead of the growth in public sector employment.     In 1976, close to 10% of the population worked in the public sector.  It stayed pretty much this way until the Mike Harris government came to power when it dipped below 9%.  It returned close to the historical range in the last six years or so, declining in 2012 to below the 1976 averag...
16 comments
Read more

Ford government fails to respond to 72% increase in COVID inpatient days, deepening the capacity crisis

COVID infections continue to drive up hospital costs and inpatient hospitalizations in Ontario. For the most recent fiscal year (April 1, 2022- March 31, 2023) hospital stays related to COVID cost $1.221 billion, according to new CIHI data.   This is about 4% of total hospital spending, creating a very significant new cost pressure beyond the usual pressures of population growth, aging, inflation, and rising utilization.   Costs for COVID related hospitalizations increased 22.2% in Ontario in 2022/23 from the previous fiscal year, rising from $999 million to $1.221 billion.  That rise is particularly notable as the OMICRON spike of late 2021 and early 2022 had passed by the the 2022/23 fiscal year.   The $222 million increase in COVID hospitalization costs came in the same year as the Ford government cut special COVID funding and, in fact, cut total hospital funding by $156 million.     In total, there were 60,653 COVID hospitalizations...
Post a Comment
Read more

The hospital crisis: No capacity, no plan, no end

While Canada has achieved universal public healthcare coverage, that does not mean conservative forces have given up trying to erode that coverage and expand corporate care where it does not currently exist. The battle has become particularly intense in Ontario under the Ford Progressive Conservative government, which is implementing serious cuts to the level of care and moving to bring in for-profit mini-hospitals. Inadequate Staffing.   Less and less of hospital spending is on staff.   Employee compensation as a share of hospital expenditures has consistently shrunk in Ontario. This is not some immutable law of hospital development.  It is in stark contrast with the rest of Canada, where compensation has become a larger share and now accounts for 67.1%. Hospitals in provinces other than Ontario now have 18 percent more staff per capita than hospitals in Ontario. Overall, if Ontario had the same staffing capacity as the other provinces and territories, there would be another...
Post a Comment
Read more