Defend Public Healthcare

Women's wages caught up to male wages when broader public sector (BPS) wages grew but when BPS wages were suppressed, the wage gap grew.  Women comprise 74% of the Ontario education, health care, and social assistance workforce.   A strong female majority is present in all three of these sectors but is especially marked in health care and social assistance, where 762,800 women work.   These three industries account for 31% of all women employees in Ontario. So what happens to these workers has a big impact on women. For men, it's a different story -- education, health, and social assistance account for only 9.89% of all male employment in Ontario. So, overall, males are much less affected by what happens in these sectors. Source:  Statistics Canada.  Table  14-10-0022-01  Labour force characteristics by industry, monthly, unadjusted for seasonality (x 1,000) These three industries are the great bulk of the provincial broader public sector or ...

Job vacancies across the Ontario economy have sky-rocketed over the last two years, with a ten percent increase in 2020 and a 66% increase in 2021.  Compounded that represents an 82% increase in two years.  Correspondingly, the average offered hourly wage for all occupations went up 4.6% in Ontario (to $23.70) from the end of 2019 to the end of 2021.  The increase in job vacancies is particularly marked in health care industries. In hospitals, there has been a continuous increase in the number of job vacancies and in the job vacancy rate since 2015, with a sharp spike in the last two years. Job vacancies went from 3,635 at the end of 2015 to 8,855 at the end of 2019 (just before COVID), and then onto 16,685 by the end of 2021.  That is a 359% increase since the end of 2015 and a 88% increase since the end of 2019. The hospital job vacancy rate has increased from 1.6% at the end of 2015 to 6.3% at the end of 2021. In nursing and residential care facilities the patter...

New militancy : Recent strikes in the broader provincial public sector by 13,000 university teaching assistants and Community Care Access Centre employees (mostly RNs) suggest increased willingness of some broader public sector employees to strike to maintain and improve their working conditions.  Moreover the workers achieved some success in their strikes.  In the health care sector, the Health Minister, Eric Hoskins, felt it necessary to publicly call for the negotiations to be settled by interest arbitration.  Shortly after this, a leading arbitrator awarded both of the proposals (wage proposals) demanded by the union. Both of the recent Teaching Assistant strikes at York and the University of Toronto put paid to the government's idea of "net zero" compensation increases, at least in the university sector, as the strikes made progress for those workers. Provincially coordinated teacher strikes are now underway to deal with the government's demands as well.  ...

The Ontario Economy:   The 2015 Ontario Budget has revised the government's real growth estimate up significantly from its 2014 Fall Economic Fiscal Outlook.  Real growth for 2014 is now put at 2.2% for 2014, up from the fall forecast of 1.9% and real growth for 2015 is forecast at 2.7%, up from their fall forecast of 2.4%.  Both of these forecasts are slightly lower than the forecasts from the banks and other private sector forecasters.  With lower oil prices and a lower dollar, Ontario is now growing faster than the rest of Canada. Substantial Real Growth -- but who benefits?  Seven years ago (starting the latter half of 2008) there was a recession in Ontario.  It ended six years ago when economic growth began again in the third quarter of 2009 (i.e. July-Sept 2009).  Since that time there has been significant economic growth, placing the Ontario economy well above its pre-recession high.     Ontario, Gross Domestic Product...