(THOROLD) – Workers at Niagara Children and
Youth Services have filed a complaint with Ontario Labour
Relations Board, charging that the employer is negotiating in
bad faith.
The complaint to the OLRB was tabled last week,
only days before the NCYS is scheduled to host a pricey media
launch that will announce it has changed its name to Pathstone
Mental Health.
“Management has somehow come up with the money
to go through a re-branding process but they plead poverty when
it comes to negotiating a fair contract with their own
employees,” said Pati Habermann, negotiator for OPSEU Local 214
representing 108 workers at NCYS.
“Worse still, they are trying to circumvent the
normal bargaining process by communicating directly with our
members which is an effort to bargain in bad faith and outside
of what’s allowable under the Ontario Labour Relations Act.”
Local 214’s contract with NCYS expired 10 months
ago, on March 31, 2010. Several bargaining sessions since then
have failed to produce any meaningful progress toward a new
contract.
In its complaint to the OLRB, Local 214 charges
that the employer has communicated directly with union members
to gain their agreement to work at walk-in clinics that the
employer was planning to open, as well as its plan to merge with
another agency. Both steps are clearly outside what is provided
for under the current collective agreement, said Leisa Burberry,
chair of the union’s bargaining team.
In a Dec. 24 memo to employees, management also
advised that it was operating an $8,000 deficit as a result of
its plan to re-brand itself as Pathstone Mental Health and, in
part, because of its contract negotiations with Local 214.
“All of this has caused unnecessary stress for
our members, who are justifiably concerned about their job
security. They see this as another attempt by the employer to
undermine the collective bargaining process,” said Burberry.
Both sides are next scheduled to meet in
bargaining on Jan. 27.
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