Statement by Leah Casselman, OPSEU
Queen’s Park, May 10, 2005
Good morning everyone,
Thank you for coming. My name is Leah Casselman, and I am the president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union. We represent over 40,000 members in the Ontario Public Service.
Here with me today are Marg Simmons, Chair of OPSEU’s Central Bargaining Team; Barry Scanlon, Chair of OPSEU’s Corrections Bargaining Team; and Terry Baxter, OPSEU’s Chief Negotiator.
Our current collective agreement expired four months ago, on December 31, 2004. We are here today to update you on these negotiations.
Tomorrow, the McGuinty Liberals will introduce their second provincial budget since getting elected in October of 2003. In case you are wondering what’s going to be in that budget, let me tell you now.
First, Dalton McGuinty, through his Finance Minister Greg Sorbara, is going to say how the previous Tory government left his government with a huge deficit. McGuinty is going to say that he has tried real hard to keep his promises, but he just doesn’t have any money to do that. McGuinty is going to say that in order to
tame the deficit tiger, he has to make further cuts, and keep expenditures on things like public services to a minimum.
Here’s the best part: McGuinty is going to say all of this while in the middle of contract negotiations with 40,000 of his direct employees. This is no coincidence.
Dalton McGuinty is going to tell you that in order to balance the books, public service workers will have just do with less.
Nice try, Dalton. Balancing the books on the backs of public service workers is laughable. Here’s why.
Provincial revenues are roughly $80 billion dollars. That’s “billion”, with a “b”. The cost of the entire Ontario Public Service is less than three per cent of that, or $1.9 billion dollars.
Now these are pretty big numbers. I know that most people, including myself, have a hard time dealing with that many zeroes. So let’s put it another way.
Let’s take the figure of $40,000 dollars a year (which, by the way, is more than what the average OPSEU member makes). Now, three per cent of that of that total revenue is $1,200 per year, or just $25 per week. Not really a whole lot of money.
So what does that $25 per week buy? In terms of provincial finances, that $25 per week pays for the people who run our court system, guard accused and convicted criminals, keep our roads safe, help people with disabilities, inspect water plants, register our families births and deaths, collect retail and corporate
taxes, protect our archaeological heritage, test for SARS or HIV/AIDS at our provincial health laboratories, answer our 911 calls, defend our human rights and more. That’s a pretty good deal, isn’t it?
Despite the low cost of the Ontario Public Service relevant to Ontario’s revenue, it is the first place that politicians look to save money. It’s the first place that politicians say they can’t afford to spend money. Mike Harris strangled the public service for eight years. Walkerton and tainted meat were the results.
Obviously, Dalton McGuinty is a slow learner. Either that, or he is a “fast forgetter”. Despite all the lessons learned from Walkerton and Aylmer, his Liberal government will spend less on public services per capita than any other provincial government in the past 20 years.
And here’s one thing that is really easy for McGuinty to forget: Thanks to inflation and Tory cuts, OPSEU members in the public service are earning seven per cent less today in real terms than they were in 1994. Seven per cent!
That is the price public service workers have paid in the last 11 years. Those that are left, that is. Because public servants have lost 20,000 jobs in the past ten years. The OPS is 33 per cent smaller than it was in 1995. And the workers who are left are trying to do the same amount of work, or more.
Here’s the part that’s laughable. We currently have a premier that is demanding “fairness” from his federal counterparts. McGuinty says that the feds are demanding fairness, yet are not giving any in return.
Wow.
This is the same guy who is at our bargaining table, repeating one word over and over: NO.
He is telling public servants who have sacrificed money and jobs not to expect much from his government. He is telling a decimated public service that he needs to cut 6,000 more jobs. Moreover, he is telling the people of Ontario, the ones that elected him to rebuild public services, that Mike Harris is back in town.
So that brings us to why we are here today. We have been bargaining with the McGuinty Liberals since last November. This government has dragged its feet to the point where we had to threaten to file charges to even get them to table a contract proposal. They have withheld documents at the bargaining table, and refused
to even discuss ways to improve public services. In short, we are still bargaining with the Tories.
Today, I formally announce that our bargaining teams have asked for a final contract offer from Dalton McGuinty. It had better be good. If it isn’t, we will ask our members to deliver a strike vote to their bargaining teams.
Our members are telling us that they don’t want a strike. However, they will strike if there is no significant movement at the bargaining table.
I said earlier that the timing of this provincial budget is no coincidence. We have made absolutely no progress on bargaining in the past few weeks. Every, I repeat EVERY proposal the union has made at the bargaining table has been rejected.
I vowed our teams would stay at the bargaining table as long as we were moving forward. We are not moving forward. That’s why we must tell Dalton McGuinty to cough up…or face the consequences.
We received one significant letter of support. Lets me read you a couple of excerpts from that letter:
“Ontario’s public service employees deserve to be treated with fairness and respect. Rather than playing games with public safety, I urge you and your government to stop running from your responsibility to Ontarians. I encourage you to bargain in good faith and settle this matter as quickly as possible. The public
demands nothing less.”
Signed, Dalton McGuinty, Leader of the Official Opposition, April 15, 2002.
So I ask you directly, Dalton McGuinty: Did you mean what you said during the 2002 OPS strike? Or were those words as hollow as the promises you made to become Premier?
Since bargaining began, our members have made it clear that they will not pay any more for the province’s budget problems.
Our union does not want another public service strike. Our members want one thing only: To deliver efficient, professional and high-quality public services to the people of this province.
The way things are right now, our members can’t do that. The only person that can fix that is Dalton McGuinty. Let’s see if he has the moral courage to do that.
If you really want fairness Mr. McGuinty, then it is time to look in your own back yard.
That concludes my opening statement. We would be pleased to now answer your questions.
