Statement to the media by OPSEU president Leah Casselman at February 12 news conference
“OPSEU asks employer for contract offer”
Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2002
Good afternoon. Thank you very much for coming out today. My name is Leah Casselman, and I am the president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union.
With me today I have:
· Marg Simmons, chair of our Central bargaining team in the Ontario Public Service;
· Barry Scanlon, chair of our Corrections bargaining team in the Ontario Public Service; and
· Andy Todd, our Chief Negotiator.
We are here today to announce that, on behalf of 45,000 OPSEU members in the Ontario Public Service, we have asked our employer, the Ontario government, for a contract offer and are calling a vote on that offer for February 26, 27, and 28.
The government has 48 hours to shape its current demands into a complete offer for our members to vote on.
Our teams will meet this Thursday to go over the offer and make their recommendation to OPSEU members.
If members vote to reject it, that rejection will give our teams a strike mandate.
On that issue, we have also asked our conciliators for a “no-board” report to help speed up the snail-like pace that the employer has subjected us to.
As most of you will know, the clock towards a legal strike or lockout deadline begins ticking on the day we receive the no-board report.
The timelines in this round of bargaining are not governed only by the Ontario Labour Relations Act, but also by a 2001 agreement between OPSEU and the government.
Under that agreement, the parties have eight working days after the vote to finalize essential services arrangements.
This means that the first possible day for a legal strike or lockout to occur is Wednesday, March 13.
We have not set a strike date.
That is because we fully expect to go back to the bargaining table after the vote and bargain a settlement in the first part of March.
Now to the issues on the table.
This round of bargaining takes place in a changed and changing world.
It takes place after the Walkerton tragedy.
It takes place after a provincial auditor’s report that said that the Ontario government is failing to ensure the safety of our roads and our food.
We don’t know what chemicals are on our apples and we don’t know what antibiotic-resistant bacteria are in the meat we eat!
And the scary fact is, nobody does.
This round takes place after the layoff of the last five infectious-disease scientists in Ontario’s central public health lab.
It takes place at a time when Ontario’s stressed-out probation and parole officers have the highest caseloads of any in Canada, and can only meet for 30 minutes a month with sex offenders serving sentences in our communities.
There is a crisis in Ontario. It is not a financial crisis. It is a crisis in public services.
At last count, the OPSEU bargaining unit in the Ontario Public Service had been reduced by over 23,400 employees. That is a reduction of one-third.
At the same time, privatization has moved through the public service like a bull in a china shop.
In many cases, as the provincial auditor reported, private operators are charging the government two, three, and more times what it would cost to have accountable public employees do the same work.
In the case of the Andersen Consulting fiasco, the Ministry of Community and Social Services paid the project manager $575 an hour to manage a computer system that still doesn’t work.
The provincial auditor said public service employees could have done the $200-million project for wages one-sixth of what Andersen charged.
I could go on. There are many other examples.
Today’s Ontario Public Service is weak, fragmented, and poorly led. It can no longer perform the full range of functions it needs to.
The story of today’s public service is the story of a system that has broken down.
If we had 100 provincial auditors, or if an inquiry like the Walkerton Inquiry were held in every Ministry, it would be revealed that the same policies that undercut the Ministry of Environment are at work in every Ontario government ministry.
The process we call “Walkertonization” is a process of mismanagement. It involves:
· selling off services;
· wiping out rules;
· axing jobs;
· reducing job security, job quality, and wages for public employees, while increasing workloads, frustration, and stress;
· creating confusion, not leadership; and
· destroying employee morale.
Walkertonization creates a mismanaged, fragmented patchwork of a public service. In its current state, the Ontario Public Service can no longer adequately protect public health and safety, let alone the public interest.
It’s time we did something about it.
After six-and-a-half years of cuts, layoffs, and privatization, it is now clear that we, as Ontarians, have no choice: We must rebuild the Ontario Public Service.
The foundation of the public service is people.
If we want public safety, value for money, and a professional, accountable, open public service, we have to start by supporting the people on the front lines.
That’s what this round of bargaining is about.
After the September 11 attacks, air security experts asked, “Can we really expect safe airports with security guards paid six dollars and turnover rates of up to 200 per cent per year?”
Not surprisingly, their answer was NO, and the U.S. government made major changes to airport security.
Here at home, Justice Dennis O’Connor reported on January 18 that “[a Ministry of Environment] human resources plan in 2000-2001 reported that the MOE has difficulties attracting and retaining skilled personnel in a number of areas.”
There is a direct relationship between the quality of the public services Ontarians receive and the wages and working conditions of public employees.
Lab technologists at our Resources Road lab in Etobicoke worked day and night during the Walkerton disaster. They were public service heroes. Yet their pay is between 17 and 20 per cent less than pay for the same job at a community hospital.
How can the government expect to hang on to skilled, experienced people? How can the government expect to recruit enthusiastic new ones?
The answer is, it can’t.
Take a look at the 25 junior Environmental Officers who have been hired to inspect water plants.
All of them are temporary contract staff. Is the government saying that water quality is a temporary problem? It certainly looks that way.
We now have 26 per cent of our members on contract, with no benefits, no pension plan, and no job security rights.
Not surprisingly, many of them leave when they find out that a contract job is not a foot in the door but a slap in the face.
It shouldn’t be that way. Public service is not just a job, it’s a calling.
When people have stable careers in the public service, they develop expertise and experience. They learn to live by a set of guiding principles on how to operate in the public interest.
Senior workers pass their knowledge on to junior workers.
More than that, they pass on the fact that they care about protecting the public interest. They pass on the fact that they are committed to protecting public safety, taking care of the public’s money, and ensuring democratic accountability.
That is the way the public service should work. But today, OPSEU members in the Ontario Public Service are overworked, stressed, and demoralized.
Their wages are low. They have little job security.
Staff turnover has never been higher. Staff recruitment has never been harder.
Those who remain on the job are forced to watch the looting of the public service by every junior Enron with a PC party card.
Public employees are saying, “Enough is Enough. It’s time to rebuild.”
Our contract proposals are all designed with that goal in mind.
We are calling for an end to contracting out.
We have tabled language on staffing levels.
We want to see Ontario’s whistleblowing legislation enacted, because a public service is most accountable when the people on the front lines are free to speak out when they see examples of waste, corruption, or mismanagement.
And finally, we want to see some serious respect and recognition for the public employees who have kept on serving the public while the organization was falling down around their ears.
Before I finish I just want to comment on one last thing: money.
Rebuilding the public service will take money. That should be obvious.
Yet in the last few weeks, the Ontario government has been pleading poverty to anyone who’ll listen.
There are a few things to say about that.
First, this is what they say every year before they do the budget. In your kits you will find a transcript of remarks by Jim Flaherty last March 21, when he raised the spectre of public sector wage caps.
This year he’s trying a different approach, but the goal is the same: to lower the expectations of people in the public sector.
Second, I want to talk about Ontario’s actual budget situation.
The fact is, there is no deficit this fiscal year, and there is currently no deficit for next fiscal year.
I’m in charge of a $50 million annual budget. The first thing anybody knows about budgeting is that you can’t make a budget unless you know a) how much you’re spending; and b) how much you’re going to be making.
This government does not know a) and is making very strange noises about b).
As I’ve said before, there is a crisis in Ontario, but it is not a financial crisis. David Dodge, governor of the Bank of Canada, has predicted growth of 1-2 per cent in the first half of 2002 and 3-4 per cent in the second half.
That’s very solid growth.
The only way this government could have a deficit is because of its own expenditures.
For example, Jim Flaherty’s pet project, the tax credit for parents with children in private schools, will cost more than all of our demands put together.
By supporting front line workers, Ontarians get a stronger public service. By supporting private schools, we get a weaker public school system. Who would vote for that if they had a choice?
Then there’s the $2.2 billion corporate tax cut. Why are we draining the public purse when Canada is the cheapest place to do business of all the G-7 nations, according to KPMG Consulting?
With these kinds of decisions going on, we shouldn’t be surprised that OPSEU members are wondering: How it is that we can afford a 36.6 per cent pay raise for MPPs but we can’t afford to build up the public service?
We would be pleased to answer your questions now.
View Feb 12, 2002 Press Release "OPSEU calls contract vote in public service talks"
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