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 February, 2002: Article 5
Contentious issues:
Your future depends on these
There are some very tough issues on the table between your teams and your employer. It will take a strong strike mandate to knock off the employer’s takeaways, contained in the Feb. 14 offer, and get the things you need in your next collective agreement.
Term classified: your career path blocked
In the Feb. 14 offer, the employer has not changed its plan to create new “term classified” positions. Term classified employees would work on contract, like unclassified staff, but with some of the benefit and pension rights of classified staff. They would not receive the job security or other
entitlements of our collective agreement.
The employer thinks this will attract all sorts of good new people to work in the OPS – without the “high” cost of hiring classified staff.
This cannot be good for you. If you are a classified member hoping for a promotion or transfer, the job you hope to move to may no longer exist. It could become a term classified position.
If you are unclassified, the classified position you’re dreaming of could disappear and be replaced with a term classified job. Some unclassified people might think “term classified” sounds good. This is a mistake. The stated purpose of term classified positions is to attract new people. And the employer
has already got you.
No matter what your status or your career goals, “term classified” positions could block you from promotion, transfer, or conversion to classified status.
Your bargaining teams oppose this, and you should, too. Don’t let “term classified” block your career path.
A declaration of pension war
Your OPSEU Central Team has called on the employer to continue Factor 80 to three months beyond the end of the next contract. The employer has offered to continue it to the end of the new contract, but only for surplused employees. Those wanting to take Factor 80 voluntarily would not be able to.
This is no good. Early retirement gives workers a chance to retire when they still have some good years ahead of them. It can also create classified vacancies for unclassified workers, new workers or those looking for a promotion or transfer. Access to Factor 80 for everyone is a rock-bottom necessity for many
public employees.
Yet in its Feb. 14 offer, your employer is trying to prevent OPSEU members from retiring early. It wants to block the union from funding other improvements through surpluses in our OPSEU Pension Trust (OPT).
This offer is a declaration of pension war.
OPSEU members fought for over a quarter of a century to create the Trust so we could have joint employer-union control over our pension funds. Under the Trust, any surpluses in the fund are split evenly between OPSEU members and the employer.
Now the employer has tabled a demand that would bar us from using our share of the Trust – our own money – to pay for pension improvements. The funds in the OPSEU Pension Trust are our wages, set aside for our retirement. They do not belong to the employer. They never did.
Protect your right to control your retirement. Give your bargaining teams a strong strike vote to defend the OPT and secure your life after work.
Offer shows scorn for unclassified workers
Over 26 per cent of workers in the OPSEU bargaining unit in the OPS are unclassified. They have no pensions, benefits, or job security protections.
Your Central Team wants to see as many unclassified workers as possible converted to classified jobs.
The union wants to see conversion after one year of work, not the current two. We want to close the loopholes that make it too easy for the employer to prevent conversion to Regular Full-Time or Part-Time classified status.
Unclassified staff are doing the work. They and their families deserve what comes with it.
The employer’s thinking is the opposite. They want to turn the conversion process into a slippery treadmill on which unclassified workers can never get ahead. The boss wants to be able to move people from assignment to assignment and claim that these workers are doing a new job with every assignment – and that
they are, therefore, not eligible for conversion.
To add insult to injury, the employer has offered an additional wage increase for all employees of up to (note those two little words) 0.5 per cent in the first year of the new contract if the union agrees to the employer’s demands on the unclassified issue and job posting rules.
Whether you’re classified or unclassified, there is only one answer to this menacing move: a strong strike vote that helps unclassified workers and boosts the employer’s wage offer.
Employer flip-flops on pay for performance
Earlier in bargaining, the employer tried to sell OPSEU members on a little idea called “pay for performance.”
Pay for performance would have allowed managers to unilaterally decide who would and would not get a pay raise within a job classification. Under the employer’s initial proposal, it would only have applied to employees who were not yet at the top of their pay range.
Newer workers weren’t biting. They quickly saw through the plan as a way to introduce favouritism into the pay structure and give managers a not-so-subtle way to discipline people – e.g., union activists sticking up for their co-workers.
On Feb. 14, the employer did an about-face. In the contract offer, pay for performance would only be for people who were at the top of their pay range. The employer would add 0.5 per cent to the total payroll and dole it out based solely on the non-grievable whims of individual managers.
A worker could only get the pay-for-performance peanut with the approval of the boss. Plus, workers would have to re-earn their peanut every year. It would not be like moving an extra step up the grid and staying there. You’d have to climb back up again and again.
Collective bargaining is about fairness. Pay raises should be for everybody, not just a few of the boss’s favourites. Reject pay for performance.
Cap teeth, not benefits
Your employer seems unaware that lower pay and higher stress can cause higher benefit usage. So instead of improving your life at work, the boss wants to cap your benefits.
The benefits section of the Feb. 14 offer is exactly two sentences: “The Employer proposes to reconfigure the benefit program by improving certain benefits while implementing cost control limits… If this is accepted in principle, the details will be worked out with the union.”
Translation: “You can have more of one benefit if you accept less of another, but whatever happens we don’t want to pay more.”
This is not acceptable. Your OPSEU bargaining teams are demanding a benefit plan that keeps up to the real costs of health benefits.
For classified workers, that means a drug card so you don’t pay for needed drugs out of your pocket. We want improvements to hearing, vision, and dental care, as well as semi-private hospital care and paramedical care. We want to see the creation of a “benefits bank” for unclassified staff.
Less health care for you and your family is not progress. Reject the employer’s vision.
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