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 February, 2002: Article 6
Key demands ignored in offer
Working people invented collective bargaining as a way to improve their lives. You sent your teams into bargaining to gain better wages and working conditions for you.
We went to the bargaining table to make gains. Too bad the employer’s Feb. 14 offer ignores many of your key demands entirely.
Your job security – ignored
Contracting out may have hurt the Ontario Public Service more than any other policy.
It has certainly been a waste of money. In the Andersen Consulting fiasco, Ontario’s provincial auditor found that taxpayers paid the company’s top manager $575 an hour. Auditor Erik Peters said public employees could have done the $200-million job for one-sixth of the wages Andersen charged.
And the Walkerton tragedy showed us that contracting out is more than a waste of money. When government sees public safety as little more than “red tape” that gets in the way of private profit, it can also be fatal.
Contracting out of OPS work is costly, dangerous, and stupid. It is also the number one threat to the job security of OPSEU members in the OPS. To protect jobs and services, your OPSEU Central bargaining team has called for a moratorium on contracting-out for the life of your next collective agreement.
The union also tabled language aimed at contracting in. We say it’s time the contract contained a process for looking at the employer’s operations and discussion where it would make sense to bring some functions into the OPS.
Your employer ignored both of these major job security demands – contracting in, not contracting out – in its offer.
Your classification grievance – ignored
Many OPSEU members are sick and tired of doing the work of a higher paying classification, but getting paid for a lower one. Right now in our contract we have something called the Joint System Subcommittee, or JSSC. That committee is made up of three employer representatives and three OPSEU representatives.
In some cases, the committee’s work has provided real pay improvements to real people. But when the two sides don’t agree that a particular job should be paid more, nothing happens. The employer wins in a tie.
Your Central team has demanded a neutral third-party chair to cast a vote, one way or the other, on issues where the two sides can’t agree. Otherwise, we will never be able to move forward on the vast majority of our classification disputes. People should get paid what they’re owed!
Your employer ignored your classification issue in its offer.
Your special case – ignored
Fed up by being wrongly paid for the work they are doing, thousands of OPSEU members in close to 100 different jobs asked the OPSEU bargaining teams to take their issue forward as a “special case” in bargaining.
The OPSEU bargaining teams tabled these issues. The employer ignored them all in its offer.
Whistleblower protection – ignored
Does this employer really want transparent, accountable government? Or does it just want to avoid getting caught, as the Walkerton Inquiry revealed?
For years, OPSEU members have called on the Ontario government to enact the “whistleblowing” sections of the Public Service Act to give public employees a safe, confidential way to report cases of waste, corruption, and mismanagement in the public service.
This demand was (wait for it) ignored in the employer’s offer.
Other union demands ignored…
Better return-to-work language to accommodate sick or injured workers: ignored.
A province-wide joint health and safety system: ignored.
Better shift premiums for afternoon and weekend shifts: ignored.
Annual training for all employees: ignored.
Reimbursement for professional fees: ignored.
Increased time off for OPSEU Local presidents for union work ignored.
No external job postings before internal process is complete: ignored.
The list of good ideas the employer ignored in its offer is very, very long. For a full comparison, check the union’s initial demands on the OPSEU web site at http://www.opseu.org/ops/bargaining/union&employer_agenda.PDF
Then compare them to what’s actually in the employer’s offer, available at http://www.opseu.org/ops/bargaining/empproposal.htm .
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