January 15,
2007
Successor rights back in effect for Crown employees
After a 10-year fight and last-year’s province-wide “same
rights” campaign, OPSEU members in the OPS have finally won
back successor rights for Crown employees.
“This is a big victory for the thousands of OPSEU members
who signed ‘same rights’ postcards, distributed flyers,
buttons and mugs at work, and lobbied their MPPs,” said Eric
Morin, OPSEU co-chair of the Central Enforcement and Renewal
Committee.
The result is stronger protection for members whose jobs are
transferred out of the OPS to another employer. Successor
rights ensure that members can move with their work – and
take their collective agreement, seniority, pay and benefits
and their union with them. These rights were stripped from
Crown employees by the Harris Tories in 1995.
In December, the Liberal government finally lived up to its
promise to restore successor rights by passing Bill 158. The
Bill also includes a number of changes to the Public Service
Act, including whistle-blower protection for OPS employees.
Successor rights came into force when this section of the
Bill was proclaimed on December 20.
Whistle-blower protection and other Public Service Act
changes are not yet in effect. They are expected to be
proclaimed once the government has developed regulations and
made the necessary administrative changes, likely in
mid-2007.
The full text of Bill 158 is available at:
www.ontla.on.ca.
Proposed public health agency raises more questions than
answers, OPSEU working group says
The McGuinty government’s plan to create a new Ontario
Agency for Health Protection and Promotion is raising more
questions than answers, according to a group of OPSEU
members in the Ministry of Health’s public health labs.
Under Bill 171, introduced in December, the new agency will
be set up in spring 2007. If the bill passes, the ministry
plans to divest the 12 public health labs to the agency
sometime in 2008-09.
“The 2003 SARS crisis showed the need to repair the damage
caused by a decade of funding cuts in the public health
labs,” says Patrick Fry-Smith, OPSEU Co-chair of the MOHLTC
MERC.
“It’s not clear how creating a new agency will do that. But
moving the agency outside the OPS threatens to undercut the
minister’s direct responsibility to the public for the labs
and the health protection system as a whole.”
Members of OPSEU’s public health labs working group have
flagged key issues the government needs to address – before
Bill 171 is passed – to ensure the new agency helps
strengthen Ontario’s health protection system:
Successor rights – Avoiding service disruptions means
protecting members’ jobs, wages and benefits, seniority, and
collective agreement rights during and after the transfer.
With the return of successor rights for Crown employees, the
government now needs to confirm that successor rights will
apply to the PHL transfer.
Pensions – Members need to know their OPTrust
pensions will be protected. It’s time for the government to
sign off on the “grandparenting” amendment to the OPSEU
Pension Plan. This will allow members who are transferred to
the new agency to continue contributing to the OPSEU Pension
Plan.
No layoffs – With plans to relocate Toronto’s central
public health lab and questions about changes to the work of
the regional labs, members are calling for a commitment that
there will be no layoffs in any lab, in any classification.
No contracting out – Bill 171 has sparked concerns
about possible contracting out to private labs, downloading
work to hospital labs, and/or including the public health
labs in the ministry’s plans for regional hospital lab
mergers. The ministry needs to commit up front to
maintaining the integrity of all 12 public health labs and
protecting the work they do.
For more information, contact a member of the OPSEU
public health labs working group:
Patrick
Fry-Smith - MERC co-chair (905) 383-9838,
pfry@metrocity.com
Sal Dost -
Local 113, London (519) 455-9310;
sal_dost@hotmail.com
Jessica
Landon - Local 154, Windsor (519) 969-4341,
jnljeo@sympatico.ca
John Guitar
- Local 201, Hamilton (905) 385-5379
Mary
Blodgett - Local 308, Peterborough (705) 743-6811,
mblodgett@cogeco.ca
Melanie
Desjardins - Local 314, Orillia (705) 325-7449,
dannymel@sympatico.ca
Dean Wiley -
Local 545, Toronto & MERC (416) 235-6135,
wileyde@rogers.com
Debra Irwin
- Local 601, Sault Ste Marie 705-254-7132,
horseandcabin@hotmail.com
Anne Mantha
- Local 649, Timmins (705) 267-6633,
almantha@hotmail.com
Clay
McKibbon - Local 716, Thunder Bay (807) 622-6449,
opseuclay@shaw.ca
Nancy
Pridham - OPSEU Executive Board (416) 407-4594,
npridham@opseu.org
Patty Rout -
OPSEU Executive Board (905) 439-8044,
prout@opseu.org
Working group members for Locals 412 (Ottawa), 432
(Kingston), and 628 (Sudbury) will be named soon.
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January 15, 2007 Issue of
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