On November 20, 2007 the Corrections MERC Team gave notice of withdrawal from the Provincial Overtime agreement. The notice to withdraw from the agreement came after the MERC realized the Ministry lacked commitment at the table to speak to our issues in any meaningful way.

It is hoped this withdrawal will give the employer representatives at the table the authority to negotiate with the union in a meaningful way. If the employer will not negotiate in a meaningful way we will make changes to the protocol through other means. Up to this point the MERC team has supported the protocol as something was better than nothing.

There have been some improvements. Over the past year, the employer has agreed to move the notice of availability from the fifteenth of the month to three days prior, and having a sliding measurement of overtime hours instead of being reset to zero each month. Both of these issues are a holdover from when overtime was tracked on paper, but are no longer an issue with that great new invention – the computer.

Each institution now has a computer for members to register for overtime, something that never would have happened without the Provincial Overtime Protocol. This may not seem very significant to our members who work in larger institutions across the province but, in many of the smaller jails, some of which are more than 80 years old, having access to a computer to do our work is unheard of. No other members in the Ontario Public Service work in these kinds of conditions. Computers will bring these members closer to the standard of other members in the OPS.

There are two main issues we are asking for the employer to commit to. The first is to close the four-hour loophole. Under the current protocol, four-hour shift extensions are exempted from the protocol. When someone works overtime it should be as per the protocol, by seniority, period. In many smaller locals the four-hour extensions are the only overtime available and this exception only carries on the culture of favouritism and lack of fairness we have had to endure.

The second issue is the Scheduling Officer Assistant position. In the larger institutions where this has been done by a bargaining unit member, the protocol has worked. The HPRO program is working; officers have made themselves available, and lockdowns due to lack of officers are the exception. Since the bargaining unit member assists with the administration and monitoring of the program, it enables the program to be transparent and credible. Without this position the protocol would not have been supported by the members. In fact, the protocol has not been effective where the position has not been established. For example, the superintendent of the Niagara Detention Centre refuses to put a member in the position. At Ottawa-Carlton D.C. the local asked the superintendent to rotate the person who has been in the position for more than two years: now they say there is no funding for that position.

There are other issues that we disagree with, such as: running through the phone calls without a waiting period between calls; only using one contact number; and being removed from the availability list if you used a sick credit the previous day.

Together we have achieved a minimum standard and the employer has indicated they will continue with the protocol. However, without the support of the MERC the language of the protocol is not protected. We advocate that each local again renew their efforts of pursuing a fair and equitable system of distribution of scheduling hours for unclassified members as well as all overtime.

 At the end of the notice period if the employer has not responded to the committee, each local will be free to re-enter into local agreements with any modifications that they can achieve