Monday, August 28, 2023

A Very Busy Summer

These last few months in Ontario have been exceptionally active for bargaining, grievance arbitration, and organizing.

By Ian DeWaard, Ontario Director

As our membership continues to grow, so too does the advocacy and representation work supported by CLAC staff. We are committed to ensuring staff are readily available to members and that we respond to your calls and emails in a timely fashion. So that we can continue to live out that commitment, we’ve hired five new representatives for a total of 41.

Healthcare
Our government relations efforts this quarter included a presentation to a legislative committee on the “Working for Workers” bill, at which we used the occasion to promote Workplace Safety and Insurance Board reform. Workers in the retirement home sector, an environment where workplace injury and illness are proportionately high relative to other sectors, are not captured under Ontario’s public workplace insurance system, and CLAC continues to agitate for a fix.

We’re exceptionally pleased that MPP John Fraser, interim leader of the Ontario Liberal Party, introduced a private members’ bill that attempts to address this problem. That bill was tabled in the summer, but we will be working this fall when the legislature resumes to rally support for the bill from all parties.

Bill 124, legislation that obligated public sector workers to endure three years of one percent wage caps, has been overturned by the courts. We are bargaining hard for make-up increases, despite fierce resistance from some employers. But others have recognized the need for improved wages in a tight labour market and are breaking rank to establish increases ranging from 11 to 14 percent.

As essential workers, most healthcare employees are captured by the province’s Hospital Labour Disputes Arbitration Act (HLDAA), which replaces the right to strike with binding contract arbitration. The system is arduous and expensive, causes persistently slow bargaining outcomes, and hinders the natural economic pressures of an undersupplied labour market. We developed insightful analyses of HLDAA’s problems and sent them to industry stakeholders and legislators to hopefully prompt review and reform.

CLAC’s push on vaccination grievances—there are well over 200—achieved a breakthrough in May when many healthcare employers and a few municipalities finally opted to withdraw or suspend their mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policies. CLAC has been working out the conditions for the return to work for these members. This resolution comes at a time when another leading case (not a CLAC grievance) was adjudicated and affirmed the employer’s right to terminate.

Construction
Our representative team has made a major effort toward concluding the renewal agreement negotiations for the 80 construction and ready-mix collective agreements that expire in 2023. Wage settlements continue to come in at the 15 to 18 percent range, with large front-end loaded increases to contend with high inflation, labour shortages, and the 6 to 8 percent increases that the Building Trades Unions secured in 2022.

Due to the unplanned mayoral election in the City of Toronto, the issue of fair and open tendering in municipalities is again being debated. Many will recall that in 2019, Ontario’s Bill 66 deemed municipalities to be nonconstruction employers, and thus several cities were no longer beholden to restrictive subcontracting obligations that shut CLAC members out of major municipal work.

At that time, the City of Toronto opted to remain a construction employer, and so major construction work opportunities there remain closed. The election reopened that debate, and CLAC, with support from the Progressive Contractors Association and the think tank Cardus, is again working to demonstrate that competition in tendering leads to fairer and more cost-effective construction procurement.

A Very Busy Summer

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