OPSEU Diablogue

Today we’re in Owen Sound to talk to the media about the VON’s treatment of 35 Personal Support Workers.

In the scheme of things, 35 part-time PSWs represent a small portion of the tens of thousands of workers that make the health system run.

These are 35 women who work part-time for wages mostly below $14 an hour – an amount so low that it requires the community to actually care for the caregivers through the United Way and other charities.

This year their employer sent a negotiator to the bargaining table who not only appears to have contempt for these workers, but also seems intent on damaging the long relationship between our union and VON Canada. We have to wonder; given the damage he is creating, is it really worth it from VON’s perspective?

The bargaining team is still reeling from the negotiator’s assertion that a wage increase for these poverty-level workers would only be used for cigarettes and booze.

Later he denied saying “booze.”

If VON Canada had any sense, they would have pulled the negotiator immediately and apologized to these workers.

We have had a long partnership with the VON.

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Lori White and Dawn Godfrey of OPSEU Local 489 prepare for a potential strike tomorrow in Kingston.

Update: Monday night a tentative agreement was reached between OPSEU and Frontenac Community Mental Health and Addictions Services. A ratification vote will be taking place next week. 

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Hopefully Kingston Mayor Mark Gerretsen made some phone calls yesterday.

Having met with unionized staff members from Frontenac Community Mental Health and Addictions Services, he expressed concern about a potential strike tomorrow (Wednesday) that will impact directly upon the municipality and its residents.

The 130 staff of the mental health and addictions agency provide a wide range of services in the Kingston community, including residential and crisis support. At midnight tonight they will be on a legal strike unless a last-minute deal is reached with the assistance of a mediator.

In the absence of the workers it will likely be up to the city’s police and emergency services to do what they can. It’ll cost much more this way, especially for those who wind up at the hospital emergency room.

Each day we are told the crisis line that Frontenac workers operate receive as many as 40 calls a day. This is on top of the 1200 clients that Frontenac routinely serves in the community.

The professional and support staff at the agency have been without a contract since the beginning of April. That’s too long.

With significant cuts happening at the former Kingston psychiatric hospital, the expectation was that Frontenac would be given new resources to deal with the pressures of downloading.

Earlier this year Providence Care said it was eliminating 60 full-time equivalent mental health positions – that translates to somewhere between 80-90 real jobs.

When the news broke, we got the same old line from government politicians about how services were not really being cut, but shifted to the community as part of health care transformation.

So how did that downloading from the hospital convert to front line jobs at Frontenac?

The answer is: it didn’t.

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