President’s Message
Shawn Haggerty
Resiliency, compassion, and the continued fight to protect working people This past year has tested all of us in many ways; especially what we’re willing to sacrifice for our jobs versus our well-being. Our priorities, our expectations, and our fears have all been put into clearer view. Your Union continues to push for solutions for pandemic pay and helping workers achieve permanent improvements. This year, the UFCW Canada Ontario Provincial Council (OPC) submission to the province regarding the Ontario budget included a number of ways the government could do better to protect working people. You can read the Union’s full budget submission at bit.ly/ Ontbudget2020. Among the proposals we made was legislating 10 paid sick days per year, which is an important step needed to protect the income and health of all working people. Ten paid sick days for all workers would mean not having to make the choice between staying home ill or earning a pay cheque. But no such thing was included in the budget, which the government released on November 5, 2020. Additionally, the budget made no mention of substantial minimum wage increases; no provincially mandated pandemic pay; no permanent improvements to wages in healthcare.
The only item from our submission that the government addressed was providing a four-hour minimum of care for clients in long-term care homes. But, the timeline put forth? Several years. The budget for it? Not clear. The NDP has twice put forth Bills to improve minimum standards for long-term care. MPP France Gélinas (NDP, Nickel Belt) first introduced legislation in April 2016, and again in 2017 after the prorogation of parliament. The latest, Bill 13, was put forth as a Private Member’s bill by MPP Teresa Armstrong (NDP, London Fanshawe). Bill 13 just passed its second reading on October 29 – almost two and a half years after its first reading. Our healthcare workers need immediate help. Immediate doesn’t mean three or four years down the road. We didn’t need another commission to tell us what has been clear for a long time: Ontario’s long-term care system is in trouble. Patients and workers have been bearing the brunt of it all for years while for-profit owners continue to rake in profits. We can applaud the $3 per hour increase for Personal Support Workers (PSWs) but that celebration – much like the increase – is tempo-
rary. Making the increase temporary reminds those workers that the government only cares when the government’s reputation is on the line. And having the increase apply to only some healthcare workers is a slap in the face to the rest of the industry, too. Visit the link at the bottom of page 5 to add your voice to the call for permanent substantial improvements to the entire healthcare industry. It takes less than a minute to use our auto-emailer to reach out to your MPP, no matter which party they belong to, and let them know that you want our healthcare system funded properly and immediately. This year has demonstrated, without doubt, that many employers, particularly the millionaire or billionairelevel CEOs, won't hesitate to sacrifice workers in order to secure their own continued status and income. But this year has also shown that it’s not the government holding our economy and society together with press conferences or commercials patting themselves on the shoulder. It’s not the employers who talk about the ‘heroes’ that work for them while at the same time eliminating pandemic pay and pocketing record profits. . . . continued on page 5
