Yukon Employees' Union Newsletter, January/February 2020

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Yukon Employees’ Union 2285-2nd Ave. Whitehorse, Yukon Y1A 1C9

Yukon Employees’ Union January/February 2020

NEWS

LOCAL Y025 BARGAINING UNDERWAY Local Y025,Yukon Hospital Corporation Workers are at the bargaining table. The team and their PSAC Negotiator held two meetings on January 15th so mem‐ bers could see the proposals that were submitted at the table, and for an opportunity to hear from the team after the first days of talks.

The next talks in March will feature an Open Bargaining process. Details will be available soon for Y025 mem‐ bers who wish to observe the bargaining process.

As before, major issues include workload, the need for more staff, and some fairly serious health and safety concerns. This is a very unified bargaining team with the strength of the membership behind them.

A

re you looking for a copy of your new YG Collective Agreement?

The employer has advised us the ENGLISH language hard-copies should be ready by the end of January. Ask your supervisor for a copy.

If you’re a Y025 member who didn’t receive an email inviting you to attend a January 15th meeting, visit yeu.ca/subscribe and get yourself on the list!

Show your support for your Bargaining Team! Visit https://www.yeu.ca/yukon_hospital_corporation_y025

For the first time, the full contract will be available in French. We will have the digital version available in early March on our website.

For those members who would like a printed copy in French, your employer will provide it upon request.

The digital copy is now available in English on the YEU’s website.

http://bit.ly/ygcontract2022

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YEU NEWS Jan/Feb 2020

NEWS

From the President’s Desk Steve Geick

Welcome to 2020. I hope everyone had a great holiday sea‐ son with family and friends. If you are one of the many who worked over the holidays to keep the Territory run‐ ning, and the rest of us safe and healthy, my sincere thanks.

time, so most can’t afford to take time off to manage stress or illness. Studies have shown that the rate of depression and anxiety in the precariously employed population exceeds 50% and that these workers are 6 times more like‐ ly to face discrimination at work.

So, what’s YEU got in store for you in this new decade?

Of course, most of these workers are not protected by a union contract, but many are unionized. Employers are get‐ ting craftier and better at dodging their contractual obliga‐ tions, and that’s something we are committed to fighting.

For those without unions, it’s important that we fight for their rights alongside them.

Expect to see YEU double down on our hard stance against privatization and precarious employment. The Territorial and Municipal Governments can be sure we will be paying close attention to every aspect of decisions that impact our membership and all Yukoners. You can expect us to be much more public about these issues as well. Our 6000 plus members are taxpayers and constituents ‐ that’s an awful lot of votes, and not to be taken lightly. YEU doesn’t care who is in office, we’ll go to the mat with ANY Government who forgets the people who put them in power.

If you’re an employer, expect us to be ever more diligent.

We’ll be making sure you live up to the commitments you made when you signed that collective agreement.

We must fight to stop the growth of the Yukon’s precarious workforce – a growing army of workers filling permanent job needs, while being denied the rights of permanent employment. These are Yukoners who can’t plan, can’t buy homes or be full participants in the economy of our territory.

Precarious working conditions are the new normal for more and more Yukoners. Their work is classified as casual, seasonal, auxiliary, temporary, part‐time, on‐call, contract, and gig‐work and is characterized by low wages, uncertain hours and a lack of rights and protections on the job. The workers most commonly affected include our most vulner‐ able populations ‐ racialized people (especially racialized women), women and young workers.

Precarious work hurts people and communities. Workers under constant financial pressure are too busy juggling two or three jobs to pursue leisure, to get involved in their com‐ munity or to volunteer.

The uncertainty, instability and stress can lead to serious physical and mental health issues. And only approximately 1 in 10 precariously employed workers have any paid sick Yukon Employees’ Union Newsletter

A rising tide lifts all boats; that expression reminds us of our responsibilities as unionized workers and explains why labour organizations across the country are working on Living Wage campaigns. We need to advocate for others who don’t have the rights we have fought for and won. YEU will tackle this issue in 2020 but like everything we do, we need the help and support, stories and input only our members can provide.

Look for more education coming your way in 2020. YEU has plenty of new courses launching soon and we want to deliver the training that’s most important to you. If you’re an activist on our email list, you will have received an edu‐ cation survey from our education officer Lynne – it should take only about 2‐3 minutes of your time and will help ensure we deliver a great year of education.

This will also be a big bargaining year for us, and we’ll be going to the table with several employers. If you’re inter‐ ested in the process, have input or want to be on a bargain‐ ing team, contact your Local President, find our when your collective agreement expires and when bargaining will begin. If you’re not sure who to talk to, check our website or call the hall at 667‐2331.

2020 is upon us. I believe we can do great things together, and I hope you let me know what you think our priorities should include. As always, I welcome your comments, your ideas and even your criticism. Email me any time, call or drop in the office for a chat.

In solidarity,

Steve Geick, President Yukon Employees’ Union Jan/Feb 2020 Page 3

YEU Behind the Scenes or: Important things you didn’t know your Union was working on.

Back in November, a group of workers were called to a meeting with their manager, requiring some to travel from out of town. Although the members knew the date of the meeting, they didn’t know what time it was scheduled to take place. Because of the nature of their work and their varied work schedules, the meeting occurred outside some members’ regular hours of work.

An updated meeting schedule was shared with little notice, and as a result, the 7 days’ notice required in Article 15.03 of the Yukon Government Collective Agreement were not provided.

Initially, the employer refused to pay the affected workers the overtime they were due. The employer argued that an email sent out a month ahead had provided the necessary advance notice, however, they did not confirm the changed hours until just before the meeting, and the union argued that Article 15.03 had been breached, and overtime was due.

In the end the employer had to agree given the facts, that the employees did not receive the required 7 days advance notice of the change, therefore they were all paid overtime for their first shift back to work!

ALWAYS CHECK WITH YOUR UNION if the employer denies you an entitlement you believe is yours under your Collective Agreement!

We’re happy to announce that Jim Crowell will re-join the YEU Staff team. Jim will serve a six month term as a YEU Labour Relations Advisor, a role he has fulfilled in our office in the past.

Jim is a very experience advocate and we’re delighted to welcome him back.

What makes YEU strong?

Our MEMBERS! Every couple of months,the training room at the YEU Hall is a bustling, exciting space. New Shop Stewards, keen to make their workplaces better and stronger, learn from experienced Stewards, facilitators and YEU Staff. What does it take to be a great Shop Steward? For many, it's a desire to be part of the solution, and a wish to help their co-workers and themselves - stronger together.

LET’S WORK TO PROTECT YUKON’S PUBLIC SERVICES ueen’s Printer Agency staff have packed up their offices, watched their desks get loaded and removed, and said goodbye to the colleagues and friends they’ve worked alongside, sometimes for decades. Their 2020 began in new work places, with new reporting structures and new jobs.

For some, it’s the same work with new rules, a new boss, and little connection to the colleagues on whom their work depends.

It’s an unwelcome outcome to the privatization scheme cooked up by Public Works Minister Richard Mostyn and his fly-in Deputy Minister Jaime Pitfield.

After 30 years of experimentation, there is no evidence to suggest that privatization saves money or provides better services, especially with regard to essential public goods such as water, health care and electricity.

The workers from Queen’s Printer did so much more than Mostyn tried to portray, or perhaps even understood. Now, departments and branch offices are scrambling for graphic designers and trying to meet deadlines while they jockey for priority at for-profit print shops. Community Health Centres try to find storage for bulk supplies and forms, or pay high prices for small print runs and retail purchases.

Bureaucrats and politicians have begun to realize this as well. At least 235 cities in 37 countries have de-privatized their water over the past 15 years, with France and the United States at the head of the pack. Paris made its water public again in 2010 and immediately saved €35 million a year, while at the same time providing subsidies to those who were struggling to pay under privatization.

And of course the workers at Central Stores have faced the same fate. Shuffled into new jobs, they’re doing good work while everyone tries to make sense of the events of the past year. Their clients, both within government and in other public workplaces like the City of Whitehorse and the RCMP have had to develop new purchasing processes.

Similar trends are taking place with electricity.

Germany's much-vaunted Energiewende is as much about the transition to renewable sources of electricity as it is about creating publicly-owned and democratically controlled energy providers. Sixty new local public utilities were created in Germany between 2007 and 2012.

Privatization is sneaky and sly. Governments can dress it up nicely so it looks like cost-savings and redtape reduction, but at the end of the day it almost always ends up costing taxpayers more. Public servants and the public sector work for taxpayers - private companies work for shareholders, and are profit-driven. Once contracts are won, there is little incentive for the public sector to keep costs low - cost overruns, delays and shortcuts often characterize the outcomes.

Other services are reverting back to public hands as well, including transportation, waste management, housing and health care in countries as diverse as Malaysia, Spain, Bolivia and Uganda. There is even a revitalization of public banks, that most hallowed of market-based institutions.

Q

Yukon vulnerabilities include Tourism, Parks, Highways & Public Works, Housing and Liquor Corporations and more.

There is a privatization plague underway in Canada, encouraged by right wing think tanks like the Fraser Institute with critical sectors of public goods sold to the lowest bidder. Healthcare services, highway maintenance, water safety are frequent targets, even while other nations reverse costly privatization mistakes.

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Unfortunately, Canada is going the wrong way, at every level of government, in every part of the country.

Outright privatization, public-private partnerships and creeping commercialization are found in almost every sector, including water, electricity, alcohol sales, transportation and security.* Public services keep our communities strong. We need to protect what is working now, and build a strong future together. *Excerpted from Why is Canada still privatizing public services when most of the world is going the other direction? by David McDonald, published October 25 2016 on rabble.ca YEU NEWS Jan/Feb 2020

The Laundry Story

The incredible turnout at YEU's January 14 Laundry Project, even when the forecast read ‐48, illustrates the need for this service in our community.

Yukon social assistance clients become eligible for a laundry subsidy only after 6 months on SA, and even then, it's only $10/month. What would you wash, if you only had $10/month for laundry? For the working poor and precari‐ ously employed, fitting laun‐ dry into a too‐tight budget is nearly impossible.

So Far...

August 2019

YEU’s Community Laundry Project was launched as a 6 month pilot with a $250/mo. budget.

Sponsored by YEU PR Committee. The Whitehorse United Church commits to provide coffee, tea, treats & games. By September, the church began pro‐ viding bagged Clean clothes and towels, clean bedding and fresh socks directly equate with dignity. It's lunches for clients to take home.

easy to take those things for granted when you have ready access to laundry in your home. Making the choice to trek across the city during a ferocious cold snap to access free laundry speaks volumes. Clearly, this is a need our society has overlooked. YEU is honored to step in to help fill this gap, but it's a stop‐gap fix and not a sustainable or long‐term solution. Our budget for 2020 is already showing signs of cracking under the growing demand.

It's hard to calculate the role of clean laundry in employment and educational success.

For a parent juggling a budget that's stretched to breaking, washing a sick child's bedding can be one expense too many. Choosing between a few more groceries or a load of school clothes is a tough choice too many parents have to make. Going to school in dirty clothes ‐ going to school poor impacts not only how children are seen by teachers and peers, it can affect educational outcomes.

Many low‐wage jobs require a uniform, and keeping that uniform fresh and clean can be a costly condition of employment. Although some jurisdictions require food service and healthcare sector employers to launder staff uniforms, cost is almost never borne by Yukon employers.

September 2019 Fewer attendees ‐ budget not fully spent. Decision was made to add social media campaign to promotions that had included only poster & stakehold‐ er outreach, in an effort to reach a larger audience.

YEU provided hot chili ‐ hot food now served monthly.

Number of loads:

The Yukon Employees' Union's Community Laundry Project is one small piece in a much larger puzzle. While many Yukon groups work to mitigate the effects of poverty, and improve the lives of Yukoners on the margins, our experiences in the few months of the Community Laundry Project's outreach shows there is more to do. We’re excited to announce that YEU/PSAC Local Y010 shares our desire to support this project and has stepped up to sponsor the program through 2020.

At the core of the union movement is a belief in equality ‐ in equal access and the fun‐ damental dignity of all people. We challenge the Yukon government to take notice. On a night where temperatures dipped to near ‐50 in Whitehorse, our little Community Laundry Project served to help our citizens do almost 80 loads of wash in just three hours. The need is very real.

"What we desire for ourselves, we wish for all."

J.S. Woodsworth.

September: October: November December January

29 31 38 92 79

January temp. was near ‐48, & 30% of machines weren’t working.

December & January events had guests lined up and ready before our volun‐ teers were on site.

MEETINGS & EVENTS

YEU STAFF CONTACTS

Shop Steward Round Table: 3rd Wed, 9am - noon, YEU YEU Monthly Exec Meeting: 2nd Thurs., 5:15 - 7pm, YEU Y010 Monthly Meeting: 2nd Tues., 5:30-7:30 p.m., YEU Y017 Monthly Meeting: 4th Thursday, 7:00 p.m., YEU All Member Open House Every Wednesday, 4-6pm, YEU (Main floor, Local Workshop)

Susan Koser, A/Executive Director; skoser@yeu.ca Dan Robinson, Labour Relations Advisor; drobinson@yeu.ca David Anderson, Labour Relations Advisor; danderson@yeu.ca Jessica Kish, Labour Relations Advisor; jkish@yeu.ca Jim Crowell, Labour Relations Advisor; jcrowell@yeu.ca Lynne Pajot, Education Officer; lpajot@yeu.ca Beckie Huston, Intake Officer; bhuston@yeu.ca Tammy Olsen, Financial Officer; tolsen@yeu.ca Roseanne Elias, Membership Services Officer; relias@yeu.ca Deborah Turner-Davis, Communications; dturner-davis@yeu.ca Christie Harper, Executive Director; charper@yeu.ca

Yukon Employees’ Union, 2285 2nd Ave. Whitehorse YT Y1A 1C9 PH: 867-667-2331 Fax: 867-667-6521 1-888-YEU-2331 contact@yeu.ca www.yeu.ca Office Hours: Monday - Friday, 8:30 am - 5:00 pm.

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YEU NEWS Jan/Feb 2020