TORONTO,ON – Health-care workers who have been there for patients and their families in every corner of Ontario throughout the COVID-19 pandemic are telling the Ford government that its wage restraint program profoundly devalues the contribution they’ve made, and that it must go now.
For nearly 16 months, front-line health care staff have overcome challenge after challenge battling the coronavirus. Nearly 23,000 health-care workers have been infected with COVID-19, and 24 have died. They have worked extended shifts, mandatory overtime, weekend after weekend, with vacations cancelled, isolating from their families to protect them, without complaint because they knew the people of Ontario need them.
Health-care staff who are overwhelmingly female have been subjected to three rounds of provincial wage freezes in 15 years. The latest (Bill124) was introduced by the Ford government in November 2019. The impacts of wage restraint legislation on a gendered health-care workforce are tremendous, setting pay equity back many years and effectively widening the gender wage gap.
Inflation in March 2021 was 2.2 per cent and it is projected to continue to increase. Bill 124 restricts health-care workers’ wages to a maximum of 1 per cent, including any benefit improvements. In real terms, this means a real wage cut for each of the three years the legislation applies.
This wage restraint does not apply to male-dominated essential services, such as police and firefighters. Disparities are fueled even further because many pockets of the health sector – including for-profit long-term care homes – are excluded from its application. Because Bill 124 puts a cap on overall compensation, it prevents health-care workers from bargaining mental health supports or sick leave for part-time employees who contract COVID-19 at work.
Arbitrators, too, have shown ambivalence to the Bill. Several have indicated that it makes a mockery of collective bargaining and in some cases have outlined the wage increase they would award if the legislation did not constrain them.
Bill 124 is being challenged in the courts by several different groups – all are calling for it to be repealed. ONA has lodged a Constitutional Challenge.
This is a situation that must be made right by the Ford government. They need to repeal Bill 124 immediately, say the Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA), the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU-CUPE), SEIU Healthcare and Unifor. Collectively, the four unions represent more than 200,000 nurses, personal support workers, environmental/infection control services, administrative, professional and other health-care staff in hospitals, long-term care and community settings.