On May 3, 2019 Rose Vogt, UWSA President and Lawrence Folland, UWSA President-Elect attended a consultation process organized by Peter Bethlenfalvy, President of the Treasury Board. The intention of the consultation with public sector employees and bargaining agents was to receive feedback and discuss “in good faith” on how to manage Ontario public sector compensation growth in a way that results in wage settlements that are modest, reasonable and sustainable. The feedback was supposed to directly inform any next steps taken by the government to manage growth in compensation costs.
Four general areas for discussion were:
- Collective bargaining agreements and provisions.
- Tools to manage compensation costs that the government should consider.
- “While no decisions have been yet made, the government is considering legislated caps on allowable compensation increases that can be negotiated or imposed in binding arbitration.”
- Are there any tools applied in other jurisdictions which you think would work in Ontario?
Overall and unanimous feedback from attendees was that imposing governmental legislation on the collective bargaining agents was a violation of the Charter of Rights, that these consultations were not “in good faith”- but a “sham”, and many voiced that it appears that Premier Ford has already made decisions about instituting legislation. Statements from representatives across the PSE sector for all employees: faculty and staff strongly supported autonomy within each institution to negotiate what is best for the institution, for the PSE sector as a whole, and that there was no support for this government initiative.
As a non-unionized representative at the table, UWSA’s Vogt and Folland expressed support for the strong statements made by the leaders of OPSEU, OCUFA, CUPE, and United Steel Workers, and a few others, and opposed any legislation that would impede the rights of PSE employees to negotiate fairly with their institutions.
On June 5, 2019 Peter Bethlenfalvy, President of the Treasury Board, released an announcement that introduced legislation that could affect the salary of employees at universities, and other “public sector” employees.
The news release of the proposed legislation, called Protecting a Sustainable Public Sector for Future Generations Act, states that it “would not impede the collective bargaining process nor impact existing agreements”.
The UWSA is aware that the proposed legislation has yet to be passed and until it has (which may be inevitable) I will continue to submit feedback to the government, work with our campus partners and work to better understand the impact to the employees at Waterloo.
Please contact me directly with your concerns and feedback at: uwsapres@uwaterloo.ca
- Rose Vogt, UWSA President
