North York Family Health Team Workers' Strike Achieves Acceptable First Contract

The nurses, nurse practitioners, dieticians, social workers, pharmacists, technicians and other workers that make up the 44-person staff of the North York Family Health Team, won a significant battle to defend their rights and uphold the dignity of labour in their 13-week strike that ended in January. A press release from the Ontario Nurses' Association on January 13 reported that a first collective agreement was ratified by 84 per cent of the workers and included an acceptable wage increase.

The North York Family Health Team is one of the primary care teams that the province is promoting as the solution to ensuring that everyone has access to primary health care.

The strike began on October 20 after the North York Family Health Team refused to offer a wage increase to the workers in spite of having received additional funding from the province specifically to increase wages to address the crisis of recruitment and retention. In June 2025, Health Minister Sylvia Jones had announced that $142 million of the $235 million announced for primary health care teams would go towards recruiting and retaining workers, including through wage increases. The North York Family Health Team used the funds not for workers' wages but to cover a budget deficit.

The North York Family Health Team was established in 2008 to serve 48,000 patients and now provides primary care for 95,000 across 21 locations. The workers, most of whom have worked there for over a decade, joined the Ontario Nurses' Association in 2024 and began negotiations with the employer for a collective agreement. In the course of negotiations the employer offered a wage increase of zero per cent. This, after wage freezes from 2009 to 2016 and subsequent increases below the rate of inflation. In 2024, when workers received a one per cent increase, the executive director received a significant salary increase.

Health care workers across the province have been fighting for their rights and dignity and for the health care services that communities need. Throughout their strike the workers had the support of patients and physicians, workers and the community. They joined their picket lines, wrote letters, signed petitions and put pressure on the Ford government and the Primary Care Action Team headed up by former federal Health Minister Jane Philpott, to enforce the funding guidelines. 

The government claims that the mandate of the Primary Care Action Team is to address the fact that over 2 million people in Ontario do not have a primary care provider. Workers in the community care sector are paid significantly lower wages than their counterparts in hospitals. They are fighting to achieve wages and working conditions that are acceptable so that they can do their work and live with security and dignity.

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This article was published in

Volume 56 Number 18 - April 13, 2026

Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/TML2026/Articles/T560187.HTM

Website:  www.cpcml.ca   Email:  editor@cpcml.ca