October 27, 2020 - No. 73

Militant Action by Alberta Health Care Workers

Hospital Workers Walk Out Across
Alberta to Defend Their Rights and
Public Health Care


Statement in Solidarity with Striking Health Care Workers - Friends of Medicare

One Year of Government Refusal to Negotiate with Public Sector Workers
The Quebec Government's Irresponsible and Dangerous
Position
- Pierre Chénier
No New Collective Agreement and No Progress in Negotiations

Workers Demand Job Security in the Midst of Pandemic
Actions Across Canada by Hospitality Workers - Brian Sproule


Militant Action by Alberta Health Care Workers

Hospital Workers Walk Out Across Alberta
to Defend Their Rights and Public Health Care


Walkouts began in the early morning at Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton.

Hospital workers, members of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE), walked off the job in 31 hospitals and health centres in 23 cities and towns across Alberta on October 26. Walkouts took place in Athabasca, Calgary (Foothills, Peter Lougheed, Rockyview, South Health Campus, and Sheldon Chumir), Canmore, Cardston, Claresholm (General Hospital and Centre for Mental Health and Addictions). Cold Lake, Edmonton (Alberta Hospital, Royal Alexandra, University of Alberta, and Glenrose Hospitals and Edmonton Remand Centre), Evansburg, Ft. Saskatchewan, Grande Prairie. High Level, High Prairie, Leduc, Lethbridge, Okotoks, Ponoka, Red Deer, Sherwood Park, Slave Lake, Stony Plain, Westlock, Wetaskiwin, and Whitecourt.

A press release issued by AUPE on October 26 quotes union president Guy Smith:

"Anger has been building among members for months. [...] The recent announcement by Health Minister Tyler Shandro of 11,000 jobs being cut in the middle of a global deadly pandemic was the last straw for them. [...]

"Nursing-care and support workers decided today that there was no other option but to fight to protect Albertans at risk, especially during the deadliest pandemic in a century. By constantly short-staffing public health care, this government is pushing our members to the breaking point exactly when Albertans need them most.

"Across this province, working people are rising up against Jason Kenney's job-killing policies and are joining the fight in solidarity. This was a decision taken by the members themselves. AUPE is a democratic union and we respect the wishes of our members."

The press release states that "AUPE Members are committed to ensuring patients' safety during any dispute," and quotes Smith saying:

"Members will do everything in their power to keep Albertans safe. Public safety is why they are taking this action. They know that slashing thousands of frontline jobs during a pandemic is mad. It will lead to lower levels of care and higher costs. It will lead to tragedies. [...]

"[Alberta Health Minister] Shandro and [Alberta Premier] Kenney have arrogantly dismissed the vital role our members play in frontline health care. After risking their lives to come to work every day for more than seven months -- to treat patients, to prevent infections, to keep hospitals running -- their reward is to see their jobs axed and handed over to corporations seeking to profit off patient care. That is shameful."

Athabasca Hospital

Smith appealed for other Albertans to join the fight. "All Albertans are being targeted by this government. If you are a public or private-sector worker, a parent, a student, a teacher, someone with a handicap or disabilities, you are all under attack. This is your fight, too."

Alberta Health Services immediately called on the Alberta Labour Relations Board to issue a cease and desist order requiring the workers to return to work, calling the strike "illegal." The labour board issued a cease and desist order at 9 pm on October 26. Following the decision, AUPE issued the following statement:

"After drawing national attention to the privatization of health care in Alberta, health care staff represented by the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE) are returning to work Tuesday, October 27, following an order by the Alberta Labour Relations Board (ALRB) to cease and desist their wildcat strike.

"AUPE members won support from across Alberta for their heroic stand, and proved once and for all that healthcare staff is more than doctors and nurses. AUPE is notifying all its members of the obligation to obey the ALRB order by returning to scheduled work."

Throughout the day on October 26, the message was clear that the walk-out signalled the beginning of a fight that must be won. Health care workers put themselves on the line every day to care for the people. They are fighting for the conditions needed to provide care and services, while the government is intent on its gigantic pay-the-rich schemes, privatizing and handing over public services to the uber-rich global corporate interests. The battle for public opinion is on! How dare the Kenney government downgrade services and the conditions of health care workers in the midst of a pandemic, people responded, expressing their support for the workers. Frontline workers know that it is disastrous to hand over medical labs and the control of keeping hospitals clean, providing laundry and linens, feeding patients, and more to private interests whose only goal is to make maximum profits. How dare you treat our heroes like zeroes, they said. 

The workers take responsibility every day, while governments who serve the rich refuse to take any responsibility for the consequences of their anti-social, anti-worker decisions. Instead they use the power of the state to declare the workers’ actions "illegal." This is not justice. This shows they are unfit to rule and cannot be trusted with the decision-making power. Workers' Forum calls on all Albertans and people across the country to speak out and support the hospital workers!

Withdraw All Layoffs Now!
Increase Funding for Health Care and Social Programs!
No to Privatization!
Stop Paying the Rich!

Edmonton

Calgary


Red Deer

(Photos: WF, AUPE, UNA, HSAA, AFL, IATSE, Progress Alberta)

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Statement in Solidarity with
Striking Health Care Workers

Frontline hospital workers represented by the Alberta Union of Public Employees have walked off the job at locations across Alberta today, to defend their jobs and the public health care system that keeps Albertans safe and healthy.

This is a decision that no health care worker takes lightly. These workers know better than anyone the importance of a strong and well-resourced public health care system, and they know what is at stake of being lost if the government continues to pursue their incessant cuts. Health care workers are striking today because they need to be sure that they are equipped to provide the best possible care for patients, and they know this government stands in the way of that.

Since they formed government, the UCP has made it implicitly clear that they are not interested in supporting our vital public health care system. Jason Kenney has pursued an aggressive agenda of cutting and privatizing the public services on which Albertans all rely. Even in the face of a global pandemic, while health care workers have proven themselves as the first line of defence in the province's pandemic response, this government merely paused its layoffs of an estimated 16,000 health care workers province-wide. The plan to contract out and privatize their jobs is an insult to workers, and a betrayal of the patients who depend on them.

"Kenney's UCP government continues to demonstrate nothing but disdain for the workers on health care's front lines. This government has shown that they will stop at nothing to push forward their privatization agenda," says Sandra Azocar, Executive Director of Friends of Medicare. "Make no mistake, everything they have done so far is by design. Their panels, their reviews, their legislative changes, have all served to provide the political fodder and legal framework to decimate those services that we value as society's great equalizers: education and health care."

We have a government that has failed to learn from this pandemic and does not respond to rallies, letter writing and telephone campaigns. They don't care about petitions, and they are counting on the fact that we can't take to the street to protest their destructive legislation during a pandemic. In their refusal to listen to Albertans' concerns on behalf of our public health care system, this government has left health care workers little choice but to strike.

"This government declared war on the frontline health care workers of this province when they announced they were cutting over 11,000 good health care jobs at a time when Albertans are already struggling," says Azocar. "Jason Kenney wasn't in Alberta in 2012 when the same workers whose jobs he is bent on attacking went on a wildcat strike and shut down hospitals. Kenney has not seen the fight that Albertans have waged time and again to protect our public health care. In this wildcat strike, solidarity and people-power have never rang so true and necessary against this government's absolutism."

Friends of Medicare stands in solidarity with striking health care workers for the sake of patients all across this province and for the protection of our vital public health care system.

(October 26, 2020. Photos: WF, Friends of Medicare)

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One Year of Government Refusal to Negotiate with Public Sector Workers

The Quebec Government's Irresponsible
and Dangerous Position

The Quebec government is taking a dangerous and irresponsible stand with regard to Quebec public sector workers' attempts to negotiate new collective agreements. Although their collective agreements expired on March 31, 2020, after more than a year at the negotiation table with the government and their employers, nothing has moved.

On the one hand, the Quebec government has shown no intention of withdrawing its March 21 ministerial order which gives the executive the power to cancel all negotiated collective agreements for workers in the health and social services sector, so that it can change working conditions at will. The Legault government has been very quiet about this aspect of the ministerial orders. Clearly this acts as a sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of workers, as any collective agreement they negotiate can be rendered null and void. The Legault government must immediately withdraw this ministerial order.

Meanwhile, for over a year now, the same government has refused to negotiate with public sector workers on the basis of their demands. On this it has been very manipulative. Government claims it wants new collective agreements to be signed as soon as possible so that full attention can be paid to the pandemic and hopes that an agreement is possible with the unions. At the same time, at the bargaining tables, it invokes the same worn out neo-liberal arguments put forward by governments for over 30 years, that its fiscal framework is tight and is even making demands for concessions.

In doing so, not only is it negating the rights and just demands of workers, it is also placing their safety and that of the communities at risk, as these demands are the necessary ingredient to overcome the second wave of the pandemic, the government's professed aim! Workers can see that the anti-social offensive that has wrecked the society for over thirty years is being pursued within the conditions of this crisis, with this crisis being used as the pretext.

The argument of a tight fiscal framework does not hold. It is based on the false claim that the pandemic must unavoidably lead to an economic collapse, the burden of which is to be shifted onto the people. This framework has been decided by the cartel parties on the basis of the demand that the rich must be paid under all circumstances. People have no say in what is referred to as the "framework."

This is the time to think and act in favour of the people and the society in this difficult situation. The demands of the public sector must be met, both as a matter of rights and of urgency. Public discussion must take place to examine how to get the necessary public revenue to finance public services, including providing public sector workers with the wages and working conditions they require to provide the services. The demand to Stop Paying the Rich; Increase Investments in Social Programs! provides a guideline for action within these circumstances. Preconceived notions that there is no alternative to the neo-liberal wrecking of society and that we must abandon our demands must be rejected.

All out to demand that real negotiations be held with public sector workers on the basis of their demands!

(Photos: FSSS-CSN, SIEU, J-F Couto)

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No New Collective Agreement and
No Progress in Negotiations

Collective agreements of approximately 550,000 public sector workers in Quebec expired on March 31, 2020. Negotiations began about a year ago but no new collective agreement has yet been signed, and according to the unions, no agreement is in sight in the near future unless the government begins to negotiate seriously to meet the workers' pressing demands.

Some Basic Facts

The workers involved in the negotiations include 58,500 in the public service, 260,000 in health and social services, 32,000 teachers and education workers in colleges, and 195,000 teachers and education workers in elementary and high schools

Negotiations are conducted on a sectoral and intersectoral basis. Sectoral negotiations cover working conditions and work organization, union activities including union leave, work tasks, scheduling, job postings, health and safety, the status of positions as part-time, full-time, casual, etc. -- issues specific to that sector. Intersectoral negotiations deal with wages, pensions, group insurance plans, parental rights and regional disparities and cover all the workers in all the sectors.

Intersectoral negotiations are conducted directly with the Treasury Board Secretariat. Sectoral bargaining for the public service is also with the Treasury Board Secretariat. Sectoral negotiations for other sectors are held with employer committees consisting of representatives of employer associations and ministerial representatives. These committees all receive their direction from the Treasury Board Secretariat.

For this round of negotiations, there is no common front of the unions. Each union conducts its own negotiations. However, the Alliance of the Professional and Technical Health and Social Services Staff (APTS) and the Interprofessional Health Care Federation of Quebec (FIQ) have formed an alliance for intersectoral bargaining. The unions have entered into a non-raiding agreement under which they commit, during the negotiation period, not to encourage members of one union to join another.

Wages

The government has, for one year now, maintained its wage offer of five per cent over three years, plus additional fixed dollar increases for certain categories of work. This represents no more than a cost of living increase and is in fact a wage freeze. All the unions have rejected the government's wage offer and consider it an insult. Workers are demanding wage increases that make up for lost wages after decades of anti-social austerity and to improve their living conditions, retain staff, and attract employees.

According to a 2019 study by the Quebec Statistical Institute, workers in the public service, education, and health and social services are lagging about 20 per cent behind other public sector employees such as Hydro-Quebec workers, and about 18 per cent behind unionized workers in the private sector.

In these negotiations, the unions are taking different approaches to wage increases.

The APTS-FIQ alliance is demanding a 12.4 per cent increase over three years, which includes 7.4 per cent in wage catch-up. The Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN) has fixed amount wage demands: $2 per hour in the first year, $0.75 in the second year, $0.75 in the third year. In this way, it wants a catch-up for low wage earners. For someone earning $20 an hour, $3.50 over three years is equivalent to a 17 per cent wage increase.

In order to counter the misinformation spread by the government about "highly paid" public sector workers, the Quebec Federation of Labour (FTQ) has published statistics on the average annual salary of its 52,000 members in the public sector: average annual salary of public sector employees: $36,155.49; average annual salary of casual and temporary public sector employees (other than regular): $28,490.15; percentage of women in the sector: 73.7.

Working conditions

There are several demands concerning working conditions which cannot be dealt with in detail here. The general orientation is this:

An Acceptable Workload

The workload is unsustainable, caused by more than 30 years of budget cuts that have resulted in mass departures, absences due to injury and illness, schedule changes, etc. Specific needs vary from sector to sector: acceptable caregiver/patient ratios in health care, for example; increased staffing; stable shifts with well-defined tasks, etc.

Elimination of Mandatory Overtime

The transformation of part-time positions into full-time positions and respect for full-time positions.

One is impossible without the other. When full-time positions, as is the case now, actually mean far more than full-time hours due to mandatory overtime, and when full-time workers are denied statutory and other negotiated leaves people do not apply for these full-time jobs.

Stable work teams and an end to forcing workers to move from one health establishment to another

This is particularly important in health care where working at more than one facility during a pandemic is unsafe for workers and patients and also affects the quality of care.

Improving Health and Safety

The health sector has become the leading sector in Quebec in terms of work-related accidents and illnesses contracted at work. However, the health sector is not even considered a priority sector by the Act respecting occupational health and safety which means that the mechanisms provided by law for priority sectors, such as joint health and safety committees and prevention representatives, do not even exist in the sector. Workers are demanding prevention measures over which they have a decisive say.

Among teachers, the demands focus on reducing class sizes so as to create conditions conducive to quality teaching and learning. In the conditions of COVID-19, this demand has taken on a particularly urgent character to ensure the safety of staff, students and communities. Teachers also demand services for students based on their needs, a workload that is humane and sustainable, recognition of their profession (especially through acceptable wages), and a reduction in precarious work (for example part-time and casual work).

Rejection of Workers' Demands and Concessionary Demands
from Government and Employers

While their demands are just, favourable to their members, to the services and to society, public sector workers are facing a blunt refusal from government and employer associations.

Workers report that after a year, government and employer negotiators still show up at the bargaining tables saying they do not have the mandate to address any of the workers' demands. They cite the government's tight fiscal framework as a reason for refusing to address union demands or for rejecting them outright. On working conditions they say that these can only be dealt with in joint committees once the collective agreements are signed.

Workers also report that government and employer representatives are coming to the tables with demands for concessions. For example, while the government is publicly proclaiming that it wants to put an end to staff movement between establishments within the Integrated Health and Social Services Centres, a demand for increased mobility is being put forward at the tables.

Government and employers are also pushing the averaging of hours of work over an extended period in order to avoid paying overtime rates. Instead of paying overtime if a worker works more than the normal defined work week, they want to average hours over a longer period with the result that workers could be forced to work twelve or sixteen hours in a day at regular rates. This theft would then be called a "reduction in overtime."

To date no progress has been made and there is no new collective agreement in sight. Time is running out and the situation is urgent.

(Photos: CSN, J-F Couto)

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Workers Demand Job Security in the Midst of Pandemic

Actions Across Canada by Hospitality Workers

 UNITE HERE Local 75 picket in Toronto, September 22, 2020
.

Hospitality workers in Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa organized actions on October 22 in support of their demands for protection of their jobs. A joint press release of UNITE HERE Local 40 in BC and Local 75, representing workers in Toronto, issued on the day of the actions, states: "UNITE HERE! Canada is urging the government to condition targeted sectoral bailouts on employers' full participation in the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) to cover their active and furloughed workers; assurances that laid-off workers have a right to return to their jobs for up to 24 months; and worker retention to secure the jobs of contracted workers in Canada's airports. Few hospitality employers are using CEWS to cover furloughed workers as the program was intended. Without protections, most laid-off workers will not have a right to return to their jobs once the industry recovers."

The Toronto action was held outside the Marriot Hotel and the Ottawa action was at the Ottawa Marriott and online. The targets were hotels owned by InnVest, Canada's largest hotel owner. InnVest CEO Lydia Chen sits on the board of the Hotel Association of Canada which is lobbying for bailout relief alongside airline and airport industry associations. The federal government has promised relief for the airline and tourism industries and it is well-known that industry representatives have been lobbying and have the ear of government. The workers, without whom neither industry can function, the actual producers of the added value that enriches the private owners, have no forum but the streets to raise their demands and be heard. BC workers who were peacefully demonstrating on the lawn of the legislature were prohibited from even entering the legislature to sit in the visitor's gallery, much less granted a meeting with any of the MLAs they tried to talk to.

The Vancouver action outside the Hyatt Regency hotel, also an InnVest hotel, involved about 100 workers and their supporters. A union activist told Workers' Forum that only about 10 per cent of workers in the hospitality sector, most of them employed in hotels and restaurants, are currently working. Some workers report having been recalled for short periods and that most employers are not using the federal government's CEWS program to keep them on the payroll. Many have been permanently laid off in all three cities. Workers in Vancouver won improvements in wages and working conditions in a strike in 2019 and employers are using the pandemic as a cover to violate those gains, forcing workers to accept lower wages and inferior conditions in order to be recalled.

In British Columbia the workers have kept up a steady pressure on the provincial government to extend the provisions of the labour laws to address the extraordinary circumstances caused by the pandemic and extend the time period during which a worker maintains their right to recall to their former job. Labour Minister Harry Bains announced on September 1 that the BC government's recovery package would contain "a pledge for employers to offer a right of first refusal to existing employees when work resumes," i.e. an option for employers to "do the right thing." To date the NDP government has refused to take up its social responsibility to protect these workers' jobs and the jobs of other BC workers in similar circumstances through guaranteeing recall rights. In Ontario a number of actions have been organized to demand that employers guarantee that laid off workers can return to their jobs as the industry re-starts.

The issue is this: in whose interests and on whose terms will the deals be struck between industry and the federal government? The hospitality workers assert that the government has a social responsibility to recognize that they have rights. No one is fooled that they should sit back and hope that employers "do the right thing," especially when employers have been using the pandemic to get rid of large numbers of workers altogether and blackmail others. The federal government must ensure that there are no deals without protection of the rights of the workers to go back to their jobs with the terms and conditions that existed when they were laid off.


Hospitality workers actions, October 22, 2020, clockwise from top left: Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa

(Photos: UNITE HERE Locals 40 and 75)

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