Three unions are forming a bargaining alliance in order to move ahead with negotiating an agreement for roughly 75,000 hospital workers in Ontario.
Unifor, which represents over 1,000 hospital workers from Wawa to Elliot Lake, is joining CUPE and SEIU Healthcare in an effort to move on stalled talks with the Ontario Hospital Association (OHA).
"It just sort of naturally grew out of some frustrations that we’ve all experienced, I’d say, fairly equally around negotiations in this previous round,” said Katha Fortier, assistant to the national president of Unifor. “The bargaining has been very frustrating, I think, for the most part, even getting language issues has been challenging.”
Leaders from all three unions have been meeting in Toronto this week to discuss its bargaining strategy.
The unions say that they need to ramp up negotiations after the OHA – which represents 160 public hospitals in Ontario – demanded that hospital workers make concessions in order to get a deal done.
Fortier also says that incidences of violence in the workplace have been on the rise throughout the province, and that employers must identify that problem in the collective agreement.
“I think that there’s strength in numbers, and I think our message is really similar,” Fortier said. “Our slogan is ‘together for respect’ and these workers who literally keep our hospitals running don’t feel like they have that in a lot of cases.”
Unifor’s northern hospital group – which includes workers from Sault Area Hospital – did a round of negotiations back in November, which resulted in “nothing being accomplished, not even language issues,” according to Fortier.
Unifor says that rallies and television advertisements could be in the works as the union alliance outlines its next steps during this week’s meetings, which will include union members from Sault Ste. Marie, Timmins and Sudbury in addition to members from smaller communities in northern Ontario.
