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By Tara Ehrcke | February 12, 2015

Trade unionists across the country were delighted to see the Supreme Court of Canada finally recognize a constitutional right to strike. The landmark decision overturned legislation impeding the right to strike, and acknowledged that the right to strike is a form of freedom of association. The decision also recognized that legislative interference in the right to strike gives undue power to employers, who already have the upper hand in bargaining. Justice Abella wrote in her judgement: “In essentially attributing equivalence between the power of employees and employers, this reasoning, with respect, turns labour relations on its head, and ignores the fundamental power imbalance which the entire history of modern labour legislation has been scrupulously devoted to rectifying.”

Posted on June 28, 2016 in Fight for 15, FTQ, Quebec

By Sonia Singh

Thousands of Quebec nursing home workers have walked off the job in their first-ever series of coordinated strikes. They’re demanding that all workers get a starting hourly wage of $15.

The St. Catharines Standard Thu Mar 26 2015

Tristen Castro is a registered practical nurse from St. Davids who sees his patients at a CarePartners clinic in Niagara Falls, one of four across the region, but he and 112 other employees of the agency are set to strike April 10 if their union and employer can't negotiate a contract. The clinics are operated by the private, for-profit agency under contract to the Community Care Access Centre, delivering nursing services such as dialysis, wound treatment and oncology care to patients who, without those services, might otherwise require long-term care or longer hospital stays. Castro and his colleagues, including registered and practical nurses, help keep about 1,600 patients across Niagara in their homes, living independently, and out of hospitals and long-term care residences, he says. CarePartner nurses also provide home care to patients who are not able to get to a clinic.

Yet they are paid substantially less than those employed by other agencies, such as VON, who are also contracted by CCAC to provide the same care, and with the same training, says Castro. CarePartners' RNs and RPNs became members of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union Local 294 two years ago, but have yet to sign their first contract. They had set a strike date of March 20, and extended that to April 10, optimistic that bargaining would reach a successful conclusion. But instead, an offer brought to the table Sunday "was an insult," said Castro. Negotiations have broken off, "and unless we reach an agreement, we're set to go on strike." Unlike hospital nurses, the service Castro and his colleagues provide is deemed non-essential, giving them the right to strike. But without their services, Castro estimates 75% of their patients across Niagara could end up in hospital or long-term care beds, "and of course we don't want to see that happen."

P.E.I.'s 11 part-time Canadian Blood Services workers have been on strike since September

May 17, 2016

Striking Canadian Blood Services workers in P.E.I. are slowly letting trucks and workers from Nova Scotia cross their picket line to set up a mobile blood donation clinic at the Miscouche Recreation Centre. The 11 part-time workers, who have been on strike since September, took up the picket line Monday afternoon.

48-hour strike across province begins tomorrow

May 29, 2016 2

Employees at some private seniors' residences in Quebec are set to begin a 48-hour strike on Monday as part of their efforts to secure better work conditions and higher wages. Earlier this month, 3,000 employees from 42 private long-term care homes held a one-day rotating strike. It marked the first time unionized workers at private seniors' residences have walked off the job as part of a labour dispute.   

April 22, 2015

Next Thursday, more than 6,400 registered nurses are participating in a two-day strike at the University of Chicago Medical Center and eight California hospitals.

The nurses say they are striking over concerns about staffing and patient care issues; the hospitals claim they are striking over pay.

The Peterborough Examiner Fri Mar 13 2015

The Peterborough County- City Health Unit has reached a deal with both unions representing employees who would have been in a legal strike position Friday. Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 4170 represents 53 workers, such as health inspectors and secretaries, while the Ontario Nurses' Association (ONA) represents 32 public health nurses. The two unions were without a contract since Oct. 1 and rejected their employer's initial offer of a 0.5% wage increase for two years. ONA reached a new collective agreement on Wednesday, after a full day of bargaining.

The board of health and ONA ratified a three-year contract with annual wage increases of 0.5% for the first two years and 3% for the third year. Initially, the board wasn't offering a three-year deal. Diane Lockman, a public health nurse for the health unit and the bargaining unit president for ONA, said she's glad that the board heard the union's concerns and reevaluated the mandate, adding the third year. "I'm relieved we reached a settlement and happy to have adverted a strike and a labour disruption for the community," she said. ONA received an outpouring of support from the community during their negotiations, Lockman said.

February 18, 2015

Public sector unions are calling on governments around the world to recognize and protect the right to strike of all workers.

The ITUC day of action - Hands off our right to strike - is in response to attacks from employer groups at the International Labour Organization, the United Nations body responsible for employment and rights at work, and the actions by some world governments to undermine the internationally recognized right of workers to strike.

May 25, 2016

On May 16 to 19, CCU President John Hanrahan was proud to join the picket line with the striking workers of NSUPE Local 19 in Prince Edward Island. The picketers set up a line to protest the first mobile blood clinic on the Island during their eight month strike for benefits and guaranteed hours of work.

About 3,000 workers on strike in 42 different senior residences across Quebec

May 11, 2016

The largest strike to hit private long-term care homes across Quebec starts today. For the first time ever, more than 3,000 workers will hold rotating walkouts in favour of better working conditions. This will affect 42 private long-term care homes in the province.

The Globe and Mail Tue Aug 9 2016

A hospital supported by Medecins sans frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) and specializing in pediatrics in a rebel-held northern Syria province has been destroyed in a series of air strikes over the weekend that killed 13 people, including four staff and five children, the international medical charity said on Monday.

The group, known by its French acronym, MSF, said two of four air strikes directly hit the hospital in Millis in the northern province of Idlib and put it out of service. Six other hospital staff members were wounded in the broad-daylight air strikes on Saturday. The bombing of the hospital, which serves as a reference centre specializing in pediatrics, also destroyed the operating theatre, intensive-care unit, pediatric department, ambulances and a generator, the charity said. It was not clear which government had conducted the air strikes and the MSF statement did not specify.

Eight PEI blood collection workers, all women, all part timers, have been on strike for close to eight months now. As Rankandfile reported in January, the women want a guaranteed minimum number of hours each week. That would allow them to qualify for benefits, and bring a bit of predictability into their daily lives. Their employer, Canadian Blood Services (CBS), isn’t budging. CBS is a not-for-profit, charitable organization operating everywhere in Canada except Quebec. Its sole mission is to manage the blood supply for Canadians. Its budget of roughly $1 billion is mostly provincial money.

No matter what happens, the significance of the strike extends well beyond PEI.  The Charlottetown workers are fighting the same issues CBS workers Canada-wide are facing. Not just workers, generous donors anywhere are also encountering obstacles when looking to donate blood. Some argue that CBS is in such a rush to cut costs that it even puts the safety of our blood supply in jeopardy.

CBS likes its workers part time and precarious, not just in PEI but anywhere in Canada. That was the consensus when unions representing CBS workers all across Canada met in Vancouver last fall, Mike Davidson tells Rankandfile.  Davidson is the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) national representative for three CBS Locals in New Brunswick. “If CBS had it their way, their clinics would  be all staffed by volunteers, and if they couldn’t have that, they’d settle for an entirely casual workforce,” says Davidson. Two of the New Brunswick locals have a few part-timers with guaranteed hours, and it has been an ongoing struggle to keep it that way, Davidson says.  In all of the three New Brunswick locals there are only three full-time unionized employees. “There is no stability. (CBS) doesn’t want stability,” says Davidson. “Meanwhile, they complain about a lack of commitment by the workers.

Mar 12, 2014

BRANDON – Employees at Hillcrest Place Personal Care Home in Brandon rejected their employer’s final offer in a vote held on March 11, 2014. Bargaining reached a stalemate over reducing the wage gap between employees at Hillcrest and other personal care homes in the region.

Dec 10, 2013

The head of the Ontario Homecare Association says a pending strike by personal support workers is a symptom of a broader funding problem. Homecare workers employed by Red Cross Care Partners across the province will go on strike Wednesday morning — and that includes more than 20 homecare workers in Thunder Bay.

Mar 29, 2014

Unions representing 47,000 health care workers are seeking a strike mandate from members. (Photo taken during 2004 HEU strike)

Health care unions representing 47,000 health care workers are seeking a strike mandate from members to back efforts to reach an agreement with B.C.'s health employers. The 11-union Facilities Bargaining Association says that talks have stalled on a number of issues including health employers' refusal to extend employment security provisions, a move that would open up health care to further privatization and put decent jobs at risk. "Health employers' demands for more contracting out will cause uncertainty and instability in our hospitals, care facilities and in the community," says Bonnie Pearson, the FBA's chief negotiator and secretary-business manager of the Hospital Employees' Union. The current provision in the collective agreement that protects services against contracting out expires on Sunday. It was renegotiated into the agreement in 2012 for the first time since it was removed by legislation 10 years earlier. The Supreme Court of Canada later ruled that law unconstitutional. Pearson says health employers are refusing to take steps to improve health and safety in the province's most dangerous workplaces. And they've rejected proposals to improve health service delivery by expanding roles for B.C.'s paramedics in the community. Negotiations between the FBA and the Health Employers Association of BC (representing most publicly funded health employers) include a wide range of health care jobs in hospitals, care facilities, emergency health services, logistics and supply warehouses, and other shared services.

April 4, 2014

By Michael Tutton The Canadian Press

HALIFAX – Parallels are being drawn between Nova Scotia’s passage of a bill Friday to end a nurses strike and a similar law in Saskatchewan that’s the subject of a Supreme Court challenge. Nova Scotia became the latest province to enact essential services legislation for health-care workers on Friday, joining other parts of the country that have longer experiences with this approach to collective bargaining. The law in Nova Scotia requires unions and employers throughout the health-care sector to have an essential services agreement in place before a strike or lockout. If such a deal can’t be reached, an independent third party decides.

April 3rd, 2014 CCPA-NS

Nurses in Nova Scotia are on the picket lines today in a legal strike. They are expected to be out until the government passes essential services legislation. Bill 37, Essential Health and Community Services Act, is a sly attempt to achieve two things: Effectively remove the right to strike (the legislation itself anticipates this by referring, in Section 15, to “depriving the employees in the bargaining unit of a meaningful right to strike,” and Avoid the substitute – interest arbitration on issues in dispute. So at one and the same time, it cuts the unions off at the knees AND offers no fair way to resolve disrupted negotiations, as prescribed by numerous international conventions to which Canada is signatory.

Several years ago, Judy Haiven and I wrote a monograph entitled: Health Care Strikes: Pulling the Red Cord.  In it, we argue that the techniques of Japanese lean production had been imported into North American industry, into public services and into health care.  If you doubt it, just take a look at the plans to transform health care in Saskatchewan. At least the classical Ohno model gives workers the power to warn if the system is faltering by pulling a yellow cord.  And if it becomes dysfunctional workers can stop the production line by pulling a red cord.

May 1, 2014

B.C. health care workers have delivered an overwhelming strike mandate to back their negotiating team’s bid to secure a fair and respectful collective agreement with health employers. Members of the 11 unions that form the Facilities Bargaining Association voted 96 per cent in favour of strike action after a month of balloting wrapped up Wednesday. The key issues at the bargaining table are employment security, protection of benefits and improved health and safety provisions. The FBA is also seeking changes to the ambulance service that would improve and enhance paramedics’ abilities to provide patient care.

The Pembroke Observer Sat Sep 27 2014

A labour dispute that sent Renfrew County home health care workers onto the picket lines has ended. More than 110 professional and support staff with Paramed Home Health Care in the Ottawa Valley, who went on strike Sept. 2, will be returning to work by early next week after ratifying a new three year contract. According to a statement released on the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) website Friday, which represents the workers, under terms of the new deal, most unionized employees will see an annual general wage increase in the range of 1.4 per cent. Improvements were also gained in mileage allowance and the establishment of a new scheduling committee. Warren (Smokey) Thomas, OPSEU president, said he was pleased the members of OPSEU Local 492 ratified the new contract, but added the strike could have been avoided in the first place.

"There would have been no need for a work stoppage had their international parent company, Extendicare, directed its subsidiary to bargain seriously from the start," Thomas said. "Clearly this is one employer which had no interest in the impact a strike would have on their elderly and infirm clients." Striking employees will begin returning to work by the end of this week. Paramed's home care clients in Renfrew County will see the return of their regular caregivers over the next few months. Workers at Paramed had been working without a contract for almost two years.