From MERC Team

ROLLOVER UPDATE…
November 23rd, 2009

update-icon
Greetings Presidents and Division,

We are happy to announce that we have come to an agreement regarding rollovers/COR 9 in the MCSCS Division.

We understand that there is much anticipation over this agreement, please be patient and details will follow soon.

In Sol., MCSCS MERC

Man escapes custody at Hamilton hospital

Two armed men wearing hospital masks overpowered two prison guards and helped a third man escape custody from Hamilton General Hospital today.

Police alerts were issued throughout the GTA following the morning escape from the hospital at Victoria Ave. and Barton St. at around 11:30 a.m.

Police identified the escaped prisoner as Fawad Nouri, 24, a man who was shot by Hamilton Police in January following an armed robbery of a Tim Hortons on Stone Church Rd. and Upper James St.

Six years ago, Nouri was accused of pointing a sawed-off shotgun at a Toronto Police officer and reaching for her gun following an armed robbery at a flea market.

The prisoner was taken to the hospital for undisclosed care by two guards who were overpowered by two men armed with handguns. Police said the suspects wore green surgical masks during the break-out.

The three men were seen leaving the hospital in a silver-coloured Hyundai Tiburon.


Police also said they may also have a scanner capable of monitoring police calls.

From MERC Team

UPDATE…
November 16th, 2009
Greetings Presidents and Division,

Rollovers For MCSCS unclassified (Fixed Term)

The MCSCS MERC met with management on November 12th to further discuss potential numbers and rational on Rollovers. We were unable to come to an agreement as of yet but have scheduled another meeting for the 23rd of November and we remain optimistic.

***IMPORTANT***: We are asking all locals/presidents to confirm with the MERC that all local hour disputes have been resolved around hours regarding appendix 24. Please confirm before 1000 hours on Monday, November 23rd, 2009. If they have not, please provide details as to numbers of outstanding disputes and forward said disputes to us.

ASMPP

We have retained counsel for this policy grievance and the union is providing a team of two, one whom we have relied on many times in the past with great success as well as the other being the lawyer who represented the London city workers against their employers punitive sick program. First date is February 22nd, 2010.

H1N1

Even though Correctional workers are now part of the group who should be given the vaccine, the employer still has not moved to having on site clinics, except for CNCC where public health declared an outbreak of this flu. We are filing a H&S Policy Grievance on this issue as well the fact that the employer failed to provide employees with protection may be another argument in regards to lack of resources provided to our members.

Court Transfers

Policy grievance has being initiated regarding the court transportation of inmates, as we believe this to be an inclusion issue.

MOL

It has come to the unions attention that inspections of our correctional facilities and potentially other inspections are being done by managers out of the Ministry of Labour. The union is moving on a policy grievance on this issue.


In Sol., Corrections Executives

H1N1 flu shot

The Ontario government is expanding the list of people who can get the H1N1 flu shot. The province's Chief Medical Officer of Health, Arlene King, said Tuesday that first responders — firefighters and police officers — can now get inoculated. Correctional workers and senior citizens living in nursing homes are also eligible to receive the vaccine.

Radios

The Local Executive would like to thank management for fixing all the radio issues. Having requested reports from its members in order to deal with the problems appropriately, no such reports have been submitted...therefore the radios and all their issues must have been resolved by management.

President's Message

Fighting the coming attack

October 23, 2009

Dear sisters and brothers:

The wounded global economy came home to roost at Queen’s Park yesterday.

Finance Minister Dwight Duncan announced that Ontario’s budget deficit this year will hit $24.7 billion. The news, while not surprising, was shocking just the same. It’s a big number. It has big consequences for every OPSEU member.

The Minister promised a “sweeping review” of government spending. Premier Dalton McGuinty would not rule out unpaid days off for the million Ontarians who earn their bread in the provincial public sector. And the spectre of privatization now looms over every public service worker.

The Liberals’ plan is to make us pay.

There is no question that the deficit is real, and it’s big. It’s about $1,900 for every living person in Ontario. Put another way, it’s equal to all the money the province collected from Personal Income Tax last year.

As a province, we will have to address this deficit. The question is, who will pay?

Dwight Duncan won’t have much luck looking for waste in public services (except, of course, for the hundreds of millions he’s throwing away on private consultants). We already had a “sweeping review” from 1995 to 2003. It was called the Common Sense Revolution, and public services still haven’t recovered from the brutal trauma of those years.

As far as unpaid days off, a lot of us remember Bob Rae’s “Social Contract” all too well. But much has changed since the Rae days.

For one thing, the Social Contract would be struck down by the courts today. In 2007, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell was wrong to tear up the collective agreements of health workers in that province. Since then, collective bargaining has been recognized as a protected right under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

McGuinty can’t legislate his way out of this. If he wants to use public employees to buy Ontario out of the recession, his two main options are a) privatization; and b) mass layoffs.

Privatization is a stupid idea. It cuts services, it destroys jobs, and it usually comes with major cost overruns. And from a budget standpoint, selling off assets like the LCBO – which right-wingers are already barking for – would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

As for more layoffs, they can only weaken local economies, destroy the services people need, and generate headlines the Liberals really don’t want to see.

So what’s their plan? My guess is, they think that just the threat of layoffs and privatization will force public employees to agree to the wage cuts or “Dalton Days” he wants.

In other words, it’s a New Social Contract.

The problem with the 1993 version of the Social Contract was not that it tried to pay off the deficit that all Ontarians owed. The problem was that it put the responsibility for doing so on one group only: public sector workers.

How is it fair that a part-time secretary at a community college, who makes maybe $27,000 a year, should be the one paying off the deficit when the Bay Street banker is not?

Which is more important, providing professional help to a child with a mental illness, or giving income tax breaks to profitable corporations and obscene bonuses to their CEOS?

Public services aren’t just for public employees. They exist because we all need them. And that’s why saving them is not the responsibility of public employees alone.

We chose careers in public service not to get rich, but because we care – for people, for families, for communities. It’s time our commitment got the respect it deserves.

We are already planning a bold strategy to fight the coming attack. It will take courage, commitment, brains, resources, and leadership. The good news is, there is no organization in Canada that is better equipped to lead this fight than our union, OPSEU.

Working together as we have done so many times before, I know we will do whatever it takes.

In solidarity,

Warren (Smokey) Thomas

President

Elections

Monday Oct 26, 2009 at 2000hr at the union hall..... Nominations and elections will take place for the following positions:
1. L.E.C
2. E.R.C
3. Scheduling committee.

No more Bitching, come out and have your voice heard! !