Should striking government workers be paid for the time they are on strike?
The union representing LCBO workers put that in as a last-minute demand potentially shutting down a tentative agreement on Friday afternoon.
It shouldn’t be the LCBO claiming OPSEU President JP Hornick was bargaining in bad faith, it should be OPSEU members. After the union representing liquor store workers announced there was a tentative agreement that would open stores Tuesday, Hornick said the deal was off.
The sticking point?
After negotiating a wage increase, the move of 1,000 workers from casual to permanent and a series of improvements to benefits, the union showed up with more demands. Included in their “back to work protocol” document was a demand that the workers on strike receive their back wages, vacation days and time in lieu for the days they were on strike.
It’s insane.
Time and again at a Friday afternoon news conference, Hornick claimed “this is not about the money.” And yet it is about the money, with one government source indicating the additional asks in the return to work protocol – which were not part of the negotiated settlement – to be $15 million.
Asked directly if the union was asking for workers to be paid for the time they were on strike, Hornick said yes.
“There’s a number of days for which they’ve been out, so they should be made whole for that time,” Hornick said.
Hornick’s rationale for paying workers for the time they were on strike is her claim that the strike was forced on workers by Premier Doug Ford’s desire to expand the sale of alcohol.
No, the strike was forced by Hornick thinking the union could force the government to change a policy position that they had campaigned on in two elections.
That decision by Hornick to push a personal, political agenda has cost LCBO workers dearly.
Prior to the strike, the LCBO had offered workers a 7% pay hike over three years, improvements to benefits and that 400 workers would be moved from casual to permanent. The union rejected that deal without presenting it to workers and announced a strike while the LCBO said they were open to further talks.
This new offer, which the union agreed to, offers a pay increase of 8% over three years, improvements to benefits and the movement of 1,000 casual workers to permanent positions. The pay grid will also change so that the entry wage increases by 7.8% and the LCBO has agreed not to close any stores for the duration of the agreement due to modernization.
Now, instead of pushing this good deal through, Hornick spent Friday afternoon threatening to scrap it all over whether workers would get back pay for the time they were on strike.
This deal is one that could have been achieved without a strike, but due to Hornick’s personal political crusade against Ford, frontline workers will lose out in the end – they simply won’t get back those lost wages.
By being on strike for 12 days, which is what the strike will have been if stores open Tuesday, a full-time worker will have lost 4.6% of their wages. The contract offer is for 3% in the first year, 2.75% in the second and 2% in the third.
Sure, they will get a raise, but they will not earn back that 4.6% this year. And as for future years, they would have gotten those regardless.
Premier Ford made it clear he has no plans to sell or privatize the LCBO – he simply wants to expand where people can buy alcohol for convenience.
By going on strike, at the behest of Hornick, all the striking workers did was aggravate the public, change shopping habits and increase calls for Ford to ditch the government liquor store.
Given what Hornick has done here, we can expect more irrational, politically driven strikes throughout Ontario’s public service. That is unless other bargaining units see what has happened at the LCBO and ensure it is workers’ issues, not union bosses’ political ambitions that are dealt with at the table.