OFL tells Ford: Recognize court docket resolution, oppose suppressing staff’ wages
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TORONTO, Feb. 12, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) is looking at the Ford govt to finish its suppression of staff’ wages, as soon as and for all, following nowadays’s Ontario Court docket of Attraction ruling to maintain the Stunning Court docket’s 2022 resolution hanging indisposed Invoice 124 as unconstitutional.
“Doug Ford must respect the decision of the courts, and finally stop the suppression of workers’ wages in Ontario,” stated Laura Walton, President of the OFL. “After wasting years and millions of public dollars fighting workers in court, Ford needs to assure workers that he won’t pursue another baseless appeal.
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“Instead, the government needs to ensure adequate sector-wide funding for those workers that have yet to negotiate a Bill 124 remedy.”
Handed in 2019, Ford’s Invoice 124 capped population sector staff’ reimbursement will increase to at least one consistent with cent a moment over 3 years, fuelling each a staffing disaster within the broader population sector and a cost-of-living disaster for loads of hundreds of staff throughout Ontario.
“While we welcome today’s decision, we know that workers can’t leave it to the courts to get the justice they deserve,” added Walton. “If Ford attempts to introduce more anti-worker legislation, our movement needs to be ready to stop it in its tracks–just like we did for Bill 28.”
In early November 2022, Ford swiftly withdrew his govt’s landmark Invoice 28: Conserving Scholars in Magnificence Work–simply 4 days upcoming it handed–following a choice by means of Ontario’s labour motion to origination province-wide accident motion. In the course of an ongoing accident by means of schooling staff, the blackmail of united motion by means of alternative staff used to be plethora to explode Invoice 28.
These days’s Ontario Court docket of Attraction resolution upholds the Stunning Court docket’s 2022 discovering that Invoice 124’s salary restraint measures had been unconstitutional and unjustifiably interfered with the liberty of affiliation word beneath the Constitution of Rights and Freedoms.
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Because the Stunning Court docket resolution, in lots of a part of the wider population sector (together with condition, schooling, power, and post-secondary sectors), arbitrators have awarded (and numerous unions and employers have negotiated) reimbursement will increase above the only consistent with cent cap in Invoice 124, in reputation of the antagonistic have an effect on of inflation on staff and the continued recruitment and retention disaster in lots of of those sectors.
Certainly, in its causes, the Court docket of Attraction particularly emphasised the disproportionate antagonistic have an effect on of Invoice 124 on “women, racialized and/or low-income earners, [who] have lost the ability to negotiate for better compensation or even better work conditions….”
Then again, in lots of conditions, staff have no longer gained indistinguishable reimbursement will increase had to offset inflation or the staffing disaster.
“If Ford really respected Ontario workers, he would provide the necessary funding to bargain fair and reasonable increases for those employees whose compensation is still restricted by the one per cent cap,” stated Walton. “We need a government that makes life more affordable for Ontarians, not one that holds down wages.”
The Ontario Federation of Labour represents 54 unions and 1,000,000 staff in Ontario. It’s the biggest provincial labour federation in Canada. Consult with OFL.ca and practice @OFLabour on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.
For more info, please touch:
Jenny Sellathurai
Intervening time Director of Communications
Ontario Federation of Labour
jsellathruai@ofl.ca | 416-894-3456
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