This week brought more big wins for members of the Worth Fighting For campaign, with four more units reaching a deal to end 17-week strikes in community, health and social services.
Members at Aptus Treatment Centre ratified a tentative agreement, while members at Salvation Army Broadview Village, Community Living Central York, and Brockville and Area Community Living Association reached awards through mediation-arbitration.
Like the workers who reached deals before them, these units held strong to maintain the historic wage standard workers are setting across their sectors. They are fighting together and winning big:
- In developmental services, where typical wage increases of zero or one per cent have been the norm for over a decade, workers are achieving a standard of three per cent or higher. Every gain made at one bargaining table helps raise the floor for workers at the next.
- Members of Worth Fighting For aren’t just raising the floor across their sectors – they’re raising standards within their own workplaces, too. Recent wins include pensions for part-time workers and significant wage increases to catch up workers in the lowest paid classifications, such as casual workers. Those gains matter in sectors that rely heavily on part-time and precarious work.
- They are also aligning their expiry dates, with most collective agreements expiring in 2028. That means they can head into the next round of bargaining together, with even greater coordination and collective strength.
Workers know that making these jobs better – making it possible for people to not just stay in these jobs, but make them careers – is essential to the future of services. Years of low pay and high workloads have pushed workers to burn out or leave jobs they love. When workers can afford to stay in their jobs, there is greater stability and continuity of care for the people they support, especially in work where relationships, trust and consistency matter so much.
With workers continuing to reach strong settlements, all eyes are now on the employers who continue to stall and delay reaching fair deals. Workers at seven units remain on the picket line, holding strong for the standards workers have fought together to establish. This week, striking members of the Worth Fighting For campaign came together for an incredible show of solidarity outside Community Living Ontario’s conference, where many developmental services employers were gathered. Frontline workers deserve respect and fairness, and their voices deserve to be heard. They know what a stronger developmental services sector can look like, because they are the people who provide these vital services every day.
After 17 long weeks at bargaining tables, on picket lines and taking action in their communities, workers are continuing to stand together – for each other, for the people they support and for the future of the services they are proud to provide.