A joint letter from your OPS Bargaining teams chairs explains that efforts to bargain in good faith has been compromised by pending legislation.

To all OPS members,

As your elected Central/Unified and Corrections Bargaining teams we want to address you and express our concerns over the upcoming round of OPS bargaining.

We have been elected to bargain and bring back a fair contract; that is what we intend to do! However, we now find ourselves in a position where this process is being hijacked.  The McGuinty government has proposed the “Protecting Public Services Act”, which lays out the framework for an imposed contract, regardless of our efforts to bargain in good faith. This unprecedented attack on the collecting bargaining rights of public workers is both troubling and unfortunate. The threat of legislation over OPS employees is an unfair, bad-faith move on the employer’s behalf to bully our members.

The teams have made the very difficult decision to not serve the employer with notice to bargain at this time. We feel that our efforts to bargain in good faith has been compromised by the pending legislation. We are eagerly waiting for the employer to step up and respect the collecting bargaining process by removing the proposed legislation and commit to bargaining in good faith.

In Solidarity,

Roxanne Barnes, Chair, OPS Central/Unified Team
Dan Sidsworth, Chair, OPS Corrections Team