Greetings from your bargaining team
Your bargaining team is preparing to negotiate a new collective agreement and we are scheduled to begin bargaining with the employer on May 28 and June 11.
From the left: Shah Nawaz, Casey McGuire, Selfa Pyentam, Vincent Fernandes, Omid Nouri
We met last month to prepare a proposal package based on the priorities you identified in local demand set meetings this year and our final demand set meeting on March 24.
We realize the importance of keeping in touch with you during the bargaining process. This will make us stronger to get a fair wages, benefits, secure jobs, and safe workplace free of discrimination and harassment.
Alicia Cross, Local 628, will be the team’s communications liaison for this round of bargaining. Alicia will be assisting the bargaining team in gathering email addresses for those members who we do not have contact information for. Please contact Alicia at aadcross@gmail.com to provide her with your home email address to ensure you are getting information from the bargaining team.
Why hasn’t our March 31, 2018 expired collective agreement been printed?
In the fall of 2016 we ratified our current (expired) Collective Agreement. As the Collective Agreement was being prepared there were discrepancies in the Wage Grid that the parties were not in agreement with regarding certain classifications. The Union bargaining team was not prepared the sign a Collective Agreement that had missing vacant classifications with no rationale provided on classification names changes. We then had ongoing Pay Equity discussions with the Employer and now that Pay Equity has been resolved the parties have agreed in principle on the Wage Grid and a tracking system that accounts for the many classification name changes. We are hoping to sign the agreement in the coming weeks and then once available the agreements will be mailed to the OPSEU Regional Offices for distribution.
In closing
We wanted to take this opportunity to thank the outgoing bargaining team for their hard work last round of bargaining and throughout the Pay Equity Negotiations. Thank you to Ellen Goslin, Robert Thomas, Clayton McKibbon, Brenda Boyle and Shah Nawaz. We will carry on your work.
The bargaining team will continue to communicate and share updates through this bulletin, as negotiations progress. Also, please be aware that all communications will be sent by e-mail and posted on the OPSEU website. Please check with your coworkers to ensure that they are receiving this update. If not please have them contact one of the Bargaining team members or a union steward to update their home e-mail address with OPSEU.
In Solidarity,
Omid Nouri, Local 545 (Toronto) – Bargaining Team Chair – omidnouri301@yahoo.com
Shah Nawaz, Local 545 (Toronto) – shahnawaz.l@gmail.com
Selfa Pyentam, Local 113 (London) – selbarry@yahoo.com
Casey McGuire, Local 412 (Ottawa) – kc.mcguire1374@gmail.com
Vincent Fernandes, Local 545 (Toronto) – vinfern80@gmail.com