Making Our Voices Heard
Making Our Voices Heard
Prime Minister Meets With Frontline Workers at SEIU Head Office
Prime Minister Meets With Frontline Workers at SEIU Head Office
This February, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited our SEIU Healthcare head office in Richmond Hill to meet with PSWs, hear about their struggles, and discuss what all healthcare workers in Canada need to be better supported. This was a historic day that showed our collective power and influence in Canadian politics.
Together with CUPE/OCHU, Ontario Nurses’ Association, OPSEU/SEFPO and Unifor, our union called on the Ford government to stop its plan to siphon provincial funding from public hospital care and hand it to private, for-profit surgical clinics, a risky venture that will cost Ontarians dearly and damage access to public care.
Along with leaders from the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, Ontario Nurses’ Association, Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) and Unifor Canada, we sent Prime Minister Trudeau and Deputy Prime Minister Freeland a letter expressing our serious concerns about Doug Ford’s consistent movement toward privatizing Ontario’s healthcare system.
We welcomed the federal government’s commitment of $1.709 billion to invest in personal support workers (PSWs) and care workers after years of lobbying for this assistance. We were the first union calling for a $25 per hour national minimum wage for all PSWs across Canada, and the funding marked a giant step towards achieving that goal. We also called on Canada’s premiers to accept this money and raise wages for healthcare workers immediately.
March 21 – Secretary-Treasurer Tyler Downey Shares Member Stories at Government Committee on Bill 60
SEIU Healthcare Secretary-Treasurer Tyler Downey and Director of Government Relations Michael Spitale were at Queen’s Park to share worker stories from the frontline, warn about the dangers of Bill 60, Ford’s bill to privatize our healthcare and detailed solutions further to fix Ontario’s public healthcare system.
Executive Vice President Mina Amrith joined Ontario’s Pay Equity Coalition to call on Ontario MPPs to support strong public services to close the gender pay gap.
Equal pay is an essential issue for our members – the majority are women. The Ford government disgustingly fought back after SEIU Healthcare’s win over a decades-long fight to give women working in long-term care homes access to pay equity. It passed Bill 106, which damaged both pay equity and collective bargaining rights.
SEIU never stopped fighting for you, and we won. To ensure we would be ready if Bill 124 were struck down, SEIU Healthcare and other Ontario unions fought for the right to reopen contract talks and engage in arbitration during the last round of central bargaining.
In November 2023, anti-worker Bill 124 was ruled unconstitutional, and we went to arbitration. This arbitration award recognizes the extent to which Bill 124 unconstitutionally suppressed union member wages, awarding compounded increases of more than 8% over the two-year 2022/3 period – for ALL hospital workers who were part of central bargaining. RPNs also saw an added $2 per hour premium; other premiums and benefit increases were also part of the award.
July 31 – Letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Take Action for PSWs
Our PSW members provide essential care, and all levels of government need to act. This summer, we sent a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, calling on him to take direct federal action to raise wages for all elder care workers across Canada. Parliament passed the federal budget, which included 1.709 billion dollars for the lowest-paid healthcare workers, but Premier Ford refused to accept this money. Our letter called on the Prime Minister to utilize whatever tools needed to pass along the already approved $1.709 billion.
In response to 1,200 hospital department closures and patient suffering, SEIU Healthcare, OCHU/CUPE, and Unifor demanded the Ford government come to the bargaining table with the funding we need to save public hospitals.
The Ontario Hospitals Association has used underfunding as an excuse not to deliver items to help fix the staffing crisis and working conditions during bargaining. If Ford fails to do the right thing, healthcare workers across Ontario will be ready to take action.