Competition may have sent baker back to table
The Quebec nurses’ union, Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec, or FIQ, ruffled a few feathers in the Common Front with its tentative agreement.
In the face of a strict government line on wages, the unions bargaining for the Quebec public service, school boards and hospitals had negotiated common wage increases. These were ratified in October.
FIQ, however, continued to bargain and were rewarded with a 15-minute premium every shift to account for the overlap between shifts. Employees who do not work in facilities where this overlap is necessary received a 2.0 per cent annual premium instead.
Which did not sit well with the colleagues in the common front of public sector unions, who were convinced they had gotten all they could from the government.
After four months locked out of work, the 50 bakers and confectioners at Purity Factories in St. John’s started back to work in January.
During the holidays, Newfoundlanders were unable to get the “hard bread” that is essential to some classic recipes. Several other bakeries began to step in to fill the void, and some speculate that that was the reason the company settled.
In March, the Ottawa Hospital had just negotiated a collective agreement with the Canadian Union of Public Employees for its support staff when the Ontario government announced that it did not want wage increases in broader public sector collective agreements, and that provincial funding would not support them. Leaving the hospital in a spot.
They refused to finalize the agreement, by then ratified, and the issue went to arbitration. In October, Kevin Burkett’s award found that the tentative agreement had been reached in good faith and should stand.
Finally, old-fashioned democracy rules at Pratt & Whitney Canada in Longueuil, Quebec. The workforce has the choice between three new shift schedules. The current leader may create daycare headaches: its day shift starts at 6:30 a.m.
