Hamilton youth jail labour dispute ongoing
A residential detention centre for teens in Hamilton remains empty amid a labour dispute between workers and the nonprofit agency that runs it.
About 60 employees of Arrell Youth Centre picketed outside the 320 Anchor Rd. facility, near Stone Church Road East and Dartnall Road Monday.
“We’re willing to meet with the employer to bargain. They walked out of contract talks and have locked us out,” said Len Mancini, Ontario Public Service Employees Union Local 216 bargaining chair for the centre.
Banyan, the agency that runs the centre, hasn’t had any recent contact with the union, said the centre’s CEO, Kim Ciavarella.
“This is not an ideal situation for the employer or employees, and I look forward to getting back to the table as quickly as possible and getting this resolved.”
The young men who were being held at the 16-bed centre have been sent to other youth detention centres in London, Guelph, Niagara and further afield.
A big issue is Banyan’s demand that staff cover 20 per cent of the costs of benefit premiums and take a reduced package.
The workers don’t have WSIB coverage, either, Mancini said.
“Those premiums are paid 100 per cent by the employee.”
Ciavarella said the agency’s budget has tightened in recent years due to the rising cost of benefits. Less and less is covered by OHIP, which means the private carrier passes costs onto the employer, she said.
“We’ve tried to manage things the best way we can with the funding that we have and that gets tougher and tougher every year.”
April 24 talks didn’t get a deal. The centre houses teens guilty or accused of serious crimes.
Ciavarella said agencies like Banyan are accustomed to transferring inmates, just not during labour disputes.
“The system is quite used to this in the normal course of business.”
Mancini has expressed concern that the youngsters are far from their community and family supports.
The Ministry of Children and Youth Services operates six youth detention centres in Ontario. Private agencies operate 14 secure-custody centres and 41 open-custody facilities with provincial funding.
Mancini said there’s a roughly $10-per-hour gap between workers at the ministry-run centres and agency-operated ones. Frontline youth corrections workers
max out at $24 an hour at Arrell Youth Centre, Macini noted. Some cooks and maintenance workers start at $15 an hour.
“We don’t have the amount of staff in the building as some of the ministry facilities do,” he added.
For instance, there are no fulltime social workers and nurses at Arrell, Mancini said.
In the 1990s, the Mike Harris government opted for the semiprivatized model, a move OPSEU has advocated to reverse, he said.
A Residential Services Review Panel report for the ministry in July 2015 found “unco-ordinated oversight” in the youth justice sector due to the mix of ministryand agency-run facilities.
The continuance of this mixed model has resulted in “inconsistent standards for the hiring, training and compensation of staff, or practice” between the “two legacy systems.”
The report recommended they be “harmonized and integrated into a single system” to make sure training is standardized and “best practices are shared and scaled up system-wide.”
Mancini said Monday the province “hasn’t acted on that at all.”
The Ministry of Children and Youth Services wouldn’t say if it has followed recommendations made in the report. And it wouldn’t comment on differences between ministry- and agencyrun centres, or funding.
“As labour negotiations are a matter between the employer and the union, it would be inappropriate for the Ministry of Children and Youth Services to comment,” spokesperson Genevieve Oger wrote in an email.
Ciavarella said Banyan and other agencies have similar operating procedures and protocols.
“There’s probably variations, but we’re all held to a best practice standard of care that the ministry requires of all their agencies regardless of whether they’re arm’s length or not.”