Getting a drink and a doctor may soon be easier
Need a drink? Or a doctor?
Fear not. Ontario’s Liberal government is pulling out all the stops to prevent any work stoppages from breaching the labour peace.
That means letting public sector workers have their way on pay these days.
Teachers came first, in February, months before their contracts were due to expire. Next came OPSEU workers, well in advance of their deadline.
Then supervisory staff. The LCBO is in the on-deck circle with a weekend strike deadline, and doctors are next up after swearing off any job actions during a new round of negotiations.
It’s not so much pattern bargaining as pattern settling — a pattern corresponding to the election calendar as Premier Kathleen Wynne braces for the next campaign less than a year away.
What price labour peace? Consider it the cost of politics — and economics.
The political calculus is that Wynne is making the most of rising revenues to bankroll the latest settlements.
But there’s also an economic calculation at play, because those workers cashing in now are just catching up after being frozen out during recent years of budget deficits and austerity.
There’s a good argument, in good times, for giving those workers their due after asking them to sacrifice during tough times. Ontario has been leading the country and much of the industrialized world in economic growth recently, and cascading tax revenues have brought the budget back into balance — with fiscal room to spare for pent-up payroll demands.
But there’s no question the government has topped up its generosity with alacrity: It keeps making the first move with pre-emptive and utterly unexpected offers that union leaders couldn’t refuse.
The more delicate dance centres on Ontario’s most powerful nonunionized workers’ movement — the Ontario Medical Association. After years of sniping, the OMA and the government have finally reached an entente.
Or more precisely, another one — after last year’s agreement fell apart. Back then, the OMA agreed to a 2.5-per-cent increase (more than other workers are getting), but a restive membership turned it down. That followed a failed mediation effort by former chief justice Warren Winkler, who had recommended half that amount (1.25 per cent) in early 2015, mindful that doctors bill more than $11 billion and act as gatekeepers in a $54-billion health-care system.
Then, and now, the sticking point was a lack of binding arbitration. But what stuck in the craw of most doctors was their belief that Health Minister Eric Hoskins was sticking it to them by publicly exposing the excessive billings of several hundred highly paid specialists earning more than $1 million a year, at the expense of lesser-paid family practitioners.
Hell hath no fury like a doctor scorned — especially by another doctor. That Hoskins is a physician criticizing the big money earned by his fellow doctors has exasperated OMA members.
In the wake of an OMA civil war that toppled its executive, Hoskins lost a battle of his own in the Ontario cabinet. He had long resisted doctors’ demands for arbitration, arguing that Queen’s Park must maintain control of rising billings lest they come at the expense of other priorities such as home care. His stated condition for any concession on arbitration was that doctors form a true union — thus giving up their right to tax shelters through incorporation.
But with an election on the horizon, Wynne’s team concluded it could not risk antagonizing 36,000 doctors with a direct pipeline to the province’s patients, nor cope with work-to-rule tactics. Stressing that she is the daughter of a doctor, Wynne reached out personally to the OMA’s new leadership while Hoskins laid low.
There is still no final deal, merely a framework for future negotiations, culminating in mediation and arbitration if needed. The OMA notes seven other provinces and territories allow arbitration for doctors, but B.C. famously reversed an order deemed too expensive. And Ontario’s doctors are already the bestpaid physicians in Canada, which may be why the last mediator wasn’t persuaded they merited a massive pay hike. That same mindset — more money and even more politics — will govern last-minute negotiations this weekend between the publicly owned LCBO and its OPSEU workers, who can walk out as of 12:01a.m. Monday. Chances are they will reach an 11th-hour deal Sunday night, as they have in past negotiations.
Whether it’s safeguarding drinks or doctors, the only certainty is that Wynne’s Liberals are trying to moderate their exposure to risk. Martin Regg Cohn’s political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn