Jail guards urged to reject deal
Correctional workers say specific concerns not being addressed
Correctional officers at the province’s jails, including Windsor’s South West Detention Centre, finished voting Wednesday night on a tentative agreement that offers them no wage increases for two years.
The tentative deal is being recommended by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union. But the presidents of the locals representing correctional officers have told their members to turn it down.
“The local presidents are standing firm,” Randy Simpraga, president of OPSEU Local 135, said Wednesday night. He said the bargaining team can endorse the offer, but correctional officers have specific concerns not being addressed. Correctional officers are demanding a separate agreement that recognizes the high-risk nature of their jobs.
The tentative deal members are voting on includes a wage freeze for 2015, a 1.4 per cent lump sum payment in 2016 and a 1.4 per cent wage increase in 2017.
Workers would not progress through the pay grid during the life of the contract.
The province has said the contract will have “zero” impact on Ontario’s finances.
Correctional officers currently make a top rate of $32.64 per hour or about $68,000 a year.
Jail workers say the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services has been provoking them in recent days.
On Monday, correctional officers learned their bosses received wage increases of three to six per cent. This was after they learned the tentative agreement reached by the umbrella union Nov. 24 included no wage increases for two years.
Last week, the ministry put out a news release touting how it has hired 91 “new” correctional officers. In Windsor, 17 of the new hires started Monday.
“The numbers lie,” Simpraga said. “They have hired much fewer than have left.”
Brent Ross, ministry spokesman, said the ministry has hired 571 correctional officers across the province since the fall of 2013. Ross could not readily say how many officers left during that same period or if the number of correctional officers overall in the province has increased.
The province currently employs 3,330 correctional officers, Ross said.
“This is politicians politicizing numbers,” Simpraga scoffed.
Union leader Gregory Richards, who works at the Thunder Bay jail where inmates took control of a wing and held a worker hostage this week, said he has crunched the numbers. He said the province hired 390 correctional officers in 2014, while 460 left.
“Stop fudging the numbers,” he said in a Twitter message to MPP Rick Nicholls and Minister Yasir Naqvi.
OPSEU did not release vote results Wednesday night. If workers reject the tentative deal, there could be a strike or lockout at the end of the month.
That would mean managers — including those from other ministries — would be forced to operate jails.