Join us for an information picket/leaflet on Wednesday November 2nd from 1pm to 2pm. We need as many people as possible to help us leaflet and show solidarity to end injuries due to violence towards our members! Additional details to come…

In keeping with Abidh Khan’s longstanding service not only to the former Queen Street Mental Health Centre—but to his Union, OPSEU-  local 500 members held a celebration last week to mark his 40+ years of dedication to OPSEU, and in particular to the local at Queen Street/CAMH.

From President Nancy Pridham:

“I know of no one who has spanned the various name changes and machinations of our organization-its numerous local executives plus staff representatives.”

Abidh will retire November 30th.

After 5 very difficult and challenging days at the Bargaining Table, the Union was unable to reach a new Collective Agreement with the Employer.  For the first time since the merger in 1998, CAMH and OPSEU Local 500 did not reach a collective agreement at the table, and will move to conciliation.

This morning, the employer rejected the Union’s very reasonable proposals on four outstanding issues and walked away from the Bargaining Table.

In addition, the impasse was definitely due to the plans of the employer to create the maximum amount of upheaval in our workplaces.

The employer’s proposals included; contracting out of support services beginning with environmental services, and the elimination of the Research Analyst II position and merging RA IIs into a new Research Analyst Classification.

The Employer was unwilling to include language about psychological wellness in the Collective Agreement.  The employer would not negotiate a fair wage, despite holding a significant surplus of over $3,000,000 and having received a 2% increase in funding from the Ministry of Health earlier this year.

Please read the attached document that your bargaining team was given on the first day of Bargaining.

In terms of next steps, there will be a General Membership Meeting held sometime in late November. The date will be shared with all of you, as soon as possible.

Your Bargaining team is ALWAYS committed to returning to the bargaining table to negotiate a fair and reasonable Collective Agreement.

For the first time CAMH/L500 did not reach a collective agreement at the table, and will move to arbitration.

The impasse was definitely due to the plans of the employer to create the maximum amount of upheaval in our workplace.

Proposals on the table included contracting out of support services (specifically environmental services), elimination of research positions.

Please see the CAMH Notice of Reliance on Strict Legal Rights for the impact to bargaining unit members.

Honestly, it seems so unbelievable that you know it must be true!

Recently, the union was enlightened to hear the top brass at CAMH were leading groovy new age initiatives such as Yoga and afternoon sing-alongs, followed by live testimonials on passions surrounding Psychological Wellness. “Better late than never”, goes the old saying and there must be a dozen or more “old sayings” which might apply here…”Putting the cart before horse…” springs to mind!

The organization has been virtually silent since signing onto the National Standards for Psychological Wellness way back in 2013.

Call it a coincidence, but now exposed to doing nothing, and seeing a million dollars in funding for a Well@work initiative pulled by the FaaS Foundation, CAMH now believes the good mental health of employees is important!

Here is another old saying: “too little, too late…”

When we meet with employees, they tell us what they hear, what they see and how they feel about the workplace every single day. Employees feel disillusioned regarding the lack of transparency and the failure of CAMH to deal with Violence and burnout in a very real manner, to focus on real initiatives which would realize wellness in the workplace.

The only real item there is a focus on is the budget. CAMH has focused on the budget at the cost and expense of employees–the people they ask to carry out their vision. People are fragile, beaten down and disillusioned–passion has been replaced with bitterness, hope replaced with despair and excellence replaced by mediocrity.

Wellness at CAMH has been, again a top-down approach–a surprise to people, after years of ignoring issues, there is a sudden interest in wellness!

Resistance is futile–you will embrace wellness at CAMH.

***No union involvement or participation was ever requested in developing initiatives which would result in a Psychologically well workplace—any such initiatives put forward by the Union were rejected immediately by CAMH.***

On Monday, September 26^th and Tuesday September 27^th, 2016 are the next days your bargaining team will meet with the employer to continue working towards a new Collective Agreement.

These will be the 4^th and 5^th days of bargaining.  The bargaining team has already met the employer on 3 previous days.

The bargaining team is looking for support from all of our membership as we continue in this process with a very, very tough employer.

On Monday, we would encourage you all to wear something blue, which is OPSEU’s color to show support for the bargaining team.

We would also like to invite you all to come and have a coffee break with us between 9 30 and 11 30 AM in the Oasis Space on the Ground Floor of the Bell Gateway Building.  Coffee and Cookies will be available.

Previous bargaining teams worked hard to enshrine paid breaks into our Collective Agreement.  It is your right and we are encouraging you all to exercise this right, not just next Monday, but every day you are at work!

We would also remind you that taking breaks goes a very long way to enhancing your Psychological wellness.

See you all on Monday!

Volume 1, Edition 1 –  United We Bargain, Divided We Beg!

What is collective bargaining?

Collective bargaining is a process in which a trade union and an employer negotiate a collective agreement.

Collective bargaining begins when the notice to bargain is served and the parties agree on dates to sit down and bargain.

OPSEU Local 500 served notice to bargain to CAMH, in January 2016.  OPSEU Local 500 has provided a number dates to bargain, face to face with the employer.

To prepare, the Bargaining team met on July 18^th, 19^th, 20^th, August 17^th, and 18^th to review YOUR demands as voted on by the membership at Local 500’s Demand Set Meeting on June 16^th, 2016.  The Bargaining team is diligently preparing our proposal to present to the employer.

What happens if, during negotiations, the employer and the union cannot agree on the terms of a collective agreement?

Either the employer or the union may ask the Ontario Minister of Labour to appoint a conciliation officer. This officer will then try to help them reach an agreement.

What if the employer and the union cannot reach agreement in conciliation?

The conciliation officer informs the Ontario Minister of Labour that a collective agreement was unable to be effected. The minister would then generally issue a notice informing the union and the employer that he or she “does not consider it advisable to appoint a conciliation board”.  This notice is known colloquially as the “no board”. [Conciliation boards are exceedingly rare. They have not been appointed in recent years.]

Bargaining Unit work is Union work.  It is yours; own it, mobilize around it.  Keep it public!

Greetings!

We are sending this message because we need your help in order to move forward and make workplace change which is meaningful to you.

OPSEU L500 and ONA 054 have embarked upon a partnership with Yale University Centre for Emotional Intelligence and The FaaS Foudation to bring you a survey which will really make a difference in the lives of working people.

Over the next short while, you will receive a “ROBO CALL” from Nancy Pridham and Danielle Larmand, your bargaining unit presidents, followed by a letter and a link to the survey at Yale University.

We need all of you to become involved and assist us in this initiative! If we all participate, we will achieve a more accurate result and obtain quality data for our bargaining units.

If you have any questions:

• for OPSEU: call a steward, a bargaining team member or the Union office (416-532-2712).
  Visit the OPSEU website: opseu500.ca
• ONA: call directly the local office 416-535-8501 x32332

This survey is NOT affiliated in any manner with CAMH.

If you failed to listen or watch the news last night, or did not read a newspaper this morning, you may have missed the fact CAMH was fined $80,000 by the Ministry of Labour. (Read the full story here.)

Certainly you could not have missed the e-leader where CAMH finally accepts and admits they failed to adhere to the Occupational Health and Safety Act, and failed to put measures in place to ensure employees were safe at work.

We think this is an important first step, because up to this point the Executive Leadership Team has done a remarkable job of pretending nothing ever happened.

The CAMH lawyer, made valiant efforts to voice the reluctance of CAMH to go to trial-rightfully, he indicated costs and reputation as issues and lastly, the organization did not want to further traumatize its employees-now that’s rich.

Let’s be clear, they had no choice but to say ‘we accept the decision of the court…’ They are not, by any stretch of your imagination, feeling warm about the decision.  Their words are hollow and hold little truth.

Some people reading this will say the Union is negative-not at all, just honest.

CAMH and its leadership have kept your Unions at a Violence table slogging away at nothing for over a year-we voiced our concerns over and over, to no avail.  CAMH did not in any way want to accept responsibility- we know this for a fact.

For the first time in my history as a Union activist and President of this local, employees at CAMH are calling for the resignation of the CEO the Executive Leadership Team.

The fine is a couple of bonuses of the Executive Leadership Team -SHAME Of course, the larger question looming before the CAMH is what will they do next?

We will be watching and we are not the only people watching.

The Union was not surprised by the announcement recently regarding CAMH and the loss of $1M of funding from the FaaS Foundation for CAMH’s Well@Work Program (June 29, 2016 CNW).

For the first time in 11 years, the foundation had to part ways with a grantee due to “…a lack of confidence…” Hey FaaS Foundation, OPSEU employees lost confidence a long time ago.

And then, to top off this incredible surprise, we see a surprise e-leader yesterday announcing CAMH has made a decision to put the WELL into WELLNESS. WHAT??? We think that they could not put the SAFE into Safety so they decided to backtrack and focus on the Wellness portion of Health, Safety and Wellness.

What is going on? Well, as usual the Executive Leadership Team has had a change of vision—WHAT?

I know, this seems at odds with what they keep saying doesn’t it? Well, let’s see what the e-leader really says…

They have a number of Policies in place which assist and support employees. Hmm, really?

1. The Psychological Wellness initiatives began years ago, and both OPSEU and ONA fought to have the psychological wellness survey brought to employees at CAMH, but the survey was never brought to CAMH despite a number of other hospitals and independent organizations recognizing they needed to do this and make changes. CAMH actually refused to adopt this initiative. The steering committee has NO union representation among its stakeholders.
2. EAP—that has nothing to do with CAMH except to say they offer this program. It is actually offered as a part of our benefits package and we have always had EAP services so this is NOT a new initiative, and recently the contract was renegotiated. Some employees advise this program is helpful, but others have advised it was an abysmal waste of time.
3. The Respectful and Inclusive Workplace Policy—do not get us started on that piece of paper… it is not worth the ink it was printed with. The term endeavour, right at the beginning of the Policy (“CAMH endeavours…”) really means all they have to do is “try”. There is no obligation for CAMH to actually STOP managers or employees for behaving poorly toward each other. They only endeavour to do certain things… and as we were advised by legal services recently, the Policy really has no teeth. To further complicate matters, OPSEU Local 500 stopped utilizing the Policy due to the fact it simply was not followed. Timeline violations and other article breeches which the Local deemed very relevant were ignored while employees foolishly believed they were getting a “fair” shake.

Employees at CAMH are not feeling well or doing well. Our belief in this organization and the Vison and Mission are completely bruised—folks are unwell mentally and then endure a bitter fight with the insurance company to get paid and to try to get well. Thank you, CAMH. You chose Desjardins, and are simply choosing to blame the insurer for our lack of coverage when they simply ADMINISTER the Policy–you pay the bill so you can make the necessary changes —you simply choose not to do so, as it impacts your bottom dollar (far more important than wellness initiatives).

These initiatives should have started years ago, but a regime was brought to CAMH which wreaked havoc on the consciousness of workers, invaded every pore of their being, and has created a great deal of unrest among all of us.

Let us speak about those polices which were brought forward at that time—the Attendance Management Support Policy—HA! Support you say. Balderdash, it is designed to intimidate and coerce employees into coming to work ill. It enforces the notion we are all the same: those lazy employees who take off sick all the time, but are not really sick, we will support you, we will fire you if you are unable to work properly, we will make sure you feel humiliated and you will be well. Resistance is futile. The real issue is that managers need to manage employees if they believe they are abusing the sick policy not throw us all into the prisoner box and condemn everyone. For the record, this writer has not had a sick day in years—I’m still waiting for the wonderful letter of support and thanking me for my attendance-HA! Maybe I am due an award next year??? Oh boy, that will make me feel well!

The MASK or FLU Shot Policy—another wonderful supportive initiative which forces employees to either get flu shot they do not want, or wear a mask. Another great choice offered by CAMH: being forced by your employer to have an injection you do not want. Thanks again for the support!

Gosh, can you hardly wait to see the new initiatives—the local is just itching to see the handiwork of the latest and greatest CAMH Policy to make us all well. Go ahead CAMH; give it your best shot—better late than never, although without any funding one can almost imagine what kind of wellness we all might have.