Shepherd’s Care: Employer tables insulting proposal

Bargaining Update: Shepherd's Care—Local 047, All SC chapters

After a number of delays, your negotiating team at Shepherd’s Care Foundation finally met with the employer on Sept. 22. In that first bargaining meeting, we exchanged our first round of proposals.

Your negotiating team is disappointed to say that the employer’s package is full of concessions and rollbacks. It’s a disrespectful package that ignores all the sacrifices we’ve made over the past two years of the pandemic.

The employer is proposing to:

Reduce your overtime pay from double to 1.5 times your pay for the first four hours of overtime
Reduce your eligibility for shift differentials, and deleting shift differential entirely for shifts that end between 2:45 p.m. and 5:00 p.m.
Remove the August Civic Holiday
Get rid of double-time pay for work on Christmas and New Year’s Day, replacing it with time-and-a-half
Refuse to recognize the Sept. 30 Truth and Reconciliation Day holiday.
Have your medical appointments come out of your sick leave bank (currently they don’t reduce the hours in that time bank)
Seriously restrict your ability to use paid sick leave if you have to quarantine due to exposure to a virus such as COVID-19

Along with these absolutely insulting measures, the employer is proposing zeroes on our salary increases for the entire agreement, from 2020 to 2024! As the cost of living rises rapidly, we need our wages to keep pace as well.

The employer also refuses to listen to your demand for longer shifts. We know that’s important for you to have longer shifts, so that you can have more certainty in your schedules rather than being asked to stay on longer after your short shift is over. If the employer wants you to be staying longer, they should be paying you overtime.

Our proposal was a reflection of the priorities you outlined through your bargaining survey in June, covering holidays, wages, RRSPs, workload, and short-staffing. We have a long way to go before we can reach something acceptable with this employer.

Our next bargaining dates are on October 20 and 21. We’ll be sure to send you out another update afterwards, so that our co-workers can stay informed about the fight for a fair contract. Don’t hesitate to reach out to your negotiating team with any questions, comments, or feedback.

Negotiating Team members — Shepherd’s Care Foundation

Barrhead

Chris Measures chrismeasures@hotmail.com

Fay Zwack fayzwack@gmail.com

Dorothy Bacon dorothyb@live.ca

Greenfield

Herbert Lat herbertlat@gmail.com

Bernadette Espiritu bdet_philex@yahoo.com

Jane Muthomi janekinya@yahoo.com

Kensington Village

Annabelle Lee annabellelee2008@yahoo.ca

Christina Nuidaal nyithaal@hotmail.com